When Animals Attack - On The Big Screen

[franklinmarsh]

Just thought I'd mention this as, while I was recently loitering at a Morrison's checkout and sifting through a bargain bin of cheapo DVDs trying to appear as if I wasn't, I struck gold. Well actually decided to p*ss away £5.99 on a WAA triple - Jovial giant croc yarn Lake Placid, plus Frogs and Piranha.
Parents may sigh with relief these days at tosh like 'All trailers are suitable for the feature presentation', but todays kids won't get the buzz us 70s types used to when 'U Trailer Advertising X Film' flashed up at the cinema. Frogs was one of these I saw, along with The French Connection and Fritz The Cat. They tended to stick in the mind - as did U Trailer Advertising AA Film - which gave me a lifelong interest in The Omega Man - years before I'd heard of Matheson's I Am Legend.
(Weird coincidence dept - Thames TV premiered Frogs the very same night the Beeb first screened The Omega Man - pre-video times - aaarrgghh!)
I even had a British poster for Frogs adorning my bedroom wall at one time. Unlike the US one it didn't have a little human hand poking out of the Frog's maw - so no-one in Britain is going to expect the film to contain 50 foot frogs, right?
Anyway, before I even got to crack the case open, I pulled a fast one. The Mrs always shouts 'Get a comedy!' when she sends me down the video shop, so last time I returned with the expected Run Fatboy Run, but sneaked in Black Sheep as well. Fortified by some Diamond White, after the RomCom she agreed to sit through the NZ WAA parody gorefest.
Black Sheep is a belter - probably the nearest film will ever get to a GNS novel. Sending up the entire WAA genre brilliantly (did we name sheep in our WAA most unlikely poll on the old board?), the people behind this get it exactly right - none of yer CGI bollocks here. A rabid sheep embryo is a glove puppet, sheep heads smashing through doors are animatronic, and you even get the real thing wandering around backed by sinister music. It's a hoot , and spot on.
It inspired me to give Piranha a go. Too young to suffer the onslaught of Frogs at the Slough Granada, I just about got in to the Corman-produced, Dante-directed, Sayles scripted sub-Jaws p*ss-take. Yep, its pretty terrible but great fun. SPOILERS!!! How can you fault a film with dialogue such as -
'The Piranhas..'
'What about the Goddam Piranhas?'
'They're eating the guests, Sir?'
or Bradford Dillman's tremendous ' We'll pollute the bastards to death!'
That's part of the glory of Piranha - the good guys are responsible for releasing the piscine predators on an unsuspecting public, and the only way to stop 'em is to flood a river with pollution - just what every other WAA film was claiming was the cause of the animals going on the rampage.
Frogs and Lake Placid are unfortunately on hold - I'm sitting by my letterbox awaiting delivery of an American cinematic groundbreaker - Piranha II - Flying Killers.

[carolinec]

I remember seeing Piranha on TV several years ago - it was awful! I guess as a Jaws spoof it was quite funny, but not the kind of film I'd want to watch again I'm afraid.

[dem bones]

The novelisation certainly does it proud.

I vaguely remember Frogs. Ray Milland, and doesn't somebody get drowned by a sinister giant turtle? Also, that other geezer is spun up in a spiders web at about 100 mph, and he goes 'No! No-ooh!' until he suffocates or something if I'm thinking of the same film (which i think i am as they give a lift to a girl with a pet frog at the end).

T'riffic find, FM.

[Calenture]

carolinec said:

I remember seeing Piranha on TV several years ago - it was awful! I guess as a Jaws spoof it was quite funny, but not the kind of film I'd want to watch again I'm afraid.

The first time I saw Piranha it was being shown as the main film at the local flea-pit, with Carrie as the supporting film... which didn't do any favours to anyone! I'd been put completely in the wrong mood to enjoy it, and actually didn't get that it was a spoof! I appreciated it much more seeing it on TV years later. The sequel which I saw recently, now that was just dire, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

It would have been much better if it had been billed with Frogs, which just seems to have disappeared into a black hole, though I remember enjoying it at the flicks. I'll definitely be keeping a lookout for that cheapo compilation in Morrisons.

Black Sheep sounds delirious. I'm sure someone mentioned a film about killer sheep at the old board and from the look of Franklin's review someone forgot to mention that it was a spoof again. All that compilation needed was Night of the Lepus!

[Johnlprobert]

"I even had a British poster for Frogs adorning my bedroom wall at one time."

So did I!

The movie itself was a bit of a disappointment after that, even without the hand.

[franklinmarsh]

Yee- hah! Piranha II has arrived! I can't wait. Dubbed The Spawning (or as one wag claimed The Yawning) in the good ol' US of A, I loved a James Cameron fan's claim on IMDB - 'OK, it's not as good as T2 - but it's better than Titanic!'

Also back in the day - Day Of The Animals (another AA) and when my Peter Pan features had hardened enough to get me into X Films (who said 'When you were 30'?) the downright weird Food Of The Gods - see magnified rats attack a model VW Beetle!

