Horror Films FAQ: All That's Left to Know About Slashers, Vampires, Zombies, Aliens, and More by John Kenneth Muir

Author:John Kenneth Muir
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: film, video, horror
Publisher: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books
Published: 2014-02-10T00:00:00+00:00

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“The Very Concept Is Unimaginable!”

When-Animals-Attack Films

Symbolism involving animals is an important part of human myth, going right back to antiquity. In myth, animals have been known to represent the will of God, the supernatural, or even merely raw power. Mithra, a Zoroastrian god, is renowned for having slain a bull. The animal’s blood (and in some stories, semen) spilled out across the Earth and ushered in a new epoch of fertility or rebirth. The act of killing the bull healed the land and healed society.

In the mid-1990s, the Fox Network aired a sensational series of TV “specials” showcasing footage of animals attacking humans, called When Animals Attack. But the subject of animal attacks has also been handled, far more artistically, in horror cinema for over a generation.

The attacking animals have come from the sky (The Birds [1963]), the sea (Jaws [1975], Orca [1978]), and the forest (Grizzly [1976], Prophecy [1979]). The attackers have included denizens from the arachnid and insect world (Phase IV [1974]), Kingdom of the Spiders [1977], Empire of the Ants [1977], Arachnaphobia [1990]), amphibians (Frogs [1972]), man’s best friend (The Pack [1978]) and even, on one notable occasion, giant furry rabbits (Night of the Lepus [1972]).

In many animal-attack films, the animal attack occurs explicitly because of human misbehavior. This misbehavior is so bad, in fact, that Mother Nature/God/Gaia changes the order of nature and makes the animals its avengers. The use of pesticide caused the spiders to attack in Kingdom of the Spiders. The pollution of nature brings about the revenge of the frogs in that film. Hormones cause those bunnies to act homicidally. Mercury poisoning creates the mutated bear/beast of John Frankenheimer’s eco-horror Prophecy. The hole in the ozone layer causes beasts to go mad in William Girdler’s Day of the Animals (1977).

If we accept that animal symbolism involves the will of God, then in these movies it is the will of God that animals overturn the apple cart and the food chain to punish man for his trespasses.

Some of the horror genre’s most popular “when-animal-attack” movies, however, don’t bear as obvious or clear-cut reasons for the kingdom of nature’s vengeance, but instead offer plenty of subtextual material about which to speculate.

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