Brute Force

Dominic Lennard

Description

It's always been a wild world, with humans telling stories of killer animals as soon as they could tell stories at all. Movies are an especially popular vehicle for our fascination with fierce creatures. In Brute Force, Dominic Lennard takes a close look at a range of cinematic animal attackers, including killer gorillas, sharks, snakes, bears, wolves, spiders, and even a few dinosaurs. Lennard argues that animal horror is not so much a focused genre as it is an impulse, tapping into age-old fears of becoming prey. At the same time, these films expose conflicts and uncertainties in our current relationship with animals. Movies considered include King Kong, Jaws, The Grey, Them!, Arachnophobia, Jurassic Park, Snakes on a Plane, An American Werewolf in London, and many more. Drawing on insights from film studies, art history, cognitive science, and evolutionary psychology, Brute Force is an engaging critical exploration—and appreciation—of cinema's many bad beasts.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Welcome (Back) to the Jungle

1. Going Ape: King Kong

2. Out of Our Depth: Surviving Marine Monsters

3. Man versus Wild: Bears, Wolves, and the Men Who Fight Them

4. Creepy Crawlies: Intelligent Ants, Sickening Spiders, and Other Ill-intentioned Invertebrates

5. Mad Science Makes for Cranky Creatures

6. In Their Sights: The Gaze of the Predator

7. Snakes Alive

8. Bad Dog! The Rogue Hounds of Horror

9. Beast Mode: Becoming the Wolf Man

Aftermath

Notes
Works Cited
Index

Sujets

• Film
• Cinema
• History of film
• Visual culture
• Popular culture
• Película fotográfica

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 novembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438476629
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 11 Mo

