Review of Day of the Animals (1977) by Shawn W — 12 Jul 2012

Day of the Animals (William Girdler, 1977).

Girdler's silly I-can't-believe-this-wasn't-a-TV-movie ecohorror showcase ended up being his penultimate film before his untimely death (he was killed in a helicopter crash in the Philippines, at the age of thirty, on the set of what would have been his next film). Like the film that followed it, an adaptation of Graham Masterton's novel The Manitou, it works only because despite being a B-movie maven, Girdler and his team had a way of picking out incredible-but-underused talent, either has-beens who were on their way back up, A-listers who were on their way down, or rising stars. That's a talent that requires incredible timing; a lot of casting agents get actors who are six months too late or six months too soon, or something holds up production and the star's career has already crashed and burned with a check into rehab, or what have you. Making this kind of flick, and making it work, requires a lot of luck, a lot of talent in selecting your cast, and a good, solid technical base doesn't hurt. Girdler had all three here, and while the inherent silliness of Day of the Animals keeps it from being what it could have been, everyone involved did a fine job with the material presented.

The plot of the movie involves a group of hikers led by good ol' cowboy Steven Bucker (The Exterminator's Christopher George). Along on the trip are a stressed-out Madison Avenue type, Paul Jenson (Leslie Nielsen back when he was still playing the heavy in everything), a glamorous reporter just a bit past her prime (George's real-life wife Lynda Day George, fresh off It Happened at Lakewood Manor), a professor with a birdwatching habit (Spenser: for Hire's Richard Jaeckel), a mother and son having bonding problems, Shirley and John Goodwyn (Strangers on a Train's Ruth Roman and Night of the Comet's Bobby Porter), young lovers on a weekend getaway (Paul Mantee and Kathleen Bracken), and another couple on their way out Frank and Mandy Young (Jon Cedar, who would return for The Manitou, and Susan Backlinie, the memorable first victim of Jaws), who spend much of the movie sniping at one another. Just after the group leaves via helicopter, the residents of the town start hearing news reports that the depletion of the ozone layer is causing animals above five thousand feet to go nuts. Yes, really. So our intrepid band, who have just been dropped off on the side of a mountain, now have to fight off homicidal animals.

Yes, it's that stupid, but disaster-of-the-week movies were sometimes done reasonably well; people still watch The Poseidon Adventure, and the cast here is no less awesome. Nielsen, one of the great heavies of the fifties and sixties, had been relegated to TV character actor obscurity for well over a decade by this time (in 1977, he would actually make two big-screen appearances, the other being the execrable Viva Knievel!, which I am ashamed to say I saw on the big screen way back then), but three years after this, his career would explode with Airplane!. Jaeckel was known as a character actor, and had steady work for years, but it wasn't long after this that he would become one of the most beloved police lieutenants in television history. Porter, while he never found success in acting, has become one of Hollywood's most dependable stuntmen. Michelle Stacy, who plays a traumatized little girl Frank runs across, was in the prime of her child-star career, a two-year stretch with appearances in Logan's Run and Demon Seed and a voice lead in The Rescuers (if she had a good agent, she's probably still able to live off those royalties alone, despite having retired from acting in 1980). You get the idea. You know this is going to be a cheesefest from the second you see the poster art, and the movie succeeds in that regard beyond your wildest imaginings (check out the "grizzly" Leslie Nielsen wrestles!), but solid acting makes it slightly less onerous than it otherwise would be. I grant you, I'm a fan of bad seventies ecohorror movies, and the worse the better (Kingdom of the Spiders, Frogs, and Night of the Lepus are all in my "you don't sell this till after I die" collection), but I think this has some appeal, however slight, beyond the confines of diehard fans of ecohorror. ***.