Killer Sheep and Other Cinema Beasts
Posted by: Loren Coleman on August 16th, 2007
Opening today, August 16, in Australia, is a debut film, Black Sheep, from writer-director Jonathan King. A movie about killer mutant sheep, in which genetic engineering is the evil underpinning of the film, doesn’t sound too cryptozoological. But Black Sheep and its little mutant lamb that foreshadows thousands turning into bloodthirsty predators is reminiscent of scores of other films about “monsters.”
Australian entertainment journalist Frank Crook has used the opening of Black Sheep to contribute a great overview of the genre. Here’s part of his wonderful article:
The new film follows the tradition of scores of movies about animals and insects that turn on people. Many early efforts were locked in their B-film origins: Attack Of The Crab Monsters, Attack Of The Giant Leeches, Killer Bees, Empire Of The Ants and The Swarm.
The modern cinema has produced a handful of classics, such as Moby Dick, Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds and Jaws, the film that sealed Steven Spielberg’s reputation as one of Hollywood’s brightest new directors.
Among them are lesser efforts such as Anaconda, in which a giant snake eats most of the cast; Lake Placid, inhabited by a giant alligator; and Cujo, the tale of a rabid Saint Bernard dog.
The grandfather of all animal-attack films was King Kong, produced in 1933 and remade in 1976 and 2005. King Kong was taken from an original story by Edgar Wallace and written for the screen by Merian C. Cooper.
The black-and-white original was known for its pioneering special effects, using stop-motion models and animatronics. The final scene, with the giant ape holding the heroine in the palm of its hand while clinging to the newly-erected Empire State Building, remains one of the screen’s great images.
In April 1961, Alfred Hitchcock read a story in the Santa Cruz Sentinel in California about birds exhibiting strange and aggressive behaviour. It led him to a story by Daphne du Maurier about birds massing together to attack a seaside village. Hitchcock shot The Birds in 1963, starring Tippi Hedren and Australian Rod Taylor.
Working with birds was no easy matter. Hedren was originally told only mechanical birds would be used. But live birds were hurled at her for a week by studio prop men. One nearly gouged one of her eyes and she collapsed, unable to continue filming for a week.
In the scene near the end of the film when she is ravaged by birds, the attacking birds were attached to her clothes by long nylon threads. It was a long and terrifying shoot but worth it in the end. The Birds was one of Hitchcock’s biggest hits.
Jaws, made in 1975, started the wave of killer-animal films of the late 1970s. It was credited as one of the first films to use traditional B-grade elements — horror and gore — in a big-budget film.
The film was inspired by both Peter Benchley’s novel and a real-life spate of shark attacks on the Jersey Shore, which cost four lives in 1916.
Three mechanical sharks — all dubbed Bruce after director Steven Spielberg’s lawyer — were used in the filming, designed by production designer Joe Alves and special effects artist Bob Mattey.
Jaws, starring Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw, was shot at Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.
Each of the Bruces was prone to malfunction, which actually helped the film, as Spielberg was forced to shoot scenes with the presence of the great white shark only hinted at. This helped build suspense, along with a throbbing musical score by John Williams.
Jaws turned out to be the father of the summer blockbuster, leading to three sequels, Jaws 2 (1978), Jaws 3-D (1983) and Jaws: The Revenge (1987). Spielberg had no connection with the sequels. The film Piranha (1978) directed by Joe Dante, was a send-up of the genre.
Films featuring homicidal wildlife had their origins in the science-fiction films rolled out in Hollywood in the 1950s, when the Cold War was a fact of life and the threat of communism ever present. Them! made in 1954 was an early example.
Them!, featuring a battle with a nest of giant ants, was one of the first nuclear monster films. The ants had grown to their gigantic size because of US nuclear testing in the nearby desert.
Japan had discovered the nuclear thriller about the same time. Godzilla, first seen on the screen in 1954, was spun off into a series of 28 films starring the giant dinosaur, transformed because of fall-out from hydrogen-bomb tests. Godzilla was released in the US in 1956, with new footage for the American market, featuring Raymond Burr.
Attack Of The Giant Leeches (1959) also played on symbolism. The story concerned a colony of human-size, intelligent leeches in the Florida Everglades, which preyed on their victims from their underground nest. The leeches were seen as a deadly threat to the human race as anti-communist hysteria peaked. But it didn’t help when the giant leeches were obviously actors dressed in rubber suits.
Moby Dick, filmed in 1956 and based on the classic novel by Herman Melville, pitted a demented sea captain against a great white whale. It could have been a forerunner to Jaws, filmed nearly 20 years later.
Many of the villains in killer animal films were tragic figures misunderstood by humans. Others were victims of experiments gone horribly wrong. But most were just nasty and hungry.
Bug featured killer cockroaches; Squirm was about flesh-eating earthworms; The Swarm starred killer bees. Crabs grew to an enormous size because of nuclear radiation in Roger Corman’s Attack Of The Crab Monsters (1957).