Must get around to Frogs - they take a massive away support to Ray Milland's island - where all his relatives are fawning to get some of his money - but are either are incredibly intelligent psychic generals, or just lazy gits as they get other wildlife to bump off Ray's family, while they hop around looking as menacing as the sheep in Black Sheep.

SPOILERS!

Talking of Black Sheep - did I mention the two hippy tree-hugger animal welfare eco warriors - one of whom gets bitten by the glove puppet and turns into a were-sheep? And then when the main villain gets bitten, one of his honchos points at the weresheep and says 'You''ll end up like that!'
And the villain says in horror 'What??? A Hippie???'

[killercrab]

Talking of Black Sheep >>

Got this in my stack as it happens. Glad you got a kick out of PIRANHA - saw it at the flicks myself and it's a firm fave. Just watched another film that did the rounds around '78 - EYES OF DR CHANEY or MANSION OF THE DOOMED as it's titled Stateside. Richard Basehart on a mission to save his daughter's sight by live eye transplants - lots of them. A grim and oppressive film with very little plot. Creeped me out back then and did so again...

ade

[franklinmarsh]

Piranha II - Flying Killers - what a film! Or should that be What?! A film?!
Sheer genius. We open with a couple floating around on an inflatable raft. Seems the chap is suffering from Dear Drooper syndrome. His other half tells him not to worry, he's trying too hard, and they can always get on with what they came out there for - scuba diving. Although it's pitch black above the waves, it's a lovely aquamarine underwater, and the couple discover a sunken ship. Our man swims around and bumps into his partner - who is now naked. She removes a large knife from the sheath on his leg and cuts away his small red bathing trunks. They clinch. Just as we're wondering How can they breathe? they're attacked by piranhas, the screen turns red and the opening credits roll. Superb! Of course, like the man featured, the filmmakers couldn't keep this up and we're into perhaps the most controversial and hotly debated part of the film - around 20-30 minutes of exposition and 'character development'. But after that it's ..erm..plain sailing with some wonderfully ludicrous scenes. The piranhas have been crossed with grunion (so they can live outside water!) and flying fish. There's a top bloodbath in a morgue and although the climax (huge crowds of extras gather on a beach at midnight hoping to clobber some spawning grunion for a barbeque - are they in for an unpleasant surprise!) promises much, it fails to deliver. And there's almost certainly the most unconvincing helicopter crash you're likely to see in a motion picture.
I sat through this with a voice inside my head telling me - You're wasting your life! You've wasted your money! But the minute it finished I wanted to watch it again!

[franklinmarsh]

Deep Blue Sea (1999). Directed by action specialist Renny Harlin (of Exorcist IV fame). Scientists have discovered that shark's brains contain a substance that might help to cure Alzheimer's. In order to obtain more of this wonder fluid, a sea lab has some genetically modified fish - ie made bigger. But with bigger brains they're more clever. Money provider Samuel L Jackson flys out to the lab to see how the work is going, then everything goes pear shaped. There's a storm, a scientist loses an arm, the paramedic's helicopter crashes spectacularly, and the sharks set about flooding the facility and stalking their human prey. Absolute tosh but very entertaining.

Empire Of The Ants (1977) - allegedly based on an HG Wells story, the names 'Bert I Gordon', Samuel Z Arkoff' and (huzzah!) 'Joan Collins' should give you some idea of what you're in for here.
Joanie, suffering her worst ever filming experience (and about to leave it all behind when Dynasty beckons) is a dodgy real estate magnate, desperately trying to flog seaside properties in Florida to a bunch of miserable parasites who've just turned up for free booze and food.
Those of us who stayed awake for the start of the film know that nuclear waste has been dumped in the sea close by, one drum even washing ashore and spilling what looks like silver paint, which the local ants swarm over.
One particularly dull would be customer explodes with range when he finds dummy pipes on the estate and is about to confront megaphone toting Joan when he and his wife are eaten by now giant ants.
The others have moved on and forgotten about them when they too realise that they're in big trouble. The ants destroy their boat, forcing the hapless humans to retreat into the jungle and fight their way back to civilisation, providing an utterly bizarre ending.
The special effects are needless to say not very special. Ordinary ants magnified, with actors attempting to react to back projection, and huge ant head puppets for close up attacks (where the cameraman suffers St Vitus Dance to make things even more confusing)
Surprisingly even more fun (in a different way) than Piranha II.

[Johnlprobert]

Franklin, if you're a "fan" of Empire of the Ants you need to see its precursor & the movie that encouraged Arkoff to give Mr BIG more money - 'Food of the Gods'. Based on 'a portion of' the novel by HG Wells, it has the same magnified animals (who don't always stay on the right side of the split screen), big rubber wasps and Pamela Franklin!

[franklinmarsh]

John -believe it or not - I only caught up with Empire Of The Ants last night, but I did see Food Of The Gods at the Windsor ABC on first release - all I can remember is some rats attacking a dinky toy VW beetle and Ida Lupino squeezing a huge maggot.