Animals Run Amok!: The Top... Well, However Many I Want To List

Aside from my undying love of supernatural horror films, one thing you should know about my horror appetite is the insatiable need for Animals Run Amok. I don't care if it's mutated giant spiders, anacondas in the jungle, or lions in the African desert, nothing gets this little horror girl excited like Mother Nature sticking it to man. Therefore, I have compiled a short list of some of my personal favorites in the Animals Run Amok subgenre, most of which are horrible guilty pleasures (don't judge me). Not necessarily the best ones, mind you, just the ones that I really get a kick out of.

No numbers, because these movies are all so different that I couldn't put them in any particular order.

Deep Blue Sea (1999)

I love killer shark movies as much as the next person and I must say that Deep Blue Sea is my absolute favorite. Samuel L. Jackson, Thomas Jane, and genius sharks with chompy teeth make me happier than any other killer shark movie. Happy in my pants. It's a sin to prefer this over the almighty Jaws, but I really can't help myself. I was squealing like a little girl at the theater over this film and the excitement hasn't waned even after 762 viewings, give or take a few.

Kingdom of the Spiders (1977)

Arachnophobia still deserves a spot on this list, but all my willies about that film were increased a thousand percent when I saw Kingdom of the Spiders. I reviewed it recently but if you don't want to read it, let's just say that I was thoroughly traumatized by the sheer number of GD tarantulas that are crawling their butts all over people in that movie. William Shatner is the king but I was a little too freaked out to really enjoy him.

Anaconda (1997)

An improbable story and a wet-behind-the-ears J. Lo could not even ruin this absolute gem of giant man-eating snake movies. Just the words "South American jungle" are enough to scare the shit out of me, but add in a hunt for anacondas with one creepy-ass Jon Voight and you've got one of the best Animals Run Amok ever. Oh jeebus help me, I can't get enough. Everything about this movie including an unconscious Eric Stoltz is simply awesome. Not to mention a giant snake eating and then regurgitating a winking Jon Voight. I am in killer animal heaven. And the sequels are a fucking riot.

Lake Placid (1999)

Lake Placid is a hell of a lot of fun. Seems to be a theme amongst these movies, right? Giant/killer animal movies just need to be fun for me to fully enjoy them. Otherwise the whole concept of people being chewed up and eaten alive by crocodiles or snakes is too horrible to think about. Lake Placid is the very definition of fun. Great movie. Betty White as the defiant old lady who feeds the croc is damn genius. And I have some mad love for Oliver Platt. Seriously overlooked character actor right there.

Snakes on a Plane (2006)

The reason Sam Jackson wanted to make this movie was because of the title. The reason I wanted to see it was because of the title. Expectations can be bad. This movie is not. It's the most parodied movie I've seen, but in a completely lovable way. It's funny and it's got the gory animal attacks that I love without being campy. Okay, there might still be a little bit of camp, but it manages to take itself mildly serious - a huge feat in my book. Yea for angry poisonous snakes in unnatural colors!

Arachnophobia (1990)

Arachnophobia is a 90s retro-licous... well, I wouldn't call it a favorite but it was a movie that even though I hated spiders with a passion, I couldn't pass up watching this literally every time it was on TV. Tell me that seeing that fucking huge queen spider crawling up Jeff Daniels' leg didn't make you squirm in your seat. He had to use a nail gun to kill the GD thing - that's one bitch you don't fuck with.

Congo (1995)

Not a horror movie, you argue? Well, it's my blog. So get over it. On this continent we've got the most feared of all animals protecting our wildlife and parks - bears. But across the ocean, they've got an even bigger menace protecting their diamond mines - pissed off gorillas trained by man to kill. And not only do we have gorillas pounding the shit out of people's faces, this movie also contains one AWESOME hippopotamus attack on a convoy of inflatable rafts. Technically, I guess it's a bad movie but it's one of my biggest guilty pleasures. Bruce Campbell and Tim Curry definitely help the film, plus one of cinema's greatest lines - "STOP EATING MY SESAME CAKE!"

Primeval (2007)

Primeval might be a little too serious of a movie to be enjoyed as much as the others on this list, but I think it was really well done. The effects work on Gustave the crocodile were killer and I loved the action sequences. The real-life issues dealt with in the movie didn't bother me at all and I embraced the movie for what it did. Dominic Purcell is perhaps not the best actor and he is completely upstaged by the guy playing the videographer. So there's a bit of comic relief to make the movie more fun. Gustave could have eaten more people, though. I would have liked that better.

Eight Legged Freaks (2002)

Three spider movies on this list is perhaps a little excessive, but whatever. From lots of ugly little spiders to spiders mutated to enormous sizes by chemical-contaminated water. Eight Legged Freaks was a deliciously delightful throwback to the giant bug movies of the 50s. It was more an enjoyment of the genre rather than ridiculing it. It was an old-fashioned good time and FUN movie to watch, you can't deny it. I mean, the spiders talk throughout the whole movie, for crying out loud. If all that isn't a love for these kinds of movies, then I don't know what the hell is. Eight Legged Freaks was an instant favorite when I first saw it and I still love it.

