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. 

Movie Review: The Human Centipede: First Sequence (2009)

I haven't heard of a bigger hype movie than The Human Centipede since Blair Witch. Blair Witch was nowhere near as good as so many have said (and still continue to say) just as The Human Centipede was nowhere near as disgusting as I've read. In fact, I found it rather tame - only horrendous in its gimmick.

The middle section and the tail, respectively. 

The already well-known plot: Two American girls vacationing in Germany get a flat tire one rainy night and while they are looking for help, they come upon the house of Dr. Josef Heiter. Once a renowned surgeon in separating conjoined twins, Dr. Heiter has the most diabolical plan in mind. Using the two girls and a Japanese man (the first man he had kidnapped was killed because he didn't "match"), the doctor wishes to create what he calls a "Siamese triplet," created by surgically connecting the three individuals mouth to anus.

The circumstances of the girl's coming to the doctor's house are perhaps a little too cliche, even for the horror genre. Car trouble and cell phones with no signal. Gee, I've NEVER seen that happen before. But I suppose it's a means to an end. As for the girls themselves, they couldn't possibly be more annoying or worse at acting. I don't how many hundreds of girls clamored to have their mouths attached to a man's ass for a few weeks, but it couldn't have been very many. Thankfully, they don't have much to do acting-wise after the surgery, what with them having no lips or teeth anymore.

She could probably use a neck massage right now.

Dieter Laser as Dr. Heiter was much more enjoyable to watch, and much credit must be given to him for being one of the film's few successes. Laser is an actor with an incredible face and a gift for acting to the extreme. He fully committed to this role, making the character a believably demented person who could actually do something like this. His actions and expressions were spot-on in all the scenes and he made the film very fun to watch.

Tom Six's writing abilities certainly leaves something to be desired. A concept for a film that comes about from joking about what punishment child molesters deserve is not enough to make a movie that is both disturbing and good. The dialogue is less than mediocre and characters are not developed at all. The ones that we do meet, though, we don't necessarily like enough to care about what we're seeing happen to them. The girls are ditzy (as described in the IMDb synopsis, written by the producer of the film) and the Japanese man in the lead of the centipede just did a lot of angry yelling and shouting. However, there were a few moments during the girls' ordeal where they would reach out and grab each other's hand, which I thought gave the grotesqueness of the situation a more tender and human emotion to it.

Of course I was disturbed by the description of the surgery and the idea of the creation of an actual human centipede. It is one of the most disgusting things I can think of, and frankly I'm glad that the film was not as graphic about the centipede as it could have been. Tom Six has said that the second film will make the first one look like "My Little Pony," so at least we have something to look forward to. If you're the kind of sick person who looks forward to that kind of stuff, I mean. So yes, I am excited about the sequel.

I kind of like the painting on the wall behind them.

Most of my problems with the film were the actions of the main characters. Many horror movies have those stupid characters that we scoff at for doing all the wrong things, but this movie just takes the cake. When Lindsay (Ashley C. Williams) first escapes from her hospital bed, instead of running out the front door - she knew the way, for pity's sake - she just locks herself in the doctor's bedroom and cowers in a corner without trying to get out. Later, she retardedly tries to go back for her friend Jenny (Ashlynn Yennie). She spends about five minutes dragging her friend's drugged ass up the stairs and through the house, when we all know that there is no way in hell that she's going to get away. So what was the point of the scene in the first place? Just to piss me off, apparently. Don't even get me started on the perpetuating of the stereotype of the incompetent policemen. I admit, I know fuck-all about  police procedure but those two bumblers royally fucked up the search on Dr. Heiter's house. It wasn't suspenseful, it was just another way to piss me off.

All that being said, however, I must give Tom Six credit for what he's done. He's opened himself up to a lot of criticism and ridicule by concocting possibly the most unusual, grotesque, yet unique film in many, many years. You knew people were going to be making fun of the concept and spitting on the "100% medically accurate" claim. He knew that the film would possibly never be taken seriously, and while that may have been part of his intention - to make a film that would only serve to get a reaction out of people - it was a huge risk to even make the movie. And while The Human Centipede was not carried out to its full potential, it was a good attempt and hopefully the sequel will improve on the first one's faults.

Movie Review: Seven Days (Les Sept Jours Du Talion, 2010)

My introduction into the amazing Halloween month of October will (sadly) probably be no different than my previous posts. I do not have the confidence to make lists of the best movies to watch on Halloween night or anything like that, for I readily admit that there are still huge holes in my horror movie watching experiences. Perhaps this month I can continue with my Catching Up On The Classics thread of reviews, and by the end of the month, my horror-lover cred will have a few more points than it did at the beginning of the month.

But that's for later. My first review of October is not a classic horror film, but rather a brand spanking new revenge film from those wonderful Canadian folks called Seven Days.

First of all, a nod to James at Behind the Couch for reviewing this film a few weeks ago (read it here). I caught the synopsis and his thoughts about it and was very intrigued by the plot. I'm always into revenge stories - but perhaps more so the ongoing and never-ending debate about morality with revenge. Both sides are justified, and yet neither side is justified.

Seven Days is the methodical and quiet tale of Bruno and Sylvie Hamel, a family broken by the rape and murder of their daughter, Jasmine, only eight years old. Despite the police catching the killer, Anthony Lemaire, Bruno decides to take his own kind of justice. He kidnaps Lemaire and takes him to a remote cottage where he will keep and torture him until killing him after seven days, on his daughter's birthday.

Once happily married, now torn apart by tragedy.

