Monster of the Day #3498

Updated on September 23, 2024 By Ken Begg 20 Comments

We continued our run of fun movies with William Girdler’s Day of the Animals, one of the better “animal attack” flicks of the ’70s. My main takeaway: When animals are driven insane by solar radiation, they all become a highly organized army, ala Frogs. Leslie Nielsen, especially, is a hoot, apparently improvising (rather redundantly) his dialog) and in one of the great scenes ever, going mano-a-bearo.

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  • The Rev.

    Damn, sorry I missed that one. I'll have to see about rewatching it on my own.

  • 🐻 bgbear_rnh

    Looks like a house cat attack in the poster. Did I miss it?

    [insert standard Jabootu cat snark]

  • 🐻 bgbear_rnh

    There may be fewer helicopters than depicted in the poster.

  • Gamera977

    I watched it again Sat. evening after getting off work. I don't know if Amazon Prime got a really good copy of the film or it's been cleaned up but it looked fantastic. The wide sweeping majestic landscape shots looked gorgeous and all the animals looked beautiful.

    And yes the scene where trash-talking bare-chested Leslie Nielson battles the giant bear (was this one of BgBear's early roles?) was worth the price of admission.

    I kinda want to see a modern Chinese remake where Jackie Chan takes on a rampaging panda…

  • This was much better than I remembered it being. It's definitely top tier of the sub-genre, which frankly ain't saying much. Definitely worth watching for Nielsen.

  • Eric Hinkle

    This film was all over TV when I was a boy, and I saw it several times. I liked it a lot. Even if it and similar movies had me convinced that if you so much as stepped foot into the local town park a horde of slavering wildlife would tear you to pieces instantly.

    I also now notice things like the one scene early on where a 'savage' wolf is looking off to one side for reassurance from its trainer as it 'attacks' with tail wagging in a very canine "Play! Play! Play!"

    I also am impressed by the scene where it looks like they had a real Army or National Gard unit escorting everyone in that mountain town to safety. How did they get the cash for that for a B-film like this? Or did they just ask a local Guard unit to assist in exchange for being in the movie?

    Really this is a much better film than its reputation would suggest.

  • Gamera977

    I think I remember it being on TV pretty often too. Somehow I don't remember Nielson's scenes, you'd think it would have made more of an impression on my young brain!

  • Ken_Begg

    Severin did a 2K scan of the internegative for their Blu Ray edition, so Amazon probably is using that. I assume it's the same for Grizzly, which is also on Prime right now.

  • Ken_Begg

    Girdler was getting better film to film. The Manitou, his last movie, is wonderful. (Also with Michael Ansara as an Indian.) Tragic that he did right after that. Indeed, knowing about his death made the sight of the crashed copter here a bit squirmy.

  • Asking local National Guard units for the loan of equipment and volunteers for movies remains common practice. I guess there is mutual benefit as a free recruiting tool. I don't know whether that was the case here but extremely plausible. I could have been an ARNG extra for the Tom Cruise "War of the Worlds" had I not been pregnant (and maternity uniforms out of stock at the Depot, mine finally came in when youngest was 10 months old. No, I didn't sign for them, much to the consternation of the supply sergeant). It filmed a lot of location footage in Charlottesville, VA.

  • Yeah, The Manitou is pretty swell. Though the solution to the problem is kind of out there (as it was in the book, more or less.)

  • Kirk Draut

    If you took a drink every time Enrico Palazzo said "hotshot" you would die.

  • Dorothy Cobb

    or "kemo sabe."

  • Eric Hinkle

    I like it myself, bizarre as it is. The Great Old Ones and their Indian shaman are defeated by conjuring the spirit of a police crime investigation computer that fries them? It's original.

    Pity if they did it today in a movie (though people would be screaming at an evil Indian for a villain) they could give the police computer a voice like Robocop. "Your move, creep."

  • Eric Hinkle

    National Guard units do that? Wow. Live and learn. Thanks for sharing that information.

    And it's a shame you didn't get to appear in War of the Worlds. Seeing a pregnant National Guardswoman machine-gunning those rotten Martians would have been the high point of the movie, I'm sure. Better luck next time.

  • Eric Hinkle

    Looking back I have to wonder how secure Nielsen felt about wrestling with a grizzly bear like that. I understand that the bear they used, both here and in Grizzly, was so tame and mellow that he wouldn't even snap at people unless his trainer was tossing him marshmallows. But I'd still be leery about grappling with Not-So-Gentle Ben.

  • Gamera977

    Yeah, I think I'd demand they bring in someone like Bob Burns in a bear costume.

  • Ken_Begg

    i mean, she did that, it just wasn't in the movie.

  • It helps (slightly) that the bear in question wasn't a grizzly, It's a cinnamon bear, which is a brown subspecies of black bear, which are smaller and less aggressive.

  • Usually when it happens you'll see, buried in the credits somewhere, a note thanking whatever service branch or state Guard that loaned equipment or personnel (or just let them film on an installation) for their assistance. The big thing these days is making sure the movie doesn't portray the US military in a bad light, after a few too many anti-military films were greenlit.

    I did once see a credit, I think it was for the SGT Bilko movie, that said "Thank you to the United States Army for being of no help whatsoever" because the got turned down.