Strong and Moving!

As Good As It Gets

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Hiking guides Steve Buckner (Christopher George) and Santee (Michael Ansara) take a group of civilians (including Leslie Nielsen, Andrew Stevens, Richard Jaeckel, Ruth Roman and, naturally, Lynda Day George) into the California mountains. What they don't know is that a hole in the ozone layer is allowing rays from the sun to reach animals and make them thirsty for human blood! If you are looking for the ultimate "animals gone truly wild" movie, check out William Girdler's entertaining-as-hell flick. This has snakes, birds, mountain lions, dogs, wolves, and bears (oh my!) stalking (in perhaps the greatest tribute to the Kuleshov effect) and going off. The cast is great all around with the stand out being Nielsen as a racist jerk ad man from the city ("Hey, did you know Indians can't cry?"). Girdler effectively stages several attack scene but seems to have dug himself into a hole regarding how to correct all of this at the climax. The end is a total cop out as the animals just roll over and die ("We're lucky it stopped when it did"). Regardless, it is a great ride getting there. I mean, where else can you get to see a shirtless Nielsen wrestle a bear?

William Grindler directed a handful of trashy films during the seventies; the best I've seen being his debut 'Three on a Meathook'. Day of the Animals is a creature feature and apparently very similar to his earlier film 'Grizzly' (which I haven't seen). The film can be considered a silly seventies horror movie, and some sort of warning against global warming as apparently; aside from just warming the planet, destroying the ozone layer and causing more tax, global warming also has the capacity to send animals insane. This idea is put forward at the beginning of the movie during the prologue, but once it starts properly; we get down to the real business of the film; which is showing a bunch of people running from a variety of crazed animals, including dogs, snakes, rats and bears. We follow a group of hikers who are dropped off on a mountainside, just before the authorities realise that something is very wrong with the wildlife. Despite being away from civilisation, this message still manages to reach the hikers and soon they find themselves battling nature for survival.This film has a really good premise and I have to say that, unfortunately, it has pretty much been wasted. The film benefits from obvious things such as the setting and the capacity for plenty of animal attack scenes, but it doesn't blend this with a constantly interesting story and most of the film involves waiting for things to happen. The film was apparently made for TV. I'm not actually sure whether it was or not, but it would make sense as the movie has all the hallmarks of a TV movie; including a lack of blood, which is a major disappointment. The cast is nothing to write home about, but there is a role for Leslie Nielsen who is undoubtedly the highlight of the film. It's not hard to see why the Zucker brothers saw his potential for comedy because even in a 'serious' role, Nielson is hilarious. In fairness to the film, it does get better as it moves along the final third actually is quite exciting; but by then, you are likely to be fairly numb from the two thirds that preceded it. Day of the Animals is not a classic seventies horror film, but it has a few memorable moments (like Leslie Nielsen battling a Grizzly Bear) and is at least worth a look.

I am so glad I finally had the chance to see Day of the Animals. I've been a fan of William Girdler's Grizzly as long as I can remember. But for whatever reason, I had never seen his follow-up. So, did it meet my expectations? While I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as Grizzly, it's still a fun ride for anyone with a taste for these animal attack movies.In this one, a varied bunch of would-be backpackers is helicoptered to the top of a mountain. The plan is to take a couple of weeks and hike down the mountain and out of the woods. Leading the hikers is experienced guide Steve Buckner (Christopher George). The rest of the group is made up of varied individuals including a boy and his overly protective mother, a couple trying to reconcile their marriage, a professor, a reporter, and an advertising executive. Things get off to a good start, but unbeknownst to the group, there's trouble brewing. It seems that ozone depletion is having a very negative effect on the animals at higher altitudes. The "negative effect" is the animals have all turned into killing machines with man as their prey. Can this band of novices make it out of the woods before they become victims? Man, do I love this kind of movie! It plays out something like a bizarre episode of The Love Boat with killer animals at every turn. But even I realize that Day of the Animals might not be for everyone. If you don't want to watch a band of ill-equipped, ill-prepared 70s types walking and talking their way through the forest, you might want to skip it. The actual animal attacks, while acceptable, are standard 70s movie stuff – nothing overly special or groundbreaking about them. The tension and atmosphere is also standard for a 70s animal attack movie. A shot of the people – a shot of the animal – another shot of the people – a shot of the animal getting closer to the people. If you've seen it once, you've seen it a million times. Fortunately for me, I get a real kick out of this kind of cheese.But the best part of the movie has to be the performance of Leslie Nielsen. It has to be the most over-the-top piece of acting I've ever been fortunate enough to see. You could look far and wide and not find anything that comes close to the scene-chewing on display in Day of the Animals. A friend of mine wrote the he almost gave the movie a 10/10 based solely on Nielsen performance. I've gotta agree with that. He's that amazing!

I'm pretty sure that if director William Grindler hadn't died prematurely, as a result of a tragic helicopter crash in 1978, he would have grown out to become Jess Franco's equivalent in America, with literally dozens of horror & cult films on his repertoire. In only six years time, Grindler had already directed eight films; of which some of them are quite derivative of each other. This "Day of the Animals", for example, is almost an exact copy of Grindler's earlier (and arguably most successful) creature feature "Grizzly", only there's a much wider selection of animal opponents – duh – and slightly more detailed character drawings. The lack of surprise makes "Day of the Animals" a rather mediocre late 70's flick, but it still comes warmly recommended to all fans of 'nature ferociously revolting against humanity'-films for several reasons. For example, Grindler maintains an effectively tense atmosphere throughout the whole film (even during the rather slow and occasionally dull first half hour), some of the animals' attacks are definitely exciting and there's a wide and interesting variety of characters trying to escape the wrath of the animal kingdom gone mad. Twelve of the most appalling people go on a guided hiking/survival trek in the Californian mountains and quickly notice there's a unusually strange and mildly unsettling ambiance in the air. Rightly so, because the overly polluted ozone balance upsets and completely disorientates all the animals and causes them to spontaneously attack the human trespassers in their area. Under the animals' siege, the group quickly falls apart and their petrified and obnoxious attitudes turns them into easy targets for the wild birds, wolves, dogs, cougars, snakes, etc etc... As mentioned above, the first half hour of the film is slow and slightly dull, mainly because there are too many characters that require a basic introduction. Their backgrounds are rather relevant for the rest of the film, so it's important you know there's the wise Indian, the troubled married couple, the ill football-player, the insufferable advertising executive, the gorgeous female journalist and so on. Still, even during these initial script-formalities, Grindler creates an ominous atmosphere using simple tricks like moody music and extended images of viciously staring animals. As soon as the group starts arguing constantly and falls apart, the story becomes slightly too implausible and particularly Leslie Nielsen's over-the-top portrayal of the ill-tempered business man is hard to take serious. The sequences in which Mandy ("Jaws" star Susan Backlinie) falls victim to a virulent bird-attack and Frank (Jon Cedar) desperately tries to avoid a wild confrontation with rabid dogs – observed by an already traumatized young girl – are downright brilliant pieces of pure suspense that reminded me of the best moments of critically acclaimed creature-features, like "The Birds", "Jaws" and "Them!". The ending, however, is severely disappointing, as I *** Spoiler *** was anticipating a typically disturbing and merciless fate for mankind, like it was the case in "Kingdom of the Spiders". Too bad.