"Speak not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me. " - AhabBut to paraphrase Slim in To Have and Have Not, "what happens if it slaps you back?" The answer is that the undying savage beneath Leslie Nielsen's butch veneer emerges, a new Ahab for a Moby Dick that's been solar ray-disseminated into the wild beasts of the American mountains.
The natural world in total becomes his Dick.
There was another leviathan that splashed the nation in the mid-70s--Jaws-- and it changed the way the country thought about nature--but it too had precedents. Initially a part of a seventies eco-awareness trend, it made many people aware of sharks as a source of life-threatening danger for the very first time. Before then we'd thought of nature as something more likely to die at our hands than the other way around, hence the formation of Earth Day, and campaigns to stop pollution, littering, aerosol cans, pull tabs on cans, and so forth (leading to the pop-tabs and roll-ons we use today); a Native American was crying by the side of the highway on TV. We kids were keen on Cub Scouts and 'Indian Guides;' TV had Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, Grizzly Adams and The Waltons, Apple's Way, and Little House on the Prairie; in school we read My Side of the Mountain; at home a magazine called Ranger Rick. Mom took us to see matinees like The Adventures of the Wilderness Family.
In sum, we were in the wilderness, pop culturally. All we needed was a beast to fear, a bad grizzly, to make the good grizzly seem even nicer.
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All this was going on before the widespread us of VCRS and cable TV, so if an exploitation pioneer wanted to get funding from the major TV networks in advance of production, he had to entertain three generations, in the same room, looking at the same screen. PG didn't just mean kids can come with the adults, it meant the grandparents wouldn't be offended or confused. And Hollywood was dealing with a surplus of stars who had drawn huge salaries decades earlier and would now work for scale in just about anything (and the older folks would blurt forth their names in momentary excitement), so ensemble cast disaster films sprang up, with older former stars and younger newcomers, and in-between the granite jaws of B-list Charlton Hestons. Meanwhile, the American west, outdoor sets (like Spahn Ranch!) beckoned as a cheap location for monster movies, far from front office meddling and prying eyes, free from expenses on things like set design and extras. You didn't even need a fake monster on account of coteries of trained grizzlies, wolves, and mountain lions for rent from animal talent agents. And oversize or swarms of vermin (Kingdom of the Spiders, The Swarm, Empire of the Ants, Food of the Gods, Damnation Alley, Night of the Lepus) could be rear projected to look freakishly large and at half speed to seem lumbering around miniature sets. We kids never ratted out the fakeness of the effects and there was no way to rewind or repeat play since DVRs and VHS were still a ways off so we had to tell other kids about it ourselves, and we told it better anyway. No kid ever said "it looked so fake" - even if we laughed about it with our parents at the time. It was the seventies, man, even the monsters were accepted for whatever mask of naturalness and freedom they chose to wear. And raining on someone else's parade was considered a form of cockblockery or narcing.
There was nothing else to worry about, so these vermin subbed as a common foe. There was no blue state / red state divide, we were all purple, like the mountain majesties. And into these mountains strode an eagle-eyed copycat director named William Girdler, a mountain man whose mountain-set monster movies were mountain man-made. (He knew where all the vistas were.) Girdler saw there was a way to make a PG monster movie that could combine the pre-Jaws nature film craze's fondness for grizzly attacks (we were often gypped on that front, but we took what we could get) and the post-Jaws landscape and its urgent demands for less nature more monster-- and thus, from the mountains came the mighty Grizzly (1976), a huge hit. He could now afford to empty the cages at the Hollywood animal wrangler's, for 1977's Day of the Animals.
Up until the Blu-ray that just came out I had always thought Day of the Animals was a TV movie. I'm pretty sure CBS co-funded it but at any rate, thanks to Scorpion Releasing though, a gorgeous 'Walden Filter' widescreen vista of an anamorphic aspect ratio has appeared, majestically dwarfing the relatively incompetent action we're used to on the small square screen of the earlier DVD. Did I mention I love this dumb movie?
