Director: George McGowan
Year: 1972
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Nature-Run-Amok
Plot:
Joining their family for a holiday celebration, a photographer going along with his girlfriend gets caught up in their struggle to survive when the local wildlife population suddenly turns on them with deadly intent following a toxic chemical spill, and he must help them get away alive.
Review:
On the whole, this was certainly a watchable if still really unremarkable effort. One of the few areas this one gets right is the fact of being able to effectively make the encroaching wildlife a force to be reckoned with, gathering a sizable number of beasts of all different backgrounds, varieties, and deadliness to make a worthwhile run at the human group assembled. With all manner of frogs, lizards, snakes and other reptiles as well as birds and fish all involved here, the gathered army makes for quite an impressive lot and the fact that there's a constant presence here with the near-continuous croaking, screeching and calling out to each other here makes for a truly chilling time here that really gets it's worth the more it's utilized throughout here. Likewise, that alone makes the final half-hour here all the more enjoyable as it's basically a series of chases throughout the compound trying to get the remaining visitors to safety as the previous attempts fail spectacularly in a couple rather enjoyable encounters with an alligator in the swamps, a vicious spider assault out in the forest and the endless frog and snake attacks that lead throughout the finale as there's no shortage of these fun scenes throughout here.
However, these are all that really work here as the film doesn't really offer much beyond that. The biggest mitigating factor is the fact that despite the best efforts to the contrary, the film is completely obvious about the hokey nature of having completely non-threatening animals turn vicious and tries several tactics to convince us otherwise that really come up short. The fact that the creatures' continuous presence is seen throughout the film always hanging out on the fringes of the property, that they never once pose any kind of active threat to the people nearby unless they're on their own is a big flaw, as they seem content to perfectly watch them go about their routine and never try any kind of attack instead of peacefully sitting around, much as the creatures ordinarily would in such an occasion.
The close-ups of them constantly croaking or hopping along are nowhere near threatening as it would be just hearing the noises, and the fact that they literally have to drag the creatures on top of them during the attacks, are forced to wrestle with obviously tame and non-threatening beasts in their scenes or confuse non-poisonous species for deadly creatures makes the large majority of the attacks here quite hilarious rather than chilling. As such, a long introduction that shows the patriarch's stubbornness as a storyline ploy rather than anything else to keep them in danger stretches the flimsy plot out far longer than it really should and makes for a really tough time getting into this one, which is another big stumbling block to overcome here. Otherwise, this one wasn't all that bad.
Overview: **/5
Decent enough but still somewhat flawed for what it is, there are a lot of worthwhile factors to this one that a pretty much turned off by the majority of the flaws featured here that hold it down. Those with an appreciation for this style or approach or who are fans of the creative crew will have a lot to like, while most others out there should heed caution.
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