Day of the Animals (1977)

Directed by William Girdler [Other horror films: Three on a Meathook (1972), Asylum of Satan (1972), Abby (1974), Grizzly (1976), The Manitou (1978)]

I fundamentally think Day of the Animals is a fine movie. It’s not quite as action-packed as I personally would have hoped, and the build-up at the beginning takes a bit, but it’s an okay film. I don’t think it’s a necessarily good movie, but for what it is, it’s okay.

I think what really took a bit to get used to is that despite having a variety of animals going wild to a depletion of the ozone layer, there’s not really that many animal attacks. Sure, there’s a wolf, a bear, some snakes, big cats, and birds, but it’s not quite as quick-paced as you might hope. That might make sense, though, given William Girdler directed this one, and he was also behind Grizzly, which I also found a tad on the sluggish side.

The story’s not bad, with a bunch of people going on a guided hike and coming across the wild and dangerous behavior of the animals, which of course causes some dissent in the group in the form of Leslie Nielsen’s character. It’s almost sociological in it’s approach at times – if man loses all sense of law and order, what horrors might they commit? It’s not heavy in that type of thing, but from Nielsen’s character, is does come up.

I’ll say that Neilsen (Prom Night, Dark Intruder, Creepshow) played a horrible character pretty well, and when he got #mauled, I can’t say I wasn’t glad (though I do wish it were a lot more violent, with screaming and limbs being torn off in gory agony and the like). I think the best character here, without much hesitation, would be Michael Ansara (Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, The Manitou, Dear Dead Delilah), who is a great guy, and has to deal with racism (he’s Native American) along with the killer animals. Both Christopher George (Graduation Day, City of the Living Dead, Pieces) and Lynda Day George (Beyond Evil, It Happened at Lakewood Manor, Fear No Evil) were fine, but neither one was that memorable.

And despite the premise of the film, I don’t think many of the animal attacks were that memorable, either. You had the white water rafting with wolves (technically dogs, but I liked the alliteration I had going) at the finale, which was fun, and there was a good scene in which someone’s getting into a car without noticing the nest of snakes on the seat behind them, which was playful, but that’s virtually it. There was a bird attack early on – the victim fell to their death in amusingly fake fashion – and I guess that was okay, but overall, I was sort of expecting more.

Day of the Animals is a movie I’ve wanted to see for a while, and I’m happy I did, despite not having loved it. It’s certainly better than some other 70’s creature films, such as The Food of the Gods, but when movies like The Swarm and The Pack exist, it’s hard to really go out of my way to recommend this one.

6.5/10