Welcome back to BAD MOVIE MONDAY! Today’s demented doltish detritus is DAY OF THE ANIMALS. It’s a 1977 eco-horror movie starring Christopher George, Lynda Day George, Richard Jaeckel, and Leslie Nielsen that is best described using two words: Jaws Wannabe. You see, after the success of the 1975 blockbuster imitators sprung out from under every rock trying to copy Spielberg’s film. Usually using ten year old scripts that had been previously rejected. In fact, these movies were so omnipresent that Christopher George starred in TWO of them. This one and the previous year’s GRIZZLY.
Quick Recap! When COVID shut down everything in early 2020, I started an online bad movie night get-together with some friends that we eventually dubbed “Bad Movie Monday”. The premise was simple: We’d torture each other every Monday with the worst trash we could find, tell a few jokes, cheer each other up, and in the process maybe discover some weird obscure cinema that we might never have seen any other way. This series of reviews will feature highlights of those nights so you can all share in the fun and maybe get some ideas for your own movie night.
So what’s the movie about? Shall I try to explain it in my usual terrible way because I’m too lazy to look up the synopsis? Well, alright. You asked for it!
DAY OF THE ANIMALS is about a bunch of disaster movie stereotypes going on a nature hike with ruggedly handsome tour guide Christopher George. You have the usual rogues’ gallery of diverse characters: an anthropologist, an ex-football player, a bickering older couple, a divorced mother and her son, a young couple, a mystical Native-American, a rich bigot, and a hot blonde reporter. However, because the ozone layer has become thin, all the animals in the world have gone crazy and will soon proceed to attack our heroes, forcing the filmmakers to find more and more ridiculous ways to hide the fact that they can’t afford realistic special effects. That’s about it. I realize I’m particularly wretched at explaining a film, but in this case I barely need to. My half-assed summary encapsulates exactly what you’re going to see almost perfectly. In fact, just reading the title and looking at the poster is enough to understand a movie whose plot is this thin.
A bit of an aside. Maybe it’s the lazy American in me talking, but the who the hell enjoys these kinds of organized hikes? You’re paying money to go walk in the woods while a guy yells at you to look at a tree or a mountain or a rock that happens to be particularly scenic. You spend the whole time sweating and tired, eating cold sandwiches, shitting in a hole you had to dig yourself, and sleeping in a crummy tent while swatting away at bugs all night. Someone please tell me where the “fun” is? I’ve done this before for free and hated it. So I can’t imagine paying for this sort of thing.
Alright! Now onto my favorite part of the review, where I list ten thoughts I had while watching the movie.
#1 – Christopher George oozes cigar chomping hairy chested masculinity. Guys like him were so sexy to women back in the seventies that they could get away with wearing leisure suits with the shirt open down to their belly button. Truly, it was a different time.
#2 – The title is accurate. The movie does occasionally take place during the day and occasionally features animals. High concept stuff.
#3 – One of the easiest ways to tell if you’re watching a movie made in the seventies is that it has these long weird establishing shots of the sun, usually at an angle or in a position where it creates a prism. I have no idea why filmmakers did that, but I can’t recall them doing this before or since.
#4 – Five percent of the film’s budget went towards buying unused Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom footage and another five percent went towards editing out Marlin Perkins.
#5 – I’m not sure the filmmakers know what the ozone layer is or what it does when it’s damaged, because I don’t think anything in this motion picture is scientifically accurate. In all seriousness though, I do give points to the filmmakers for bringing up the fact that this was going to be a serious issue almost a decade before anyone else.
#6 – What’s nice about this movie is that once you watch it you don’t need to see 1976’s Grizzly anymore. Because both movies have the same lead actor, plot, director, producer, and production and distribution company. In fact, Christopher George is basically playing the same character in both.
#7 – It’s impossible tell if Leslie Nielsen is trying to be funny on purpose or if the script was that unintentionally ridiculous. At one point his character completely loses his mind, takes off his shirt in the middle of rainstorm, and goes ” If there’s a God left up there to believe in. My Father who art in Heaven, You’ve made a jackass out of me for years. It’s never been you for me. Melville’s God, that’s the God I believe in! You see what you want, you take it. You take it! And I am going to do just that! ” Then, after unsuccessfully trying to adopt his new philosophy with one of the women in his group, challenges a grizzly bear to a fight. You think I’m kidding don’t you?
#8 – Composer Lalo Schifrin was one of the great masters. When you think of a “Waka-Chicka Waka-Chicka” seventies movie score, you’re pretty much thinking of him. He did genius scores like Dirty Harry, Enter The Dragon, The Amityville Horror. Real memorable stuff. Then he took a break and did this movie’s score in what appears to be about five minutes. I’m glad he got to take it easy. He deserved it. Just don’t get too excited seeing his name in the credits.
#9 – Most of this film was filmed on the cheap and it shows. Because there’s nothing cheaper than wandering around in the woods and having your characters occasionally stop and point at stock footage of animals.
#10 – Don’t expect too much of an ending. The movie just sort of stops at some point. It was very “seventies” that way.
VERDICT: Good Bad or Bad Bad? Well, it’s not a bad movie but it’s very leisurely paced for what it is and has a bit too much filler. There’s some nostalgic and sometimes very beautiful 1970s cinematography, some fun dumb seventies writing, and you could a whole hell of a lot worse than Christopher George and Leslie Nielsen in a movie about animals trying to massacre every human they come across. The Nielsen Vs Bear scene being a particular standout. I personally enjoyed myself, this really took me back to the glory days of watching movies on late night TV when I was seventeen, but I’m not sure you would. So I can’t quite recommend it unless you’ve seen this sort of very mid-seventies movie before and know what you’re getting into.