There was another leviathan that splashed the nation in the mid-70s--Jaws-- and it changed the way the country thought about nature--but it too had precedents. Initially a part of a seventies eco-awareness trend, it made many people aware of sharks as a source of life-threatening danger for the very first time. Before then we'd thought of nature as something more likely to die at our hands than the other way around, hence the formation of Earth Day, and campaigns to stop pollution, littering, aerosol cans, pull tabs on cans, and so forth (leading to the pop-tabs and roll-ons we use today); a Native American was crying by the side of the highway on TV. We kids were keen on Cub Scouts and 'Indian Guides;' TV had Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, Grizzly Adams and The Waltons, Apple's Way, and Little House on the Prairie; in school we read My Side of the Mountain; at home a magazine called Ranger Rick. Mom took us to see matinees like The Adventures of the Wilderness Family.
In sum, we were in the wilderness, pop culturally. All we needed was a beast to fear, a bad grizzly, to make the good grizzly seem even nicer.
.png)
All this was going on before the widespread us of VCRS and cable TV, so if an exploitation pioneer wanted to get funding from the major TV networks in advance of production, he had to entertain three generations, in the same room, looking at the same screen. PG didn't just mean kids can come with the adults, it meant the grandparents wouldn't be offended or confused. And Hollywood was dealing with a surplus of stars who had drawn huge salaries decades earlier and would now work for scale in just about anything (and the older folks would blurt forth their names in momentary excitement), so ensemble cast disaster films sprang up, with older former stars and younger newcomers, and in-between the granite jaws of B-list Charlton Hestons. Meanwhile, the American west, outdoor sets (like Spahn Ranch!) beckoned as a cheap location for monster movies, far from front office meddling and prying eyes, free from expenses on things like set design and extras. You didn't even need a fake monster on account of coteries of trained grizzlies, wolves, and mountain lions for rent from animal talent agents. And oversize or swarms of vermin (Kingdom of the Spiders, The Swarm, Empire of the Ants, Food of the Gods, Damnation Alley, Night of the Lepus) could be rear projected to look freakishly large and at half speed to seem lumbering around miniature sets. We kids never ratted out the fakeness of the effects and there was no way to rewind or repeat play since DVRs and VHS were still a ways off so we had to tell other kids about it ourselves, and we told it better anyway. No kid ever said "it looked so fake" - even if we laughed about it with our parents at the time. It was the seventies, man, even the monsters were accepted for whatever mask of naturalness and freedom they chose to wear. And raining on someone else's parade was considered a form of cockblockery or narcing.
There was nothing else to worry about, so these vermin subbed as a common foe. There was no blue state / red state divide, we were all purple, like the mountain majesties. And into these mountains strode an eagle-eyed copycat director named William Girdler, a mountain man whose mountain-set monster movies were mountain man-made. (He knew where all the vistas were.) Girdler saw there was a way to make a PG monster movie that could combine the pre-Jaws nature film craze's fondness for grizzly attacks (we were often gypped on that front, but we took what we could get) and the post-Jaws landscape and its urgent demands for less nature more monster-- and thus, from the mountains came the mighty Grizzly (1976), a huge hit. He could now afford to empty the cages at the Hollywood animal wrangler's, for 1977's Day of the Animals.
Up until the Blu-ray that just came out I had always thought Day of the Animals was a TV movie. I'm pretty sure CBS co-funded it but at any rate, thanks to Scorpion Releasing though, a gorgeous 'Walden Filter' widescreen vista of an anamorphic aspect ratio has appeared, majestically dwarfing the relatively incompetent action we're used to on the small square screen of the earlier DVD. Did I mention I love this dumb movie?
You want to know the plot? There's humans on a hike high in the mountains, and then there's animals driven mad by the ozone layer hole (and close proximity to the sun up there in the mountains with thinner air) and they may be crazy with bloodlust but they all team up to stage massive multi-species attacks on the hikers and townsfolk. The end. There's one hawk, three vultures, a carload o' rattlesnakes, a tarantula, wuxia mice, a wolf, three panthers, a gang of German shepherds presumably fresh out of a hole in the K9 Academy fence, and most fearsome of all, a savage alpha male Leslie Nielsen, shirtless, as nature intended wrasslin' with a real live Grizzly. Can you prove it didn't happen?
Sometimes you eat the bar....