Extrait

Brute Force

Brute Force
Animal Horror Movies

Dominic Lennard
Cover image: David Naughton (as David Kessler) in An American Werewolf in London (1981), directed by John Landis. Credit: Universal Pictures/Photofest.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2019 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lennard, Dominic, author.
Title: Brute force : animal horror movies / Dominic Lennard.
Description: Albany : State University of New York, [2019] | Series: SUNY series horizons of cinema | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018056834 | ISBN 9781438476612 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438476629 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Horror films—History and criticism. | Animals in motion pictures.
Classification: LCC PN1995.9.H6 L3853 2019 | DDC 791.43/6164—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018056834
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my mother and father
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Welcome (Back) to the Jungle
1 Going Ape: King Kong
2 Out of Our Depth: Surviving Marine Monsters
3 Man versus Wild: Bears, Wolves, and the Men Who Fight Them
4 Creepy Crawlies: Intelligent Ants, Sickening Spiders, and Other Ill-intentioned Invertebrates
5 Mad Science Makes for Cranky Creatures
6 In Their Sights: The Gaze of the Predator
7 Snakes Alive
8 Bad Dog! The Rogue Hounds of Horror
9 Beast Mode: Becoming the Wolf Man
Aftermath
Notes
Works Cited
Index
Illustrations Figure I.1 Saber-tooth cat ( Smilodon fatalis ) skull cast with jaws open. These impressive predators were a fearsome hazard of the Pleistocene environment in North and South America. Other species of saber-tooth roamed Europe, Africa, Eurasia, and Indonesia. Figure I.2 Famous cinematic snake-hater Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) faces a cobra in Raiders of the Lost Ark . We are predisposed to fear snakes because of the threat they posed to our prehuman ancestors. Figure I.3 Tim (Joseph Mazzello), hiding behind a log, is fascinated by the sight of the Tyrannosaurus devouring its prey in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park . The impulse to observe one’s predators is reflected elsewhere in the animal kingdom. Figure I.4 Hercules and Iolaus slaying the Hydra (1545), engraving by Sebald Beham. As well as its reptilian frame and multiple snake-necks, the hydra is depicted here with wolfish heads. Mythological traditions are filled with monsters that resemble, or combine features of, animals that would have presented real threats in our species’ own natural history. Figure 1.1 Gorille enlevant une femme by Emmanuel Frémiet. Figure 1.2 A gorilla ominously approaches a bound beauty in The Sign of the Cross . Figure 1.3 The captured king: the mighty Kong manacled for public amusement in King Kong (1933). Figure 1.4 While acknowledging her beauty, Jack Driscoll (Bruce Cabot) is nevertheless initially unfriendly toward his lovely female shipmate, Ann (Fay Wray) in King Kong , wary that she’ll generate intrasexual male rivalry. It won’t be on the ship, but Jack will find a rival, all right. Figure 1.5 The weary Kong, riddled with bullets, seconds before falling from his great height in a fate that also symbolizes his romantic rejection, in King Kong . Figure 1.6 The beautiful and flirtatious Dwan (Jessica Lange) quickly becomes the center of attention upon awakening in King Kong (2005). Figure 1.7 “You know how much an associate professor earns?” Despite the romantic setting, Jack (Jeff Bridges) begins to count himself out as a competitive mate for the high-maintenance starlet Dwan in King Kong . Figure 1.8 Kong faces off against a Tyrannosaurus in Ann’s (Naomi Watts’s) defense, in Peter Jackson’s King Kong . Figure 1.9 Tough guy, soft heart: Ann (Naomi Watts) approaches Kong, gazing contemplatively over Skull Island at sunset, in King Kong . Figure. 2.1 Mistaking the ocean for a domain of spirited leisure, Chrissie (Susan Backlinie) becomes herself the plaything of the predator in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws . Figure 2.2 Already psychologically consumed by his own animal aggression, Quint (Robert Shaw) is now literally consumed by the animal in Jaws . Figure 2.3 A fatal attraction: the shark sails in to cause tourist terror in the SeaWorld lagoon in Jaws 3-D . Figure 2.4 Facing judgment: Captain Nolan (Richard Harris) sails out to confront his nonhuman nemesis in Michael Anderson’s Orca . Figure 2.5 Susan (Blanchard Ryan) sorrowfully releases her dead lover, Daniel (Daniel Thomas), shortly before she too slips permanently under in Open Water . Figure 2.6 Deli section: tidal wave survivors take refuge on the tops of shelves and refrigerators as a great white shark patrols the flooded supermarket in Kimble Rendall’s Bait 3D . Figure 2.7 A shark is lobbed through a California billboard in Anthony C. Ferrante’s cult hit Sharknado . Figure 2.8 Her surroundings seem tranquil, but journalist Sue Charlton (Linda Kozlowski) is poised to be prey for a saltwater croc as she refills her canteen from a pond in Crocodile Dundee . Figure 2.9 Having gobbled a few of them by now, a giant African crocodile eyes off another appetizing teenage morsel (Caitlin Martin) in Tobe Hooper’s Crocodile . Figure 2.10 In Greg McLean’s Rogue , a boat full of tourists cruises down a scenic waterway in the Kakadu region of Australia’s Northern Territory before the wildlife makes the excursion a lot less agreeable. Figure 2.11 “This is the island of the pregnant woman, no?” Nancy (Blake Lively) gestures to the formations beyond the water, in which she sees her mother symbolized, in The Shallows . Figure 2.12 Trapped on a small rock after a shark attacks her, Nancy inspects her wound as a similarly stricken seagull looks on, in The Shallows . Figure 2.13 Washed up on the shore and lucky to be alive, Nancy again looks to the mountains that remind her of her mother, having embraced her fighting example in The Shallows . Figure 3.1 Both jaws and claws: the colossal carnivore of Grizzly closes in on its prey. Figure 3.2 Jenson (Leslie Nielsen) grows increasingly bestial as he intimidates a young camper, Bob (Andrew Stevens), in Day of the Animals . Figure 3.3 Eager to impress, the clean-cut engineer John Patterson (Val Kilmer) has little sense of the chaos that awaits in Africa in Stephen Hopkins’s The Ghost and the Darkness . Figure 3.4 “They are not lions—they are the ghost and the darkness”: The twin man-eating terrors of the East African village of Tsavo in The Ghost and the Darkness . Figure 3.5 The wild touch: Charles Remington (Michael Douglas) drinks the blood of a bull during a Masaai tribal ritual in The Ghost and the Darkness . Figure 3.6 “So, how are you planning to kill me?”: aging billionaire Charles Morse (Anthony Hopkins) calls Bob Green’s (Alec Baldwin’s) jealousy likes he sees it, moments before their plane crashes, plunging them into the wilderness, in The Edge . Figure 3.7 John Ottway (Liam Neeson) tries to formulate a plan to escape certain death after a drilling crew’s plane crashes in the Alaskan wilderness in Joe Carnahan’s The Grey . Figure 3.8 Man versus Wild: the alpha wolf, black as the death it brings, scatters its subordinates to face John Ottway alone in The Grey . Figure 3.9 John Ottway of The Grey remembers himself as a child (Jonathan Bitonti), his perspective now aligned with that of his defiant father (James Bitonti): “Once more into the fray.” Figure 4.1 Dainty nightclub singer Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw) squeals in disgust under a virtual ecosystem of insects in Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom . Figure 4.2 Disease-threat: a spider emerges from the mouth of its infected host in Spiders . Figure 4.3 An oversized flesh-eating ant makes a sensational first appearance in Them! Figure 4.4 The chemically enhanced arachnid lumbers downtown in Jack Arnold’s Tarantula . Figure 4.5 Poor Carey (Grant Williams), dwarfed by the domestic in Jack Arnold’s The Incredible Shrinking Man . Figure 4.6 Carey battles the spider in The Incredible Shrinking Man . Figure 4.7 An ant has arranged its dead in Saul Bass’s Phase IV . Figure 4.8 No room of one’s own: with the door closed against them, the spiders begin trickling under it in Frank Marshall’s Arachnophobia . Figure 4.9 A spider slides down the soapy clean skin of teenage girl after it leaps on her in the shower in Arachnophobia . Figure 4.10 Primal fear: the spider begins creeping up the leg of the arachnophobe Ross Jennings (Jeff Daniels), repeating his childhood trauma, in Arachnophobia . Figure. 4.11 Sex pest: a spider backs the near-naked Ashley (Scarlett Johansson) against a wall and sprays her with web in Eight Legged Freaks . Figure. 4.12 “Right there”: Peter (Michael Shannon) tries to show Agnes (Ashley Judd) a nonexistent human-biting bug in William Friedkin’s Bug . Figure 5.1 Ready to bite the Big Apple: the Rhedosaurus clambers out of the Hudson River in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms . Figure 5.2 The eponymous amphibian giant of the original Godzilla , disturbed from his marine seclusion by thermonuclear bomb tests. Figure 5.3 Professor Deemer (Leo G. Carroll) inspects the oversized arachnid he has created in his lab in Jack Arnold’s Tarantula . Soon it will