April 19: Animals Attack! — Animals gone wild and killing people.

Robert Lee Collins created Police Woman and was going to be the director of Star Trek: Phase II before Paramount chose to make a movie instead of a new Star Trek series. He directed this movie, which was written by Ralph Helfer (the creator of the Marine World/Africa USA theme park), Ken Noyle and Robert Blees (Curse of the Black Widow, Frogs).

Made the same year as Roar, this is the same story but no one was insane enough here to allow animals to get as close as they did in that movie. Helfer also acted as the animal trainer.

The movie starts with this…”For many years, Africa, the world’s hungriest continent, has been plagued by drought. A vast body of land encompassing twelve countries exceeding in size all of Western Europe, has been devastated. Ancient tribes have been forced to leave their villages to seek work in the cities. Those who remain poach starving game herds. Hungry predators seek food in any form. Not even humans in remote areas are safe from the predators… The motion picture you are about to see is based upon actual events.” And ends with this…”This story was based upon actual events. During the past 5 years of drought 742 attacks upon humans have resulted in over four hundred deaths… and the drought continues.”

That means that this movie is torn from the headlines.

Maggie (Michelle Phillips) and her family live in Kenya and a pride of lions has surrounded their home. Luckily, they have a man named Casey (Tom Skerrit) staying with them and perhaps that will be enough.

There are some scenes that make this worth watching. One has the entire family having a sing-a-long — keep in mind one of the kids just watched a lion maul a housekeeper to the point that you can see meat coming out of the mannequin and this is a PG rated movie — while a lion sneaks in and eats another staff member. There’s also a lion that somehow gets in the chimney and just comes on into the living room to start attacking children.

This is a total vanity project for Helfer, as his daughter Tana plays one of the kids, Kristie. Anothe character, Wendy, is played by Anne-Marie Martin, who was Clea in the TV Dr. Strange, Kim in The Shape of Things to Come, Wendy Richards in Prom Night, Jessica in The Boogens and Darcy Essmont in Halloween II (nurse Karen’s friend who reminds her she promised to give her a ride home). She was also Dori Doreau on Sledge Hammer! and would later marry Michael Crichton, who she met on the set of Runaway. Later, they would write Twister.

You can watch this on YouTube.