William Shatner covered in spiders!
Betty White feeding a cow to an alligator!
Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin fighting a bear!
These are just a few of the attractions in the most savage animal attack horror movies
of all time.
Perhaps the single best thing about the 1990 horror black comedy Arachnophobia is that
it doesn't need life-sized monsters to build tension and elicit fear.
Instead, it achieves all that with a story of a town besieged by thousands of small,
venomous spiders.
Directed by Frank Marshall, Arachnophobia delivers chills by exploiting the familiarity
of its monster.
It's not unusual, after all, to discover a spider crawling on your ceiling or in your
bathroom sink.
And the film employed actual arachnids as well.
If you thought being attacked by a massive animal was a scary ordeal, consider this:
you're living in complete peace, oblivious to the fatal danger that's infesting your
town by the minute.
Where do you hide when your house is full of them?
The 1999 horror-comedy Lake Placid is a perfect example of its era.
It's an over-the-top, exploitative backwoods romp that encapsulates all there is to love
about turn-of-the-century creature features.
It stars Bridget Fonda as a paleontologist from the city who goes out to the titular
lake after reported sightings of a prehistoric-sized crocodile.
She's joined by a crocodile enthusiast played by Oliver Platt, but the two city slickers
don't quite have what it takes to survive their trek into lake country without some
help.
So they team up with local law enforcement and fish and game authorities, but even they
aren't quite prepared for what they're up against: the world's wildest little old lady,
played by the legendary Betty White.
It turns out that White's character lives on the lake and feeds the killer croc.
Lake Placid is as ferocious as it is funny, balancing moments of terror with dark comedy.
Plus, you've got White delivering lines with the confidence of a swaggering sailor despite
looking like she should be baking cookies instead.
"Come and get it!"
The movie also features a truly terrific full-size animatronic crocodile, designed and built
by the legendary Stan Winston.
They simply don't make movies like this anymore.
Before the summer of 1975, only a few people on this planet had any idea what a shark attack
felt like.
But that all changed with the release of Jaws, a one-of-a-kind cinematic phenomenon that
changed the way people thought about the ocean.
This wasn't all for the best, though, as great whites were suddenly feared as the apex predator
of the sea, leading to a flurry of overfishing that made a serious dent in the worldwide
shark population.
But as far as a moviegoing experience, Jaws is unimpeachable.
Thanks to supremely confident direction from a young Steven Spielberg, it blended pricey
practical effects and old-school suspense tactics to thrill and scare everyone who bought
a ticket.
Nobody was the same after walking out of Jaws.
Anyone who claims that they can take a carefree dip in the ocean without wondering what's
lurking beneath their toes is simply lying.
"You're gonna need a bigger boat."
Rushed into production to capitalize on the Jaws phenomenon, 1977's Orca is a half-silly,
half-sorrowful seafaring epic.
It's about a whaler played by Richard Harris who finds himself locked in a life-or-death
struggle with a killer whale whose mate and offspring he inadvertently killed.
Considering the intelligence of whales, this premise is a little more plausible than that
of Jaws, but the screenplay goes hilariously overboard by turning the aggrieved mammal
into an aquatic Rambo.
The whale methodically destroys a coastal village's entire economy by sinking boats
and driving away the fish that prop up its seafood exports and also picks off the whaler's
crew one by one.
This is one seriously peeved animal.
Orca is such a strange movie.
Despite the human characters, the viewer's rooting interest is always with the whale.
It's a shame that Bo Derek's leg had to get mixed up in all of this, but that's what she
gets for hanging out with a harpoon-happy jerk like Harris.
Orca strives to be a gory exploitation flick and an environmentally conscious screed, but
it's ultimately mostly an enjoyable goof instead of a ecologically responsible answer to Jaws.
With all due respect to Joe Dante's original Piranha, director Alexandre Aja seriously
upped the stakes with his loose 2010 remake, Piranha 3D.
The latter film cranked the tension up to 11 with a violent prehistoric fish causing
a big, bloody mess.
Aja didn't shy away from showing us one second of the carnage.
There are a few sequences that are particularly brutal.
One involves Jerry O'Connell's sleazy porn producer character being ripped in half by
the sharp-toothed fish.
It's quite gruesome and shocking.
But the biggest set piece comes at a time when a spring break party is interrupted by
the beasts that have surfaced from far beneath the lake.
This isn't one intimate encounter with a victim.
Instead, It's an entire party's worth of people swimming for their lives, and many don't make
it out alive, or intact.
Overall, this is a unique brand of animalistic brutality.
"The first bite draws blood, and the blood draws the pack."
The ocean is a place we still don't know much about, and scary shark movies don't help matters
much.
The Renny Harlin-directed Deep Blue Sea is the sort of flick where you just know something
truly terrible is about to go wrong when you learn that a group of scientists is working
in an underwater facility with a bunch of super-smart sharks.
