The Laelaps Movie of the Week: Something is Out There (AKA Day of the Animals)

Most of my nightmares aren't rated PG, but if they involved a crazed and shirtless Leslie Neilson, they would be pretty terrifying indeed. Throw in a few cougars, birds, bears, wolves, a pack of purebred German Shepards, a motley crew of campers, and a mysterious hole in the ozone layer and you've got the 1977 film Something is Out There (also known as Day of the Animals), one of the worst revenge-of-nature films I've ever seen.

For some time movie monsters were aliens as mutants produced by exposure to radiation, but during the 1970's there was a shift to "monsters" being normal animals with big appetites or the destructive handmaidens of an ornery "Mother Nature," although their rampages never resulted in any governmental policy changes ("We now yield the floor to the bloodthirsty mutant grizzly bear..."). While many of the scenarios that set various creatures off on a killing spree are invented, Day of the Animals at least makes an attempt at basing its story on science, citing the 1974 paper "Chlorofluoromethanes in the environment" by Rowland and Molina, making the connection between chemicals in aerosol cans and damage to the ozone layer. Indeed, the movie admonishes us that the events in the film COULD happen (much like some of the prefaces to older black and white monster films), although the premise that the increased UV radiation could set off a virus in living things that made them killers is absurd. The animals and people would be more likely to get skin cancer than go at each others throats, but that probably wouldn't make for a very exciting movie. Unfortunately, the story we're presented with isn't very exciting, either.

The basic setup is simple; a bunch of stereotypes (including a Jewish single mother and son, a stoic American Indian, a young couple, a geeky professor, an obnoxious advertising exec, etc.) get flown out to "Sugar Meadow" for a camping trip, ultimately discovering that the animals have unionized. Various animals from all over the park set upon the campers, usually roughing them up a bit but not being very practiced predators. The head of park law enforcement, however, isn't very much concerned with the camp leader and the tourists; he's too busy ordering a slice of apple pie with ice cream on top before he's even into his chili fries and beer, the rare northwestern jumping rats that are munching on his Thanksgiving leftovers being a more immediate concern.

Eventually the cast gets thinned out as they blunder into various animals in the dark, a pack of overexcited German Shepards licking two of the tourists to death, Leslie Neilson likewise being smothered in a literal bear hug. What is interesting about all this, however, is that the animals are seemingly being organized by a single Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos), although in life these birds often work in pairs, one partner driving the prey towards another. Another mutualistic alliance is apparently between a dog with peanut butter stuck to the roof of its mouth and rattlesnakes, the dog driving a hapless victim into a bed of rattlers and taking advantage of their poisonous bite.

In the end, though, the special Army Baked-Potato squad arrives on the scene to find people who collapsed in the streets clutching their favorite stuff turkey vulture mounts clasped to their chests, the "virus" that caused all this subsiding as the ozone problem "self corrected." I was just thankful that I didn't have to look at Leslie Neilson's back fat anymore *shudder*.

Most scientifically inaccurate dialog;

"155 million years ago there were no animals... just reptiles and insects."

Another revenge-of-nature film with a hammy actor;

Kingdom of the Spiders starring William Shatner.