“This is more than a movie. It’s a prediction!”
Publicity tagline for The Swarm
Nature’s Revenge[ Book Contents]
Snakes on a Plane [David R. Ellis, 2006]
The passengers and crew are not happy about snakes on the plane.
Nature’s Revenge[ Book Contents]
The Naked Jungle [Byron Haskin, 1954]
Charlton Heston struggles to save a Peruvian cocoa plantation from the “Marabunta”—millions of voracious army ants.
Nature’s Revenge[ Book Contents]
Empire of the Ants [Bert I. Gordon, 1977]
A toxic spill turns ordinary ants into intelligent, rampaging monsters, bent on conquering mankind. Another Bert I. Gordon trashing of an H. G. Wells story.
Nature’s Revenge[ Book Contents]
Willard [Daniel Mann, 1971]
A lonely young man is unable to kill the rats in the basement. Soon, they do his bidding. Based on the novel The Ratman’s Notebooksby Stephen Gilbert.
“My God, look at the rats!”
Mr. Martin (Ernest Borgnine), Willard[1971]
Nature’s Revenge[ Book Contents]
The Food of the Gods [Bert I. Gordon, 1976]
Ralph Meeker is eaten by giant rats in this low-rent and very loose adaptation of H. G. Wells’ novel The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth[1904].
Nature’s Revenge[ Book Contents]
Jaws [Steven Spielberg, 1975]
Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) in his final confrontation with the monstrous great white shark in Spielberg’s summer blockbuster.
Nature’s Revenge[ Book Contents]
Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus [Ace Hannah, 2009]
Mega Shark attacks the Golden Gate Bridge. Followed by Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus[2010] and Sharktopus[2010]. What can I say?
Nature’s Revenge[ Book Contents]
It Came From Beneath the Sea [Robert Gordon, 1955]
A gigantic octopus destroys the Golden Gate Bridge in this Ray Harryhausen thriller.
Nature’s Revenge[ Book Contents]
Squirm [Jeff Lieberman, 1976]
A storm knocks down high power lines, sending electricity into the ground. For some reason, this causes thousands of bloodworms to attack humans. This actor is actually covered in thousands of real bloodworms, which is not dangerous, but is pretty gross.
Nature’s Revenge[ Book Contents]
Attack of the Giant Leeches [Bernard L. Kowalski, 1959]
Deep in the swamps of the Florida Everglades, a giant leech attacks victims.
Nature’s Revenge[ Book Contents]
Cujo [Lewis Teague, 1983]
A rabid St. Bernard is enough to generate real chills in this suspenseful adaptation of the book by the prolific Stephen King.
Nature’s Revenge[ Book Contents]
Grizzly [aka Killer Grizzly, William Girdler, 1976]
Identical in plot to Jaws, but with an 18-foot-tall grizzly bear instead of a great white shark.
Nature’s Revenge[ Book Contents]
Piranha [Joe Dante, 1978]
“Operation Razorteeth,” a covert Vietnam War research project, ends up creating the menace for New World Pictures’ jump onto the Jawsbandwagon.
Nature’s Revenge[ Book Contents]
The Birds [Alfred Hitchcock, 1963]
Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) runs from another unexplained bird attack. Based on the novella by Daphne du Maurier.
Nature’s Revenge[ Book Contents]
Creature From the Black Lagoon [Jack Arnold, 1954]
Julie Adams and the Gill-Man (Ben Chapman) in an unusual color publicity still (the film is black and white).
Nature’s Revenge[ Book Contents]
The Monster of Piedras Blancas [Irvin Berwick, 1959]
A lighthouse keeper leaves food for a sea creature. This turns out to be a mistake.
Nature’s Revenge[ Book Contents]
The Descent [Neil Marshall, 2005]
Six women go spelunking and encounter terrifying, subterranean, flesh-eating humanoids in this claustrophobic, scary movie.
Nature’s Revenge[ Book Contents]
The Mole People [Virgil W. Vogel, 1956]
Archaeologists discover a race of Sumerian albinos that live underground and use humanoid Mole Men as slaves to harvest their primary food source—mushrooms!
Nature’s Revenge[ Book Contents]
Tremors [Ron Underwood, 1990]
A very entertaining movie about two modern cowboys (Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward) coping with big underground monsters in the Nevada desert.
Them![Gordon Douglas, 1954] Giant ants, the result of atomic mutation, in the first of the 1950s Big Bug movies.
ATOMIC MUTATIONS
The threat of nuclear annihilation has been a Sword of Damocles over our planet for more than 65 years. But usually we just prefer not to think about it. The fear of destruction on an apocalyptic scale was very real in 1962, when the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the USA and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear conflict.
A movie that captures the sense of impending doom and paranoia of that time is Joe Dante’s excellent Matinee[1993]. Although ostensibly about a William Castle-like schlock Hollywood producer (John Goodman), the movie also boasts a terrific parody of the then-popular Atomic Mutation pictures, which reflected audiences’ atomic anxiety. Mant!, the film within the film, is perfectly done.