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When Nature Goes Wild! The Best "Nature Run Amock" FilmsMay 23 '02 Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line What do you do when those little harmless bugs become giant man-eating monsters? John Agar knows! When I was a young lad in elementary school, I used to stay up late on weekends and watch the cheap science fiction and horror movies that they would play after the midnight hour on cable stations. I particularly liked the nature-run-amock movies where some tiny, harmless creature, usually mutated by radiation or toxic waste, would suddenly become man’s deadly adversary. I stayed up into the early morning hours watching Suzanne Somers getting devoured by thousands of radioactive ants, seeing Houston get invaded by several mile-long swarms of killer bees, watching small towns overrun by hordes of mutated spiders. I probably watched dozens of classic and not so classic “nature” flicks, and they all scared me. After watching many of them again later on, I realized that many of these films – scary to an eight or nine year old – are actually pretty cheesy. However, there is still a good library of nature-run-amock films that are watchable and, in some ways, still a little bit creepy. I still have a place in my heart even for the bad ones. There are not too many surprises on my list. While it is likely that I forgot some great movie, these are all the ones I saw as a child and have seen since then. You’ll find an abundance of movies from the 1950’s and 1970’s. Indeed, when one thinks of these type of films, the 50’s and 70’s are probably the two decades that stand out the most. Both decades produced an abundance of good and terrible science fiction movies about things that creep and crawl around. The 50’s produced sci-fi classics like Them!, The Deadly Mantis, and Tarantula. The 70’s had Kingdom of the Spiders, Piranha and, of course, Jaws. Sadly, very few quality nature-run-amock films have been made in the past two decades. The 80’s was pretty mediocre with the exception of Alligator and the cockroach movie The Nest. The 90’s started out well, with both Tremors and Arachnophobia coming out in 1990, and the cheap but fun Ticks in 1993. Since then, however, little of note has come out. There was the abysmal Anaconda and the equally bad Bats. Lake Placid and Deep Blue Sea had promise but ended up disappointments overall. The new millennium has so far offered up the very cheesy Spiders but not much else. With all the technology available nowadays, you’d think the time would be ripe for some good bug movies. For now, we’ll have to be content with enjoying some of the old classics that made the genre. Some are will gross you out, some will scare you, and some are just downright funny. But most of them, even the bad ones, are pretty entertaining. Get some friends together and give one a watch some Friday or Saturday night. Despite their dated effects and often corny scripts, they’re still loads of fun. The Top Ten Nature-Run-Amock Movies: 10) Tarantula (1955, b/w) Scientists experimenting with a radioactive growth “nutrient” accidentally release a giant tarantula into the Arizona desert. The spider, which is still growing, escapes to a remote area and begins feeding on horses, livestock, and ranchers in the area, leaving behind only a puddle of white liquid as a clue. John Agar, as wooden as always, plays the hero, a doctor who, along with the local police, has to solve the mystery of the attacks. After analyzing the white puddles, they discover that it is spider venom and have to confront the monster. Although effects are pretty bad -- basically a tarantula superimposed on a movie screen – the movie manages to be pretty interesting, in a corny sort of way. Look for a cameo by a young Clint Eastwood as an Air Force Pilot. 9) Piranha (1978, color) Commonly labeled as Roger Corman’s version of Jaws, Piranha is more of a spoof than it is a serious horror film. The military is conducting experiments with genetically engineered piranhas, which they had originally planned to release into the rivers of Vietnam. A couple of nature lovers accidentally release the piranhas into the river and have to race downstream before the hungry fellas can feast on a summer camp full of children and the vacationers at a resort. The military is called in, but the officer in charge owns part of the resort and prevents the scientists from clearing it out because he does not want to scare people away. But if they eat his guests, I guess the resort will get more popular… okay so it doesn’t make sense, but if you’re looking for an intelligent political satire, you’re watching the wrong film. There are some pretty funny death scenes here, and the piranhas are intentionally cheesy looking. This film is not nearly as funny or good as people make it out to be, but it is one of the better ones in the genre. Followed by an awful sequel and an even worse made-for-TV remake. 8) Alligator (1980, color) Taking off on the old urban legend about alligators in the sewers, Alligator is a fun monster movie that does not take itself too seriously. A baby alligator, flushed down the toilet by a little girl, grows to 36-feet long with the help of growth hormones and proceeds to go on a feeding frenzy in Chicago. A burnt-out police officer is assigned to the case and eventually goes into the sewers to track the big beastie down. There are plenty of tongue-in-cheek moments in this one, and most of them work pretty well. The alligator attacks are well done, but the whole non-serious tone of the movie makes them almost comical. Thus, they can get away with having an alligator eating a kid. The script for Alligator was written by John Sayles, the same guy who wrote Piranha. Followed by a pretty crappy 1991 sequel. 