The mayhem that unfolds is suspenseful, nerve-wracking, and incredibly entertaining, as the genetically-engineered
sharks attack the research facility and eat its researchers.
Poor Samuel L. Jackson even gets devoured while delivering a motivational speech.
That's what happens when these big-brained predators swim backward and tear through anything
that stands between them and their prey.
Deep Blue Sea once again proves that shark movies make some of the most brutal animal
attack flicks of all time.
Rendering these creatures more intelligent than they already are just doesn't seem like
a good idea.
There are some questionable moments that teether on the edge of absurdity, but overall, Deep
Blue Sea has all the toothy action you'd expect out of a movie like this.
1988's Slugs is about a small rural town that must defeat a growing army of millions of
mutant, flesh-eating slugs that were birthed from a toxic waste dump in the town's water
supply.
If it sounds like Slugs is one of those 1980s so-bad-it's-good reimaginings of the b-movie
monster flicks of the 50s, that's because that's exactly what it is.
Slugs leans heavily into deliciously campy exploitation, as the slimy monsters terrorize
humans and turn them into blood-red clumps of viscera.
This creature feature boasts a script that was likely cobbled together using safety scissors
and random magazine cut-outs in an attempt to tell a story.
Nevertheless, Slugs is an absolute blast, with all of its technical shortcomings only
enhancing the experience.
People cut off their own limbs in an attempt to stop the slugs, and they also explode from
someone's face in the middle of a business meeting, and that's merely the tip of the
iceberg.
This is The Rocky Horror Picture Show of animal attack movies, with questionable line deliveries
saved by sincerely effective special effects, and a cult following of fans who can't get
enough.
Years after he retired from his position on the Starship Enterprise, William Shatner was
trying his best to branch out.
That probably explains why he took on the role of a cowboy veterinarian named Dr. Robert
Hansen in 1977's Kingdom of the Spiders.
"Excuse me?
Hello?
You!"
After a family of farmers discovers that one of their cows has been killed, they bring
in their local vet who is equally as confused and needs to bring in the big guns in the
form of stunning scientist Diane Ashley.
As the two doctors work together to solve the mystery, they're horrified to discover
that the cow was actually killed by an army of oversized arachnids that are beginning
to invade their sleepy community.
To make matters worse, the town is getting ready to throw a massive county fair, coincidentally
wrangling every citizen to one central location for the spiders to feed.
Kingdom of the Spiders is terrifying if only because of the sheer number of spiders on
screen.
Approximately $50,000 of the film's $500,000 budget went toward the spiders, which were
all kept in separate containers to avoid them cannibalizing each other.
There are multiple moments throughout the film when the actors are covered head to toe
with live spiders, resembling something like a Jackass stunt gone wrong.
It was an obvious inspiration for future films like Arachnophobia, but due to the animal
protection standards now required on film sets, there will never be a film like Kingdom
of the Spiders ever again.
Steven Spielberg's 1993 blockbuster classic Jurassic Park reckons with what might happen
if humans and dinosaurs were suddenly forced to share the planet after being separated
by 65 million years of evolution.
Spoiler alert: it does not go well for the humans.
The resurrected dinos simply cannot be contained by mere fences and walls, leading to pure
carnage and chaos.
There's no attack in the film that clearly stands out as the most brutal, although the
T-rex paddock sequence is particularly memorable.
It does feature one character getting eaten off a toilet seat and two kids becoming traumatized
for life, after all.
Beyond that, once the Velociraptors get out, more chaos ensues, as another character meets
his demise at the mouth of a particularly clever girl.
"Clever girl."
And let us never forget Wayne Knight meeting his end by coming face to face with a Dilophosaurus,
thus rendering his plan to steal dinosaur embryos completely pointless.
True, some of the human characters do manage to survive in the end, but it's obvious that
the dinos reign supreme.
What would you do if you were trapped in a car with no cell phone and a massive, rabid
dog right outside?
That's the premise of 1983's Cujo, based on the Stephen King novel of the same name.
Dee Wallace plays Donna, a housewife whose marriage is on the rocks because she's having
an affair.
When she and her young son take their Ford Pinto in for repairs, they're beset by the
titular Saint Bernard.
Infected with rabies, Cujo will stop at nothing to take a bite out of Donna and her child.
This creature flick turns the tables on anyone who's ever locked their dog in a hot car,
as the Pinto breaks down and the humans are trapped baking in the sun with the crazed
canine just outside.
Saint Bernards aren't usually vicious killers, as they're instead famous for their work rescuing
people in mountainous terrain.
Making one of these giant furry teddy bears look scary was an effort, but it paid off,
as Cujo is absolutely terrifying.
Weighing in at over 150 pounds, that's a lot of angry dog, and with some gnashing jaws
and clawing paws, he's one nasty mutt.
While King's novel features supernatural elements, the movie is entirely within the realm of
possibility, making it that much scarier.