Like all Day of the Animal's devotees, I was the right age to remember the night Day premiered on CBS, but I missed their whole dog attack climax because it came after my bedtime. (I was ten). Sometimes I wonder if my blog's real origin story lies in my dad's strict adherence to pre-set bedtimes, regardless of how riveting the movie we were watching. I missed the last hour of a horde of great films that way: The Poseidon Adventure, Telefon, Day of the Dolphin, Orca, The Cassandra Crossing, to name a few. I would be in bed, furious and crushed. But I would often dream my own crazy ending - which was way better than the actual climax turned out to be. For Day of the Animals when I heard at next Monday's recess that the humans had survived by riding a raft down the rapids with rabid dogs snapping at their hands every yard of the way I envisioned a pretty wild ride.
Naturally it's not that wild, as it turns out --but 'naturally' is the key word, that's what saves it. Animals was filmed as far away from the age of CGI, mentally and spiritually, as film would ever get. Girdler feels his way along in real time, in real nature, with semi-real actors and real animals--especially vultures, hawks, a cougar, a crazy dog pack, the bear, and a tarantula--the scene where the hawks and vultures maul the bitchy girl is terrifying because those birds are real, and they're right there in the shot, and they're pissed, and her distress is palpable.
Like all Day of the Animal's devotees, I was the right age to remember the night Day premiered on CBS, but I missed their whole dog attack climax because it came after my bedtime. (I was ten). Sometimes I wonder if my blog's real origin story lies in my dad's strict adherence to pre-set bedtimes, regardless of how riveting the movie we were watching. I missed the last hour of a horde of great films that way: The Poseidon Adventure, Telefon, Day of the Dolphin, Orca, The Cassandra Crossing, to name a few. I would be in bed, furious and crushed. But I would often dream my own crazy ending - which was way better than the actual climax turned out to be. For Day of the Animals when I heard at next Monday's recess that the humans had survived by riding a raft down the rapids with rabid dogs snapping at their hands every yard of the way I envisioned a pretty wild ride.
Naturally it's not that wild, as it turns out --but 'naturally' is the key word, that's what saves it. Animals was filmed as far away from the age of CGI, mentally and spiritually, as film would ever get. Girdler feels his way along in real time, in real nature, with semi-real actors and real animals--especially vultures, hawks, a cougar, a crazy dog pack, the bear, and a tarantula--the scene where the hawks and vultures maul the bitchy girl is terrifying because those birds are real, and they're right there in the shot, and they're pissed, and her distress is palpable.
Aside from that, and the bear-wrestling, the animal attacks are endearingly abstract. The key signifiers of amok nature horror movies, such as animal mauling, really can't be shown unless you're a dickhead whose going to really kill animals for his movie in which case fuck you, Ruggero! Girdler doesn't do such things, I presume, and that's where the comfortable cult pleasure is for we sensitive types. Quick edits between what is clearly just well-staged play wrestling with tame animals: a dogs's bared teeth in a play snarl (trying to stay in character and not wag his tail, but finding it nearly impossible while eyeing an off camera treat) pink foamy blood on mouths like toothpaste; men yelling and running and waving at the air; dog's teeth play-biting someone's arm; various close-ups of claws; fluttering wings. It all cuts together in the 'Shower Scene Montage' tradition, and--before it gets monotonous--the hawk looks down from its coaching gyre and screams the signal to end to the scrimmage, and all the animals withdraw.... as you were, kids. I don't consider this unconvincing montage strategy at all negative. In fact if this were an Italian or Japanese film every animal in the film would probably be dead by the end of each scene. Anyway, if William Girdler hurt any of these critters, he paid the ultimate price, dying in a helicopter accident scouting locations in Indonesia soon after making The Manitou.
With smaller animals this mellow mood can be undercut, it becomes skeevier and more disregard for animal life threatens to cast a bad vibe. Bewildered mice on visible strings come flying backwards across the rooms onto the head of the fat old sheriff; hordes of snakes sun themselves inside of cars, clearly not aware they're in a movie. They all seem... expendable. Nothing as bad as the look of stunned betrayal on the rat's faces when they're blasted off the miniature porch with pink pellets in Food of the Gods.
Girdler's films aren't meant to be great gore pieces, but they are great for those of us in search of Cecil B. DeMille-levels of under-direction. Actors stand around in a 'funeral processions of snakes' kind of Cinemascope chorus line and wonder what to do, receive no guidance, and improvise.
