DAY OF THE ANIMALS (1977)

DAY OF THE ANIMALS (1977)

Tagline:  After the movie, only the terror remains!

(Horror, Sci-Fi, Ozone) [PG]

It’s like I just said… there’s no food and mighty animal spirits are stalking the land…now what are we going to do?

So it turns out being worried about the ozone and the environment and stuff isn’t a new issue. This entire movie revolves around the idea that ozone depletion will make animals insane…especially if you hike up a mountain and some of them see you doing pretty much anything. Yes, even if you are just minding your own business. 

Overall this movie starts out pretty tame. Even just seeing Leslie Nielsen gives you the false sense that even with the aggressive movie poster artwork things are going to be okay. Only about 50 minutes into this thing, everything goes bat crap crazy. Effects wise we are dealing with the ’70s, but very little of this movie looks campy except for one scene where this dude's really angry wife falls off a cliff and maybe a couple other brief instances. For some reason, Disney can’t pull off a real animal movie in 2020, but in the 70’s they pretty much perfected it. 

Performance-wise for the ’70s and being a horror flick, this movie is extremely solid. There isn’t a ton that is comforting about the events in the movie, but everyone involved seems like they were pretty sold on the idea that the earth losing its ozone was going to jack up everything. As I mentioned Leslie Nielsen is in this but he plays a character named Paul Jensen who you pretty much just can’t wait to see get what’s coming to him. 

If you stream this movie or get it on BLU-RAY or DVD, just note that this thing should be watched with the idea that you are going to see a cracked-out GRIZZLY-like movie only with good acting, and not a really mediocre outing. This thing is well-done, preachy, intense, and well scripted in the dialog department. Where it does kind of drop the ball is the ending, but dang, the audience needed at least a few minutes of feel-good before going home to get rid of all their hairspray and shaving cream. 

I am guessing a lot of you reading this haven’t seen this, but if you get a chance, and you are feeling you need to see what a movie that should have been called "NATURE TRAIL TO HELL", this is your movie. I also feel like everyone working at Disney should also see this, because they’ve clearly forgotten how to work with real animals. 

I give DAY OF THE ANIMALS a 5 out of 7. This thing could have been a 6 if they hadn’t chosen such a whacky reason for the animals going crazy. Even just EMF, radiation, a giant box of marbles would have been a better route to go.

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