Day of the Nielsen

If we continue to damage the ozone layer, the following will happen:

That’s right. Leslie Nielson will shirtlessly hug a bear and rats will be thrown at your face.

In other words, rev up your camping gear kiddos! It’s time to experience Day of the Animals.

Quick Plot: A touristy hike through the mountains gets moving, filled with an assorted group of white people and one Native American. Though the landscape is lovely, the paying customers get a trip that wasn’t on the brochure when some chemical imbalances cause the region’s wildlife to gang up and declare open season on all humans.

Boy do I love animalsploitation. Socially relevant AND adorable. Day of the Animals takes a cue from Frogs and knows that a good killer wilderness film is a diverse killer wilderness film, and thusly do we get a nice assortment of killer rodents, mountain lions, wolves, dogs, rats, and birds...so very many birds.

But really, let’s address the main reason Day of the Animals still gets talked about in film and teenage girl circles: shirtless Leslie Nielsen wrestles a bear. He also attempts rape and acts like the most raging “hate this guy” character I may have ever seen onscreen, but because it’s Frank Drebin, that is completely okay. Watching him insult and literally throw annoying children down mountains is a plus, plain and simple.

His ghost can babysit my phantom children any day.


There’s actually a surprisingly amount of poor child-rearing, which makes for (again) an inappropriately enjoyable little film. A subplot involves a little Them!-like girl who shuffles through the wilderness and ghost town with a man who has just about no idea how to treat a kid. Nielsen refers to his bratty companion as a “little cockroach” on multiple occasions. For whatever reason, these things made me quite happy.

High Points

Day of the Animals introduces a pretty large group of victims, but it does a surprisingly good job of making each character memorable enough to care of at least acknowledge their deaths. We don’t necessarily know all their names, but we know exactly who they are, even when they’re stuck under a pack of wolves

Lynda Day George’s Terry isn’t the beacon of feminism, but it’s nice to see a woman helping out to beat off a band of angry mountain lions

Low Points

...only to spend the next major attack scene standing in a corner with her hands over her face, then wining about how she can’t swim when survival moves down to the river

It’s a shame that the sound quality is so awful as to muffle much of the dialogue. It’s a bigger shame that the DVD inexplicably is sans subtitles

Lessons Learned

When the going gets tough, the tough order pineapple pie with ice cream on top

An ideal solution to disciplining children is to threaten to scalp them

Rats are adorable, even when being thrown at your face

The Winning Line

“I use my head all the time. A lot of people use their butts.”

I know he’s dead, but I’m just saying: Leslie Nielsen can use his butt on me whenever he feels like it

Rent/Bury/Buy

I own my copy of Day of the Animals (it shares a three-room box with Grizzly and Devil Dog) and without question, I’ll put it on as background noise sometime in the future. It’s an enjoyable and goofy lil ‘70s treasure filled with about zero scares but high camp, though in fairness, it’s also a whole lot more competent than some of its dreadfully awesome peers (Frogs and Food of the Gods come to mind). Leslie Nielsen fans owe it to themselves to see him play the baddie, plus, did I mention he wrestles a bear?