Genetically-mutated giant rabbits terrorised a farmer played by Rory Calhoun in Night Of The Lepus. The film, all but forgotten today, has the line: “Attention! Attention! Ladies and gentlemen, attention! There is a herd of killer rabbits headed this way and we desperately need your help.”
Australia got into the act in 1983 with Razorback, the saga of a giant pig terrorising the Outback.
Directed by Russell Mulcahy, it starred the American actor Gregory Harrison with a solid Australian supporting cast, including Bill Kerr, Chris Haywood, Judy Morris and Arkie Whitely.
A full-sized animatronic model razorback cost the producers $250,000 and was seen on the screen for only a matter of seconds.
Practically every creature used in animal killer films appeals to our most basic instincts. Fear of spiders is exposed in Arachnophobia; rats brought about similar emotions in Willard, the 1971 story of a boy who sets his pet rats loose on his tormenters.
The film spawned a sequel and a recent remake. There was also The Deadly Mantis, while a young Joan Collins was tormented by another nest of giant ants in Empire Of The Ants.
Man’s best friend turned killer in Cujo and The Hound Of The Baskervilles, the Sherlock Holmes adventure filmed in 1939 and again in 1959.
So Black Sheep is in good company. A good scare never did any harm at the box office.“Beastly old ways to scare your socks off” by Frank Crook, August 13, 2007, Australian News.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Saw a screener for Black Sheep a few weeks back. Throughly entertaining.
I am all for an entertaining yarn of creatures run amok, but I groan sometimes at some of the misperceptions that can be spread through a few of these kinds of movies. Jaws for example did a tremendous amount of damage to the reputation of sharks and to this day I am sure there are those out there who are afraid to go near the water because of that film. Great film, but it sure did contribute greatly to a widespread false impression of sharks as ruthless man killers. And what about the bad rap that leprechauns got in “Leprechaun”? 🙂
Some of my other favorite movies of what could be called cryptids running amok are “The Creature from the Black Lagoon”, “Gremlins”, and “Tremors”.
Mystery Man:
Again, I largely agree with you, but on this shark thing…well—while I grant that it’s a bit silly for people to fear sharks to the point of avoiding water—and I grant you that Jaws did introduce an air of supernatural fear in regards to sharks that was unwarranted—on the other hand let’s not go so far as to say that sharks had their collective reputation ruined by that film. “Slightly exaggerated” would be more accurate.
Sharks are animals not be trifled with; Jacques Cousteau was overtly wary of sharks, and as he reports in his books it was basically his policy to never allow a shark within a certain radius surrounding his dive teams. If a shark did so, he didn’t hesitate in pushing the thing off aggressively or even killing it if need be. One notes that (to the best of my knowledge) Cousteau and his team never suffered a serious shark attack in 60+ years of diving, even though they came close on many occasions. Quite simply, the man knew how to deal with the creatures.
Whether the shark’s ferocious reputation is wholly deserved, it’s true that the best policy is to always be wary of them and never let one’s guard down. Of course this is true of all large predators, but I suppose my point is that there’s a tendency for people to go too far in the opposite direction of caution when they “re-evaluate” the danger of predatory animals—sometimes the tendency is to come to think of them as benign and “naturally unthreatening”—a dangerous mistake.
Almost forgot…. Tremors and The Creature From the Black Lagoon ARE both awesome films (never was all that fond of Gremlins) but I have to confess that Them, as implausible as it is, still creeps me out, and remains my favorite. It’s a great film.
Rbhess- I wasn’t blaming that movie on all of the sharks woes, but rather saying that it did a great amount of damage, which it did. I don’t believe I said “ruined” at any point. That movie in no way portrayed the typical behavior of a shark yet a lot of people who do not know any better took it to heart and since it was such a big hit, it was seen by a great many people.
I agree that of course respect has to be shown to any large, possibly dangerous animal and quite frankly with many wild animals. I would never condone going out and getting up close or letting one’s guard down and anyone who has worked with animals knows this. I am of course not advocating a “lah dee dah, everything is peachy” complacent philosophy with wild animals, and indeed one should be wary when dealing with animals such as sharks. What I am saying is these are not rampaging monsters going out of their way to find and attack humans. The threat from these creatures is quite exaggerated for the most part. The thing is if one is not “trifling” with sharks and leaving them alone, the threat from being attacked by one is actually quite low. There are a lot of far more dangerous things to worry about than being attacked by a shark, such as current, drowning, etc, and I feel it is an irresponsible thing to expound on how deadly they are to humans or to spread the idea that they are out to kill us.
Mystery Man:
All very reasonable, of course, and I’m in agreement with you.
Okay, I admit it—sharks scare the bejeezus outta me. 🙂 Has to do with their (seeming) lack of intelligence, their almost robotic nature… and the frenzied nature in which they sometimes feed.
Beautiful but spooky animals. I will perpetually give them a wise berth.