For me, this is ultimate revenge tale setup. We've had revenge movies of guys whose wives or girlfriends were killed by drug lords or whatever, but those scenarios are not powerful enough. This one - the loss of life and innocence of a young girl and her father taking revenge - is the perhaps the only revenge tale I would understand. Why always the father? Simple. The mother is supposed to be the mother. She's supposed to be nurturing and understanding and not wanting any harm to come to anyone, either the perpetrators or especially her own family. She never wants her husband to do anything rash to get him into trouble. Maybe it's that age-old thing of women and girls wanting a man there to protect him. Maybe it's the showing of real raw emotion when a man lashes out against someone who hurt someone he loves.

I give the movie credit for that, but at the same time, this is the not the most original revenge story. Seems like there have been a lot of avenging fathers in films recently (The Last House on the Left, Taken). And yet it seems to work all the time, at least for me. And original or not, I still think this film is effective on a high level because of the different issues it brings up related to revenge and morality.

Legally, of course, Bruno is completely in the wrong. Taking the law into your own hands is a no-no, but what I think this film did that was interesting was having Bruno kidnap and torture Lemaire AFTER he was in the custody of the police, with overwhelming DNA evidence as to his guilt. Sure, he might have been able to get away with a lesser sentence at trial but I'm thinking not many would show much leniency to child rapist/murderer. Bruno would almost undoubtedly have gotten justice for his daughter, yet he chose to think he knew better than the law and take him before he could be tried by a judge. This makes it hard for the audience to side with him.

Pretty fucking brutal.

The rapist himself even gives a convincing argument against Bruno's actions. During the torture, Lemaire tells Bruno his tale of woe, of being abused as a child. That certainly wasn't enough to get me on his side, but then he said something that was like a smack in the face. He said, "I need help. Don't try to teach me a lesson by introducing more violence into my life. More violence is not going to solve my problem, but only make me worse." Not verbatim, I know, but that was the gist of what he meant. Even if Lemaire was lying about his abuse, I believe he's right. Violence against one's abusers may feel good for the moment, but it doesn't solve anything. But then again, child molesters are not generally known to be rehabilitative. They are the ones most likely to slip. So there we are again, going back and forth on the issue.

Bruno's wife never thinks what he did was right, although that could be her harboring some anger at Bruno for his (supposed) negligence in first noticing their daughter's disappearance. Frankly, I didn't like that bitch. They are both grieving tremendously and yet she always manages to slip in a comment about how he didn't listen to the messages sooner and that it was basically his fault that their daughter was dead. I know it was probably just the hurt talking, but there was a time, during their screaming match on the phone, that I truly believed that she thought it was his fault. And I cannot forgive an accusation like that.

The torture scenes are at times brutal but not overly graphic. I read one review that compared this film to the Saw franchise, The Devil's Rejects and Wolf Creek. Nonsense. Believe me, Seven Days has nothing in common with any of those films. There's a sledgehammer, off-the-cuff surgery, and a severe whipping with a length of chain but it is nothing that most viewers wouldn't be able to handle. It's the words coming from the rapist's mouth and the father's uncontrollable and almost insane grief that will make this film hard for some people to watch.

The ultimate loss.

The most disturbing part of the movie for me, however, had nothing to do with the torture. Before the title credits roll, we have the whole set up of the girl going off to walk around the neighborhood by herself to deliver invitations for her birthday party. She never makes it back. When Bruno is showing the police the route she would have taken, they discover her dead body. Nothing is left to the imagination as the father hunches dumbfounded and grief-stricken at her side. He sees the blood on her thighs and skirt. He sees her underwear around her ankle. And worst of all, he sees - and therefore, we see - the blank stare of death on her blue face, open-eyed and afraid. That was the worst part of the movie to me. The close-up shot of the girl's dead face actually made me shut my eyes and look away.

Another interesting thing this movie brings to the table is Bruno's refusal to speak to Lemaire even while he's torturing him. I was expecting him to be spouting off obscenities and saying things much in the style of Christopher Meloni on Law and Order: SVU. "Do you like raping little girls?" That kind of stuff. But he doesn't say a word to him. He just goes into the room were Lemaire is strung up like a pig carcass and starts the day's work. Does he prefer to let his actions talk? Or can he just not bring himself to say to the man all the things he is feeling about him and what he did? Is it too hard for him to do that?

Detective Mercure.

There is also a subplot dealing with the detective who is trying to track Bruno down (having kidnapped Lemaire right from a police transport van and leaving his own car behind, he really didn't make it all that difficult for them to figure out what happened). This detective, Mercure, lost his wife recently when she was shot in a grocery store robbery. We see him obsessively watching the surveillance footage of her murder in every scene where he is at home. You would think that he would be the most conflicted about the situation, to agree with Bruno or not, yet Mercure goes after Bruno hardcore, insisting that it is Bruno he is trying to save and not Lemaire.

At the end of the film, as it should be, we are given no answer. Bruno is taken into custody himself by police and asked by a reporter if he still thinks vengeance is right. He says no. He is then asked if he regrets what he has done. He says no. I don't think that it's that he hasn't learned anything from his experience and the conflicting opinions around him. There's just no right or wrong answer to the issue. Legally it's wrong, but the heart and soul has more power over any law, and people have a hard time making up their mind on what they really believe. Bruno's dreamy vision of his daughter suggests that he realizes the pointlessness of his actions because she will still be dead, but then his last line of the film tells us that he would probably do it again the same way if he had the chance. Back and forth on the issue again.

Seven Days is shot beautifully. No music whatsoever to get in the way of the emotional journey, and washed out colors bring a very cold and detached feeling to the film. There is no warmth and no relief from the horrors you are witnessing. Shots are well-composed and linger just long enough to really milk the emotion out of the viewer. The acting is superb by all main characters, including the little girl. Two very big thumbs up.