Top 10 Animal Horror Films Of All Time
Welcome to that time of year where we look back at another horror sub genre for Halloween. This year we will be uncaging Animal Horror and considering the long and lost history of man versus nature classics.
So sit down beside the fireplace with your dead childhood pets and reminisce about burying them in the back garden. Just dont flush that baby crocodile down the toilet when your're bored of looking after it. They only come back bigger.
Watch the Top 10 animal horror movies below.
In descending order of greatness:
10. Willard [1971]
This creepy low budget B movie focuses on a sweet natured teenage boy, Willard, who uses his psychic powers to control hoardes of rampaging rats to wreak revenge on the adults who bullied him and made his life a misery.
Starring Bruce Davison and Elsa Lanchester, this film is a slow burning study of teenage rebellion which never fails to surprise with the delicious depths of the main characters’ penchant for violence. This film is easily confused with the very similar Ben movie due to an identical rat premise but I’ve always found Willard to be a darker and more biting affair.
Willard was remade in 2003 starring the excellent Crispin Glover in the title role.
9. Cocaine Bear [2023]
Cocaine Bear is perhaps the most famous of recent animal horror films, and despite being critically panned, this rabid Paddington Bear CGI monstrosity deserves a special mention for it’s black humour and surprisingly blood soaked scenery.
The film is based on the true story of a bear discovering a cache of cocaine in Oregan and going on a wild rampage. That’s about it. But the film never takes itself too seriously and features some stand out scenes of hilarity. It was also famously directed by the actress Elizabeth Banks.
None of this makes a lot of sense when you consider all the random elements that had to come together to make this bizarre film - but savour the fact it exists at all.
8. Razorback [1984]
I remember watching this under appreciated low budget Australian horror when it first came out on VHS. Like Jaws, it somehow took rare animal attacks and turned them into an everday possibility. Especially when Razorback centres on a rampaging wild boar - basically a killer pig -in the Australian outback which was unlikely to happen in your local suburban town.
I still have vivid images of the climax in the canning factory at the finale which made this low budget classic look like a million dollar Hollywood production.
7.Lake Placcid [1999]
Any animal horror film list needs to include Lake Placcid purely because it is completely tongue in cheek and intentionally bad - but that’s half the fun. The black humour and bad acting carry this classic across the line when the film opens with an animal attack at a lake in Maine. This event leads to the local sheriff calling in New York paleontologists when a dinosaur tooth is discovered and a giant crocodile is suspected to be on the loose.
This movie has a famous Hollywood cast starring Brendan Gleeson as Sheriff Hank Keough, Bill Pullman and Bridget Fonda, and Oliver Platt, all doing their best to overdramatise the situtation. It proved so popular that it birthed a further two sequels which I’ve never bothered to watch.
6. Piranha [1978]
Literally following in the watery wake of Jaws, Roger Corman’s low budget B movie classic cashes in and retreads the danger at sea / lake premise. It features some terrifying underwater scenes of rampant pirhana attacks, but whereas Jaws only alluded to the horror (and left it to the audience’s imagination) Corman revelled in the sea change of blood red waters. Ferocious attacks leave bodies picked clean of their flesh with skeletons left floating to the bottom of the ocean. A horror B movie classic.
5. Alligator [1980]
I’m not sure which came first, Alligator the film, or Alligator the urban myth. Some people may remember an urban myth circulating around the Big Apple for many years where Alligators lived in the sewers of New York city after children flushed their pet baby alligator down the toilet.
This gritty film features an early starring role for the Oscar nominated actor, Robert Forster (Jackie Brown) and is the logical conclusion of urban myth into reality. A Hollywood cash-in.
The film climaxes in a flood when the alligators burst through the drain covers to attack New York citizens. Or perhaps I imagined it? Maybe it’s another part of the myth. Either way this horror classic deserves to live on in people’s imaginations and fears.
4. Cujo [1983]
Famously based on one of Stephen King’s worst books, Cujo is a simple affair about a family dog that contracts rabies and turns against its owners. The film is surprisingly well made and isn’t that unrealistic when you consider XL Bully dog attacks kill owners every day.
King cleverly took something ordinary and elevated it into every parent’s worst nightmare - the family pet - but then sadly didn’t take the premise much further until Pet Cemetary. Despite the narrative shortcomings, Cujo is a gruesome and intense classic because of Dee Wallace’s emotionally committed performance as a mother trying to protect her children from the relentless St Bernard dog attacks. Perhaps owning pets that are larger than you isn’t such a good idea.
Fun fact: Cujo was an allegory for King’s personal nemesis, alcoholism, and he had no memory of writing it.
3. Food Of The Gods [1976]
This 1970’s Canadian classic plays it straight and throws every cute furry animal known to man at the audience. No animal is spared. While some films had a single giant shark or crocodile, the Food Of The Goods upped the ante and delivered thousands of giant killer rats and giant killer bunnies. It’s cheap, it’s low budget, it’s fantastic.
This man versus nature film features a committed performance from Marjoe Gortner, a classic 1970s ubiquitous actor who appeared in every B movie from Starcrash to Earthquake, trying to shepherd his family to safety. But the practical in camera effects really are the star of the show - the giant attacking furry paws and toy furry faces maybe less so.
2. Jaws [1975]
Let’s get this out of the way. Everyone loves Jaws. It’s a great film based on a novel by Peter Benchley, but controversially, it’s not my favourite animal horror film. But is it even a horror film?
There is very little blood or gore on display but Jaws proved that a horror film could leave everything to the audience’s imagination and its impact upon society changed the way people viewed the seaside, and even the local swimming pool. It meant noone was safe. In fact, it’s interesting how we misremember its key scenes of horror - which are few and far between - when we consider it was rated a PG.
Steven Spielberg famously had a terrible time shooting Jaws due to the constant mechanical failure of Bruce the shark which rendered much of the footage unuseable. He nearly abandonded the project but then Verna Fields, a relatively unknown film editor, changed the course of Spielberg’s career and deliberately ommited the shark footage to build tension and fear. It’s limited screen time made it more impactful, and her contribution made Jaws one of the most suspenseful horror movies of all time.
1. The Birds[1963]
Alfred Hitchcock invented the man versus nature premise of Animal Horror when he made The Birds.
Originally taken from a story by the British author, Daphne du Maurier, this film wedged in my brain for years as I tried to comprehend why the birds attacked humans? The film provides no explanation or inciting incident as the birds begin to flock together and attack in ever larger numbers. Ultimately, it’s irrelevant.
The narrative follows Melanie Daniels, played by Tippi Hedren, as a San Francisco socialite who pursues her boyfriend, Rod Taylor, to Bodega Bay where she is randomly struck by a seagull, foreshadowing the attack on the townsfolk. But it’s the films climatic scenes where Hitchcock employs a masterstroke of building tension as the birds gather outside a local schoolhouse. The indoor scenes are intercut with growing numbers of birds outside the building, poised to the attack the children when they leave. Hitchcock even adopts a birds eye view of the local town’s destruction when the birds attack - a technique used in Jaws underwater point of view shots.
The Birds is a triumph of horror and tension which heavily influenced the next generation of filmmakers. It is certainly the bleakest of Hitchcock’s films and reflects the growing pessimism at the heart of the 1960’s that would later flourish in the cinema of the 1970s.
And now a word from our host, Alfred Hitchcock…