It helps to look at statistics for shark attacks and think that for all of the people in the water, enjoying recreational water sports, swimming, scuba diving, and so on, the total numbers of shark attack, especially those resulting in fatalities are incredibly low. To the best of my memory, worldwide fatalities reached a record high of around 78 in 2000, and decreased in 2006 to somewhere in the 60s. This is despite the growing population and sadly is probably indicative of declining shark numbers. If one considers that of these attacks, an even smaller percentage were unprovoked, the amount of irrational fear on display by some seems a bit silly. By comparison, more people are killed by snakes, dogs, and deer (by way of vehicular collisions) than by sharks. Even though they are obviously potentially dangerous and should be treated with respect, the threat of sharks tends to be quite overblown.
Rbhess- Don’t forget those souless doll eyes! Aaarrrgh! 🙂
I also have a fondness for THEM! It creeped me out as a youngster and was the standard for sci-fi for years. It is also memorable to me because of the starring roles of James Arness and James Whitmore (one of the tallest and one of the shortest actors in film history). And let’s not forget Arness was the thing in The Thing, another great sci=fi movie from the 50’s.
Yes, the original 1950s Thing. I’m a fan of the re -make with Kurt Russel, but the original was amazing for the amount of dread they were able to invoke without a modern day budget.
“Like a doll’s eyes…” I still love that speech, one of the best in cinema history.
I think the reason Them and the original The Thing (From Another World) are still successfully creepy is because they have few hokey moments (to me The Thing has none) and never talk down to the audience. It helped that the ants in Them were so well done; even though they don’t move fast enough for real ants (but of course it’s impossible for ants to reach that size anyway, and whose to say, if they could reach a such elephantine proportions, how they’d move?) they somehow look frighteningly realistic. Tellingly, the film doesn’t explode the ants up to utterly ridiculous, Godzilla or Deadly Mantis size… they’re large enough to be horrific and yet still within some kind of nightmarishly believable proportion. They behave like ants (more or less) and aren’t invulnerable. Somehow this makes them scarier.
The Thing (the original) also still scares me somehow… Arness’ “intellectual carrot” in that film is some kind of soulless, utterly evil Frankenstein. I remember watching it late at night a couple years back and actually having a nightmare, which hasn’t happened to me since I was a little boy and was rendered terrified by the giant spider in Tarantula. But The Thing is of course in reality a disguised, classic horror film. Instead of the isolated Carpathian village, we have an isolated Arctic science station. Instead of villagers with pickaxes and torches, we have Air Force officers with pistols and machine guns. There’s a Monster that even looks like Frankenstein’s… and even a mad scientist who almost brings destruction down on everyone. Great film. The John Carpenter remake was closer to Campbell’s Who Goes There, but I still prefer the original 1950 version. It fits into a long line of Hollywood horror.
I always thought 1957’s The Monster That Challenged the World was one of the better examples of its time and genre.
Different movies can have a distinct, cryptid feel to them. Lake Placid, extinct dinosaur croc, Anaconda, wasn’t there reports of giant snakes in the jungles? Gremlins, The Creature from the Black Lagoon (Frogman or Lizardman), people love those movies for the unknown being brought to them. Why can’t people have that same thrill with cryptozoology? its frustrating sometimes. People need to have open minds to the unknown. But they don’t. 🙁
It seems that many people’s minds are stuck in the binary, at least historically, about sharks. First they said that sharks are incapable of hurting humans and wouldn’t if they could, and continue in this disastrous line of thought until a certain Great White attacks people in New Jersey repeatedly, most likely because it was an old shark and couldn’t catch its normal prey.
Then sharks are portrayed as evil man-eaters that should be killed off for the sake of us and everything else that so much as gets their toes wet.
Thankfully, many people nowadays, (including many here) have found a reasonable middle-ground. Take the proper safety precautions when swimming in the ocean, but, if a shark gets too close, try to ward it off nonlethally, as blood from the shark will attract more sharks.
Oh, and, in response to Black Sheep: Uh, angry sheep? That’s the monster this time? What are they angry about, improper wages? Sheepie want a raise? Why don’t they just go on strike? Or are they just mortally afraid of shears? lol
Gromit, we have a mission!
Cujo, Razorback, The Swarm, Them, on and on. I have seen most of them and loved them all. B-Movies are great for some homemade popcorn on a rainy Friday or Saturday night.
Gotta love those really old ones – On Mystery Science Theater!
Fans of killer livestock should also check out the mutant sheep movie from the 70’s “The Godmonster of Indian Flats,” although it’s pretty bad. In the most terrifying scene the giant sheep monster shambles upon a group of children having a picnic. They run off screaming and the sheep eats their watermelon!
Yep, THEM! I must watch every rerun. The fine acting includes a bit part by Fess Parker and the always fine work of Edmund Gwenn. Even Leonard Nimoy has a few seconds in the communications center receiving strange and unusual reports.