Welcome to 5 Favorites. Each week, I will put together a list of my 5 favorites (films, performances, whatever strikes my fancy) along with commentary on a given topic each week, usually in relation to a specific film releasing that week.

This week, Idris Elba protects his family from a savage predator in the African savannah. Unlike most lions, this one hunts its prey not with the intent of eating it, but seemingly because it enjoys killing. Cinema is filled with creature features were seemingly normal animals go berserk. My main criteria for this week’s list was to avoid aliens. There are some great creature features that include aliens, but I wanted to stay with a terrestrial origin. I gave myself some leeway by allowing for creatures that didn’t co-exist with modern man, but that’s the extent of my leniency. Here are five films with terrifying beasts as the enemy.

King Kong (1933)

What may well be the quintessential creature feature, King Kong takes audiences to a strange exotic island where a gargantuan gorilla-like monster named King Kong is feared by local villagers who attempt to sacrifice Fay Wray to the creature who instead takes a fascination to her and carries her off into the jungle. After many mishaps, Wray is rescued and Kong is brought back to New York City where he’s put on display as the eighth wonder of the world. Terror ensues upon his escape.

Kong is suggested to be a forgotten creature that may have existed at the time of the dinosaurs, a stegosaurus even makes an appearance in the film. The film is noted for its revolutionary use of special effects, including stop-motion animation, matte paintings, and the use of miniatures. It was a tremendous box office success, making $5.3 million at the box office in 1933. With ticket prices in 1935 being $0.24, compared to today, that tally would be over $211 million. A sizable effort. The film is worth watching just to see the evolution of the medium and while there were creature features that predate this one (The Lost World being the most noteworthy in 1925), few have retained the long-lasting appreciation this film has generated, including numerous sequels and remakes.

No original review available.

The Birds (1963)

Science fiction and horror are the genres most noted for the use of creatures as antagonists. While it’s common for a single critter to terrorize a wide swath of the populace, Alfred Hitchcok provided that a flock of normal, everyday creatures, could be just as terrifying. The Birds stars Tippi Hedron as socialite who meets a young lawyer (Rod Taylor) and decides to follow him to his quaint family home for a weekend birthday gathering. With a pair of lovebirds in tow, she drives out to Bodega Bay where an innocent party turns into a nightmare weekend.

Hitchcock was the master of suspense, but he dabbled in horror as well thanks to the similarities in tone and storytelling techniques. The Birds followed three years after his landmark Psycho and while it’s not considered one of his top-tier films, it’s no less compelling to watch. With a supporting cast that includes Jessica Tandy, Veronica Cartwright, and Suzanne Pleshette, the performers are all working hard at selling the frightening potential of an unexpected flock of seagulls and other birds threatening their very lives. You might never have though of avians being terribly scary, but after this film, you’ll never see a massive flock of crows or starlings without getting a chill down your spine.

No original review available.

Jaws (1975)

Everyone knows the term blockbuster. It’s meant to signal that a film is so popular that audiences are queued up in lines stretching around the block (or several blocks) leading into the movie theater. Jaws was the origin of that term, though films as early as Gone With the Wind could lay claim to having been one of the first to have such massive popular support. In Jaws, Roy Scheider plays a beleaguered police chief who must protect the public from a rare shark attack at a local beach. With marine biologist Richard Dreyfuss and shark hunter Robert Shaw, Scheider tries desperately to stop the deadly predator before it can kill too many more.

This creature feature gives audiences an abject fear of sharks, their terrifying, stealthy viciousness on full display in what is one of the best horror films ever made. Aided immeasurably by John Williams’ ominous minimal score, Spielberg keeps tension ratcheted to its maximum for much of the film’s length, scaring audiences even these nearly 50 years later. Strong performances help lend the story credibility, but Peter Benchley’s adaptation of his own novel gives just as much support to film that managed to tap into audience fears like few films before it.

No original review available.

Jurassic Park (1993)

Spielberg is to science fiction as Hitchcock was to suspense. His masterful approach to weaving fantastical tales with varying degrees of scientific literacy into his pictures is unparalleled. Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. The Extra-Terrrestrial were his earliest examples, but Jurassic Park was one of his mid-career pinnacles as well. Based on Michael Crichton’s popular novel, and adapted by Crichton and David Koepp, the film positions its narrative on a remote island where rich industrialist John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) has brought together great scientific minds to create a unique experience by bringing dinosaurs back to life.

He brings in noted paleontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill), paleobotanist Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), and chaotician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) to his park to show them what he’s been working on. When things go awry as they are often expected to do in such films, the quartet, Hammond’s two grandchildren, and a handful of other figures become terrorized by the frightening inhabitants of the island, namely the king of the dinosaurs, tyrannosaurus rex, and deadly predator velociraptors. Igniting the imaginations of young children and doing for paleontologists what he did for archaeologists with Raiders of the Lost Ark, Spielberg’s film is thrilling, frightening, and an overall great experience. Williams once again lends his insane talents to defining the musical landscape of the film.

My Original Review

Mimic (1997)

Perhaps the oddest film on my final list, Mimic might not seem to be a creature feature on the surface. Twenty years before he would become an Oscar winner, Guillermo del Toro was quietly establishing himself as the pre-eminent genre filmmaker of his generation. This film was del Toro’s first English-language film and while it pales significantly in comparison to his later triumphs Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water (for which he won his two Oscars), it is nevertheless a chilling experience to watch.

Mira Sorvino, hot off her Oscar win for Mighty Aphrodite, stars as an entomoligist brought in by the CDC to investigate a strange disease spreading through Manhattan’s child population being spread by cockroaches. In attempting to resolve the situation, she engineers a predator that can eradicate the roach population, but inadvertently creates a super predator in the process with enhanced reproductive abilities. These insects have begun preying on the human population as a food source rather than as a simple disease carrier and Sorvino and her associates must work against the clock to stop it spreading. Most people have an innate dislike of most types of bugs, especially cockroaches. This film will not only give them a terrible fright, but it might convince a few less squeamish people to change their minds about crawling insects of all types.

No original review available.