Jurassic Park 1 and 3 (1993 and 2001)

What? This doesn't count either? Technically dinosaurs qualify as animals and they certainly run amok in this series of films. I can do without The Lost World, but was I the only one who totally fell in love with Jurassic Park 3? The spinosaurus kicking T-rex's ass and the pterodactyl scenes rocked my face off (I don't really know what that means). And of course the first one is a classic for bringing Sam Neill back into our lives. Raptors are the craftiest bastards that ever lived.

Black Sheep (2006)

Killer... sheep? Is, um, is this movie really about killer... SHEEP? Holy crap, it is. And you know what? That FUCKING RULES. That's all I have to say.

This list probably sounds a hell of a lot like other peoples's killer animal movie favorites, but I guess there's a reason for that. THEY ROCK. I know there's a lot of killer animal movies from the 70s and such and I haven't seen any of them. I'm working on that, I promise. Perhaps I can revise this list in the future. 

A Week of "P" Movies: Primeval

Ah, yes. Primeval. The love-child of Lake Placid and Blood Diamond. But you know what? I love Lake Placid and I love Blood Diamond. So yes, gosh darn it, I love Primeval.

First of all, fuck all of those initial teasers that led us to believe that the movie was about some wacko serial killer that killed over 300 people. Remember that? Remember feeling like an idiot when you found out that the serial killer was actually a fucking CROCODILE? I do. And I was pissed at first, but then I was like, "Giant crocodile? Eating people? I think I'm gonna like that."

The plot: A reporter, producer and cameraman travel to Burundi to do a story on the legend of Gustave, a massive man-eating crocodile that has been feeding on villagers for years. They also take on the impossible task of capturing this beast, so they bring a guide, a croc expert, and a big cage. Yes, I'm sure that will work great. In the midst of their adventure, there is still civil war in Burundi - mass killings and terror at the hands of the elusive Little Gustave, an evil warlord who soon wants this team dead after their cameraman films him slaughtering an entire family.

We're not safe on land, either.

Most people, as I recall, had a problem with the movie incorporating the whole genocide thing into the story. Like, "Please. We just want to watch a crocodile eat a bunch of Africans. Let's not get into real-world issues here." Or they spouted off some bullshit about how the movie "couldn't make up its mind on what it wanted to be: a horror movie or a political commentary." When the fuck did a movie ever have to be either-or? Why shouldn't a movie, based on a true legend, set in Africa, confront the issues that were going on in that region at the time? People might have even been more pissed off if they hadn't included that bit into the film.

To the movie's credit, they give a reason for how Gustave's reign of terror came to be and what this has to do with the genocide. The bodies of those murdered by Little Gustave and his men were dumped in the water and Gustave fed on them, getting his "taste for human blood." The commentary here is obviously that they fear and are trying to kill this beast, when it was man's violence that created him in the first place. Okay, I'll buy that. It's a good enough explanation for the movie.

Basically, Primeval is not a bad movie. If Gustave was the only thing the team had to fear in the movie, then the audience would just scoff and tell them to pack up and leave. Bringing Little Gustave into the mix puts our heroes in a much more dangerous situation. Making him the man who was their contact into the country also shows that he has the power to not let them out of the country, as well.

Ooooh, creepy, isn't it? 

The plot is fairly predictable, but that is not always a bad thing. Of course I knew that we would eventually meet Little Gustave and that Big Gustave would eat him. That was pretty much a given. Doesn't mean that I still didn't enjoy seeing Little Gustave's head crushed like a grape in the big croc's mouth. While he was covered in urine. Good stuff.

Yes, there are a lot of unbelievable situations here where most of the main cast should have easily died. I know that, I see it. The worst scene is at the end when Gustave comes plowing through the back window of the SUV. That car and fucking everybody inside should have been mincemeat after Gustave spent five minutes thrashing around, but amazingly everyone survives and the car still runs. Whatever.

Eat, you beautiful thing you, eat!

Gustave himself actually looks pretty amazing. For an entirely CG crocodile, the effects come off almost seamlessly. He interacts amazingly well with the environment, especially the water. Watching the effects feature on the DVD, you see that a lot of the water was CG as well, and while I know fuck all about computer effects, something tells me this must have been a pain in the ass to accomplish. So a big kudos to the effects team for the work on Primeval. We're well-learned in how really bad CG can ruin a potentially good creature feature (coughcoughSYFYORIGINALScoughcough), but I think Primeval pulled off the task quite well. Despite the fact that Gustave wasn't exactly an ordinary crocodile, like he was supposed to be. I'm thinking the CG dudes added some enhancements and scarier looking scales or something because he looked way more menacing than regular crocs do.

So all in all, it has its flaws and at times some distasteful jokes that some would find offensive, but I would say that Primeval is one of the better animals-run-amok movies out there. It's a serious movie, but still fun, but then not so much fun that it's laughable.

I still don't know how I feel about Dominic Purcell in this movie. Do I like him? Is he really that bad of an actor? Sometimes he's tolerable. I don't know.