ENSEMBLE ASSEMBLE!
If you're not old enough to remember the fuss parents used to make about Poseidon Adventure and Airport you may not have the same giddy rapture for the "ensemble cast of familiar but older faces, and young up-and-comers, and one square jawed hero and someone jostling for his alpha position" disaster films that were all the rage in the seventies, as parodied in Airplane! (1980). But either way, let me give you some background on this big 70s staple, too--and why it was the perfect fit to merge with the amok nature trend.
Once upon a primetime (before the age of cable and VCRs), The Love Boat and Fantasy Island ruled the weekends. They had a steady cast of hosts and a sea of B-list celebrities of all ages wandering aboard the boat or onto the island for their mundane adventures. Some people managed to become celebs by doing nothing but showing up on these shows, like Charo! Or Zsa Zsa Gabor! Or look, there's Charles Nelson Reilly!
Girdler rides this ensemble zeitgeist too, so on this hike in Day of the Animals we have the disaster movie cross section:
CHECKLIST OF 70s ENSEMBLE DISASTER CASTING
Check ("She KNOWS what she's doing!"- only this one doesn't - to the point of dressing for an overnight hike in her Sunday best and--I think--heels). She's also an idiot, following the guy with the whitest hair towards her doom, and dragging with her "son" with her.
2. A 12 year-old kid (unusual for these movies, he's played by a 25 year-old stuntman, which is real creepy, like that 'kid' in Burial Ground but without the incest.
3. 70s bombshell career woman contemplating her lack of a love life and children while eyeing the square-jawed hero's ring finger - Here we have-70s mainstay Linda Day George + extra point for her Farrah hair and off-the-cuff New York accent.
4. Christopher George or David Jansen? Former, Linda's husband, so their scenes of courtship have an interesting vibe. Here he sometimes remembers to use a (terrible) Southwestern accent.
5. A Richard Dreyfus-ish Jaws-style dweeb for scientific exposition? check
6. Famous athlete considering retirement / disillusioned preacher? - Former (written in case Girdler signed some actual famous athlete looking for some screen time; he didn't but hey the script is done)
7. Native American or black sidekick who will certainly die - Check
8. The insane challenger of the rugged hero's leadership? Leslie Nielsen!? I knew there was a reason I loved this movie.
9. The 'Newt' or little girl (ala THEM), alone and traumatized after her parents die (and is found wandering around the wasteland (extra point if carrying dirty Teddy bear or blanket) - Check.
10. Attractive young couple dealing with some pre-marital or post-marital issue? Check
11. Fat sheriff roused out of bed in the middle of the night to investigate? This better not be another prank!
12. Some old character actor who either comes along to spread his dead spouse's ashes or as a bucket list last hurrah. (He dies second, usually, and maybe bonds with #1, the Shelly Winters, before he does) - I can't remember if Girdler has one.
Everyone assembled: the hike goes on, the NYC mom's heels dig into the mud, the animals attack in the blazing ozone sun. A midnight evacuation of the towns above 5,000 feet is given a few shots, hazmat suits, clear the building (you know, it's The Crazies but for animals). And eventually you'll have deeper resonance to the phrase "Watch you like a hawk" cuz there are some shots of hawks watching the humans; and Nielsen--going shirtless to signal his de-evolution into a Putin-like celebrant of masculine power (the Ozone layer thing also affects the beastly as well as the beasts)--pokes a big stick into the belly of the young beta-male, grunts at his cowering girlfriend: "I killed for you! You're mine now!" and to the 25 year-old widdle boy, "Shaddup you little cockroach or I'll shove you off the cliff!" Clearly, those who left with Leslie are reconsidering the choice in a leader, but that's politics. Some people just follow the loudest voice in the room, and are surprised over and over when it devours them, ranting and asserting dominance all the while.
But that's not even his most memorable quote, someone in his terrified party mentions believing in God and he shouts:
It's hard to remember if I had a point to all this or if I even recommend Day of the Animals, though of course I do, if for no other reason than Nielsen and the near-Morricone-level cacophonous percussion score by Lalo Schifrin. Lalo, you're the closest thing Hollywood had to an Ennio back then, be proud!
