EDITOR’S NOTE: The Beasts Are On the Streets was on the CBS Late Movie on February 22, 1984 and March 8, 1985.

Peter R. Hunt is best known for his work on the James Bond movies, editing many of the early movies and directing one of my favorites, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

He also directed this Hanna-Barbera Production, written by Laurence Heath and Frederick Louis Fox, in which a tanker truck smashes into the fence of a Texas wildlife preserve, unleashing all of nature’s fury into the city, including bears, bison, zebras, rhinos, tigers, camels, antelopes, ostriches, elephants, lions and bears. Only Dr. Claire McCauley (Carol Lynley, Elevator) can save the day.

The strangeness of this movie comes from the fact that it uses the Hanna-Barbera audio library, so every sound effect for real happenings has the audio of a cartoon and what we know of cartoons, you know? It’s disconcerting.

A pre-Miami Vice Philip Michael Thomas is here, as is Bill Thurman, who is in several Larry Buchanan movies. He’s the pill-loving trucker who gets the movie in this mess.

Don’t expect Roar or Wild Beasts, but still, maybe you can ethically enjoy this film more, even if it doesn’t have some of the lunatic thrill of those other two animals gone wild films.