7) The Black Scorpion (1957, b/w) Often labeled as a “Them!” clone, The Black Scorpion manages to stand on its own two feet as a decent 1950’s monster movie. A series of volcanic eruptions in Mexico unearth thousands of formerly isolated giant scorpions, spiders, worms and centipedes that descend on Mexico City – and only an American geologist can save them! The stop-motion animation by Willis O’Brien of King Kong fame is surprisingly good, as the scorpions and other undesirables look pretty. The puppets that they use for a close-up shots, however, are typically cheesy and overused. The script also runs a little on the slow side for a monster movie. Thankfully, when the monsters are on screen, it pays off. 5) Kingdom of the Spiders (1977, color) See William Shatner’s pathetic attempts to hit on a woman! See William Shatner run like he has something stuck up his behind! See William Shatner consistently overdue all of his lines! Ok, in all seriousness, Kingdom of the Spiders is a good movie, but it is not without its funny parts. KOTS is a solid spider film about a small Arizona town that is overrun by thousands of particularly venomous tarantulas, who have come to find prey due to the townspeople’s killing of the spiders’ food supply. William Shatner (he does play a character, but you know… he’s always just William Shatner) and a group of townspeople eventually barricade themselves in a hotel when all other hope is lost. As with most nature-run-amock movies, the stars of this movie are the spiders. They use hundreds of real tarantulas, so there is nothing fake looking here. The deaths are all pretty nasty, with the appropriate amount of spiders crawling all over people, and the ending is still pretty cool even though, watching it at a much older age, it looks pretty fake. This is one of the two best spider movies ever. 5) Arachnophobia (1990, color) Notice how there is no six in my list? Well, that is not a typo. Bogged down in indecisiveness over whether I should rank Arachnophobia or Kingdom of the Spiders higher, I just took the easy, cowardly way out and ranked them both at number five. Truth be told, they are both pretty good and work on different levels. The premise to Arachnophobia is pretty much the same as KOTS: thousands of deadly spiders, this time brought in a coffin from South America, infest a small town. A new doctor, played by Jeff Daniels, comes to down and two of his patients die mysteriously. He is quickly nicknamed “Dr. Death” by the townspeople and the town’s old doctor accuses him (more or less) of malpractice. Knowing the deaths were very strange, he calls in an entomologist who confirms that they were killed by deadly spiders. As the deaths continue, they discover that the spider’s nest is literally in the doctor’s backyard. Arachnophobia, though not a spoof, is not nearly as serious as Kingdom of the Spiders. It is creepy in an “eew gross” sort of way, but not as wholly terrifying as KOTS. But, as a lighthearted spider movie, it works as well as KOTS does as a serious film. John Goodman is hilarious as the town exterminator, and Jeff Daniels is a big step up in acting from William Shatner. 4) Tremors (1990, color) A female seismologist is doing a study in the Nevada desert (have you noticed just about all of these movies are in the desert?) when she notices strange seismic activity. She is attacked by a giant worm-like creature, but manages to get it to run into the concrete wall of a canal, killing it. She escapes the nearby small town where she takes two of the locals (played by Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward) to the site. A local shopkeeper makes light of it, and nicknames them “Graboids” in the hopes of cashing in on the strange find. Soon, however, the giant creatures head for the town to find more prey. The people, cut off from the outside world, have to make it to the safety of the mountains to survive. Tremors is another movie that does not take itself too seriously. The giant carnivorous worms look great, and nearly all the characters play off of each other for some good humor in the middle of the suspense. They replay this all the time on USA, and I’ve never gotten bored with it. A very fun movie. Followed by two surprisingly good sequels. The third one in particular is very much worth watching. 3) The Birds (1963, color) A rich socialite drives to the tiny Pacific-coast hamlet of Bodega Bay in pursuit of a love interest that she met at a pet shop in San Francisco. While the two begin a strange love-hate relationship, flocks of angry birds begin to inexplicably attack people in the town. Interpersonal relationships take up a surprisingly large part of this movie, with the birds adding a strange twist to what would have otherwise been a fairly drab romance film. The bird attacks, though not as numerous as attacks in most standard films in the genre, are some of the most frantic and scary. Alfred Hitchcock uses the bird attacks just enough so that the movie does not drag too much, and so the attacks do not became stale and repetitive. Also noticeable is the lack of any music; the only soundtrack to this film is an eerie symphony of bird sounds that provide a constant reminder of danger, even when the birds are off screen. 2) Them! (1954, b/w) The giant bug movie, Them! is about giant ants, mutated by atomic testing in the desert, who come out of their underground colonies and begin to colonize the world. Scientists and the military find a way to contain the creatures in the Arizona desert where they first appear, but soon find that several ants have escaped, and several more are winged and flying across the country. The plot is standard enough for the genre, but the intelligent script, dry humor and solid acting set it far above the rest. The ants are not more intelligent, more poisonous, more anything, other than being bigger. Their attempt to colonize the world is not any sort of sinister master plan. Rather, they are just doing what ants do. And, as carnivores, the now larger ants need larger prey. All of this is explained well in the movie, which gives it a realistic bent -- as realistic as giant ants can be, anyway. The special effects, though dated by today’s standards, are good enough, and the annoying, high-pitched squeal of the ants is a good mood setter. Them! still holds up well even by today’s standards. 1) Jaws (1975, color) No surprises here, Stephen Spielberg’s Jaws was one of the first, if not the first summer blockbuster hit. The small New England island of Amity is preparing for its 4th of July festivities, which also happens to be its biggest tourist day of the year. However, a great white shark with a thirst for human meat has different ideas, and begins devouring helpless swimmers. The mayor, not wanting to lose tourist revenue, refuses to acknowledge the shark threat despite warnings from an expert who is on-hand. A shark hunter, the town’s new police chief, and the shark expert set off in a boat to hunt for the killer Great White. The unforgettable score to Jaws, composed by John Williams, masterfully sets up the suspense, and the shark attacks are carried out flawlessly. Spielberg shows just enough of the shark that it does not look fake or cheesy. Nobody swims in the ocean quite the same way after watching this movie. Honorable Mentions: The Nest, Cujo, Frogs, Tremors 3, Tremors 2, Ticks Mediocre: Ants, The Swarm, Grizzly, Mosquito, Squirm, Lake Placid, Deep Blue Sea So Bad They’re Funny: Night of the Lepus, The Killer Shrews, Empire of the Ants, Crawlers, The Deadly Mantis Just Bad: Bats, Spiders, Anaconda, Rattlers, Tentacles, Slugs  |
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by Stephen_Murray
by lindaohio