In the 70s, even the mauled sleep well.
Everyone assembled: the hike goes on, the NYC mom's heels dig into the mud, the animals attack in the blazing ozone sun. A midnight evacuation of the towns above 5,000 feet is given a few shots, hazmat suits, clear the building (you know, it's The Crazies but for animals). And eventually you'll have deeper resonance to the phrase "Watch you like a hawk" cuz there are some shots of hawks watching the humans; and Nielsen--going shirtless to signal his de-evolution into a Putin-like celebrant of masculine power (the Ozone layer thing also affects the beastly as well as the beasts)--pokes a big stick into the belly of the young beta-male, grunts at his cowering girlfriend: "I killed for you! You're mine now!" and to the 25 year-old widdle boy, "Shaddup you little cockroach or I'll shove you off the cliff!" Clearly, those who left with Leslie are reconsidering the choice in a leader, but that's politics. Some people just follow the loudest voice in the room, and are surprised over and over when it devours them, ranting and asserting dominance all the while.
But that's not even his most memorable quote, someone in his terrified party mentions believing in God and he shouts:
"My father who art in heaven you've a made a jack ass out of me for years. Melville's God, that's the God I believe in! You see what you want you take. You take it! And I am going to do just that!"And by it, you know he means that girl, from the young couple beset by some pre-or-post marital issue (#10 in the ensemble assemblage checklist above). The other attractive girl, the one with the career, (#3) smartly stayed with the square-jawed male (#4)
It's hard to remember if I had a point to all this or if I even recommend Day of the Animals, though of course I do, if for no other reason than Nielsen and the near-Morricone-level cacophonous percussion score by Lalo Schifrin. Lalo, you're the closest thing Hollywood had to an Ennio back then, be proud!
But take a knee and let me tell you one last story about why I love this movie:
There was this townie up in Syracuse in the 80s who stole all my Tom Waits albums (he promised to return them after he taped them, yeah right.) but he had the best dog in the world. This dog, a mutt of medium height, was super smart and sweet, a brilliant actor and almost psychic. When I was filthy drunk in the Syracuse snow some nights, which was often, this dog and I would roll around in the snow at like 4 AM and I'd scream like he was tearing me apart while he jumped all over me making these terrifying growls. We'd go on and on, rolling around growling and screaming, the dog managing to seem like he was tearing my arm off while barely even getting fang marks on my coat. We sounded, I thought, like someone was being mauled to death. Drunkenly, I thought it was hilarious and convincing, and fun. And then, one night, someone finally yelled out a window "hey, you and the dog - please keep it down!" and I was like how the hell can that guy tell I'm not really being hurt? I'm screaming in 'agony' - Why isn't he calling an ambulance?
There was this townie up in Syracuse in the 80s who stole all my Tom Waits albums (he promised to return them after he taped them, yeah right.) but he had the best dog in the world. This dog, a mutt of medium height, was super smart and sweet, a brilliant actor and almost psychic. When I was filthy drunk in the Syracuse snow some nights, which was often, this dog and I would roll around in the snow at like 4 AM and I'd scream like he was tearing me apart while he jumped all over me making these terrifying growls. We'd go on and on, rolling around growling and screaming, the dog managing to seem like he was tearing my arm off while barely even getting fang marks on my coat. We sounded, I thought, like someone was being mauled to death. Drunkenly, I thought it was hilarious and convincing, and fun. And then, one night, someone finally yelled out a window "hey, you and the dog - please keep it down!" and I was like how the hell can that guy tell I'm not really being hurt? I'm screaming in 'agony' - Why isn't he calling an ambulance?
This dog and I stopped in mid-attack, both looked up at the window, without a word or bark, then looked at each other, and resumed the attack quieter. How that damn dog knew to go quiet, I still don't know. And I think that story shows why I love Day of the Animals, because even very young kids can tell when animals aren't being hurt or hurting anyone for real, no matter how vehement the snarls and screams. Take that to the other extreme equivalent in grand Melville tradition, even being devoured, mauled and screaming for your life, even crashing into Indonesian cliffs, laugh and roar for the love of roaring.
In the 70s, even the mauled sleep well.