Wallace's performance holds it all together, keeping things tethered to a more human element
and bringing the ferocity of motherhood to fight against the raging dog.
2019's Crawl seriously subverts expectations, thanks to director Alexandre Aja adding the
natural disaster subgenre into the mix.
It stars Kaya Scodelario and Barry Pepper and features a simple, straightforward premise:
a father and daughter and their dog must survive a night in their flooded house after a destructive
hurricane hits their town.
But then their basement becomes home to some extremely hungry alligators.
The main reason that Crawl is so deeply unnerving is because of how realistic it is, as a natural
disaster like this one can have devastating consequences.
And the fact that there are 5 million alligators living in the United States doesn't help.
Most of the film takes place in a dark, confined crawlspace.
It gradually builds the tension with plenty of gore, and it prominently features a human
or two getting chomped on and rather graphically dismembered.
With plenty of blood and jump scares, it's not the kind of animal attack movie you can
easily forget.
Crawl is relentlessly violent and scary, mainly because there's nothing more frightening than
being helpless and hunted in your own home.
"Apex predator all day!"
Adam Green has been making horror films for over 20 years, but he really burst onto the
scene with his 2007 slasher flick, Hatchet, which was a throwback to the ultra-gory films
of the 70s and 80s.
His follow-up to that breakout was a complete departure in the form of the psychological
survival flick Frozen.
Three characters find themselves trapped on a ski-lift in sub-zero temperatures, with
workers gone home for the week and no safe way for any of them to get down.
As if things couldn't get any worse, the trio soon realizes that the mountains of their
ski resort are home to many wolves, who freely run through its confines when tourists are
away.
The real terror of Frozen lies in how Parker, Joe, and Dan must survive the elements and
the dangerous drop with the knowledge that they're also at risk of becoming wolf food
driving up the stakes even further.
During their first escape attempt, Dan decides to make a jump for it, causing compound fractures
in his legs.
As he tries to plan his next move, he's surrounded by wolves, as he pleads for Joe to cover Parker's
eyes so she doesn't have to watch him get torn to pieces and eaten alive.
It's a harrowing scene in an underappreciated film.
The 1997 survival thriller The Edge isn't technically a horror movie, but it's still
tense and brutal and features plenty of unbearably scary moments.
The plot follows billionaire Charles Morse, photographer Robert Green, and his assistant
Stephen after their plane crashes in the remote Alaskan wilderness.
Much of the film revolves around a potential love triangle involving Robert and Charles'
wife Mickey, but they also must face off against one of Mother Nature's most terrifying inhabitants:
a ferocious Kodiak bear.
There's no CGI or animatronics on display here.
Instead, the bear was portrayed by one of the most famous animal actors to have ever
lived: Bart the Bear.
Bart's performance skills were put to the test, and he proved himself to be as talented
a thespian as his human co-stars as he roared his way through the film.
Eventually, the bitterly battling men face off against the bear, and their internal conflict
becomes something much more primal.
If anything can force two people to work together, it's surviving a plane crash AND a bear attack.
The Edge is part of a long line of great survival films that pit man against beast, but it's
one of very few that stars a real animal actor, and that authenticity makes the scary scenes
especially terrifying.
Director Lee Tamahori manages to make the frozen forests of Alaska both claustrophobic
and immense, while composer Jerry Goldsmith heightens the tension with a truly unique
score.
The Edge keeps viewers right on the edge of their seats, making for an all-time animal
attack movie classic.
"We're all put to the test."
Have you ever heard the urban legend of baby alligators getting flushed down the toilet
and turning into subterranean city predators?
That myth inspired 1980's Alligator, a spectacularly entertaining piece of pulp horror that more
than justifies its bizarre existence.
Robert Forster stars as a disgraced Chicago detective faced with a baffling string of
sanitation worker deaths.
He soon realizes these men have been attacked by an abnormally large alligator.
But considering his reputation and the improbability of such a creature prowling Chicago's sewers,
everyone dismisses him as a kook.
But he's not, and once irrefutable evidence of the gator's existence is obtained, it's
an all-out hunt to catch and kill this mammoth 36-foot predator.
Alligator is a classic B-movie insofar as it embraces its ludicrous premise without
stooping to spoofery.
Forster is immensely sympathetic as the detective with a penchant for getting his partners killed
in the line of duty.
Meanwhile, director Lewis Teague and screenwriter John Sayles go for the jugular with a series
of inventive suspense sequences.
None is better than the swimming pool death of a poor little kid being forced to walk
a diving-board plank by his bullying friends.
The reveal of the alligator in that scene is seared into the memory of every child who
watched this movie at far too early an age.
At a brisk 94 minutes, Alligator gets in some digs at big industrial polluters, who are
responsible for the mutated growth of the title beast.
And it ends with a deeply satisfying bloodbath at an upscale wedding party.
As with many monster movies, it's just about impossible not to root for this monster.