12 Deadly Animal Movies That Used Real Animals

These deadly animal attack movies went for authenticity — often with terrifying results. But sometimes they just looked fun and silly.

Snakes on a Plane (2006)

Snakes on a Plane, an internet sensation before it was even released, is the story of a gang boss who arranges to have dozens of deadly snakes released on a flight over the Pacific to kill a witness before he can testify.

In addition to some convincing CGI, Snakes on a Plane enlisted more than 450 snakes and 30 different species. They generously shared the screen with a fun cast that includes Samuel L. Jackson, Julianna Margulies, Bobby Cannavale and Kenan Thompson.

It's one of the most fun modern-day animal attack movies.

Orca (1977)

The trailer for Orca takes pains to note that orcas are in many ways admirable deadly animals: "In some respects, the orca's intelligence may be even superior to man's," says a cool voiceover. "They remain loyal to one mate for life. As parents, they are exemplary — better than many human beings."

Perhaps the filmmakers grew fond of orcas by working with real ones: Orca used orcas trained at Marineland of the Pacific and Marine World Africa — though it also used some doubles.

Of course, the part about orcas' loyalty to their families was also some excellent foreshadowing: The movie is about an orca who sets out to kill a human (Richard Harris) after that human kills his pregnant mate.

Orca was one of many animal attack movies quickly released after the huge success of 1975's Jaws — and so was the next film on our list.

Grizzly (1976)

Grizzly's absolutely awesome trailer informed theatergoers that the titular deadly animal is "over 18 feet tall, over 2,000 pounds — the largest carnivorous ground beast in the world." The typical grizzly is nowhere near that big, and the Kodiak bear named Teddy who played the grizzly in Grizzly was 11 feet tall.

Teddy was kept at a distance from the cast and crew, and because Teddy was more docile than the bear he played, the crew used food to get him to open his mouth, and roars were added in post production.

The team also used the occasional fake bear claw for closeups.

Night of the Lepus (1972)

If there were a prize for the least-scary deadly animal movie, it would have to go to the sci-fi cult classic Night of the Lepus, about a town besieged by... giant killer rabbits. After a rabbit infestation, scientists make the foolish decision to try to use hormones to slow the breeding of the local population, which only makes the rabbits grow bigger, stronger, and deadlier.

The killer rabbit effect was attained by filming (often very cute and docile) rabbits in front of miniature sets, sometimes with ketchup smeared on their faces to simulate blood. And there were some people in rabbit costumes, too.

The cast was pretty solid, including Star Trek veteran DeForest Kelley and Psycho star Janet Leigh. There was just one problem, as Leigh later explained to Starlog:

"How can you make a bunny rabbit menacing?"

The Night of the Lepus "monsters" have a proud place on our list of Pathetic Horror Movie Villains Who Aren't Really That Scary.

The Edge (1997)

The Edge is a survival-in-the-wild story that features Anthony Hopkins, Alec Baldwin, Harold Perrineau, and one of the biggest animal stars of all: Bart the Bear, who also earned raves for his roles in The Bear, White Fang, and Legends of the Fall.

The nearly 10-foot tall, 1,500 pound star was especially good in The Edge, which Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan called "the capstone of an illustrious career" and "a milestone in ursine acting".

Both Baldwin and Hopkins expressed deep respect for Bart in interviews, noting that his docile personality bore not similarity to the savagery of the deadly animal he portrayed onscreen.

The Edge was one of his final roles before his passing from cancer in 2000 at age 23.

The Ghost and the Darkness (1996)

The Ghost and the Darkness is a fictionalized retelling of a real-life series of lion attacks in 1898 as the British government attempted to build a railway bridge across Kenya’s Tsavo River. The lions became known as the Ghost and the Darkness, which gave the film its haunting title.

The filmmakers used real lions, and sought the tamest ones possible: brothers d Bongo and Caesar, brought in from a zoo in Onatario, Canada, as well as four additional lions brought in from the U.S. and Canada, according to Fiction Machine, which notes that only a single animatronic animal was used.

For obvious reasons, the lions almost never shares the screen with humans, including stars Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas. Shots were digitally combined in post production to make it appear that the men and lions were interacting.

The shoot did not go smoothly, but it wasn't the lions' fault: "We had snake bites, scorpion bites, tick bite fever, people getting hit by lightning, floods, torrential rains and lightning storms, hippos chasing people through the water, cars getting swept into the water, and several deaths of crew members, including two drownings," director Stephen Hopkins later told the Los Angeles Daily News.

The Birds (1963)

Alfred Hitchcock originally wanted to use artificial birds with motorized wings for his story of birds terrorizing a coastal California town, which starred Tippi Hedren, who will soon turn up again on this list.

Despite spending about $200,000 (about $2 million in 2024 dollars) on the birds, only a few of them turned up in the final film, according to this excellent piece by Cinefantastique about the making of The Birds.

Ultimately, about 25,000 birds were used in the filming. "Pound for pound, I think the raven and the cockatoo are the most intelligent beings on earth," bird expert Ray Berwick told Cinefantastique. He and the crew soon learned to be careful around them, he told the magazine.

"We had about 12 or 13 crew members in the hospital in one day from bites and scratches," he said. "The seagulls would deliberately go for your eyes. I got bitten in the eye region at least three times, and Tippi got a pretty nasty gash when one of the birds hit her right above the eye."

Still, you can't argue with the results: The Birds is widely considered one of the best killer animal movies, along with Jaws, which, of course, did not use a real shark.

Roar (1981)

When it was finally released in the United States in 2015 — nearly 40 years after it began its five-year, accident-filled shoot — savvy distribution company Drafthouse Films used the tagline, “No Animals Were Harmed in the Making of This Film. Seventy Cast and Crew Members Were.”

Roar is the story of a family — including Tippi Hedren and real-life daughter Melanie Griffith — stalked by lions and tigers on an African nature preserve. It was supposed to be a comedy. Star Hedren and writer-director-star Noel Marshall — her then-husband — used animals from their own collection of big cats, which they began assembling in response to poaching and other threats to the animals in the wild.

The film eventually led to the creation of Hedren's Roar Foundation and Shambala Preserve, dedicated to the preservation of big cats.

Eight-Legged Freaks (2002)

The first of two films on this list to feature the great Kari Wuhrer (above), Eight-Legged Freaks is a fun, comical homage to B-movie creature features like, well, Night of the Lepus.

It's good! Roger Ebert gave it a thumbs up, noting it "has laughs, thrills, wit and scary monsters," and describing it as "one of those goofy movies like Critters that kids itself and gets away with it."

Directed by Ellory Elkayem, it also features a notably strong cast, including David Arquette (above with Wuhrer), a young Scarlett Johansson. And while it features some fake giant spiders, it also features plenty of real ones, including tarantulas, jumping spiders, spitting spiders, trapdoor spiders, and tiger wolf spiders.

Anaconda (1997)

Things got a lot safer — and considerably less wild — when Hollywood made concessions to safety and PETA and started relying on computer-animated animals instead of real-life ones... mostly.

Anaconda features plenty of CGI, but also plenty of real snakes, including in a scene in which Jennifer Lopez's character comes across a nest of anacondas played by... actual anacondas. (California Herps, our favorite online herpetology guide, has details.

It also stars Jon Voight, Ice Cube, Owen Wilson and, again, the great Kari Wuhrer.

Alligator (1980)

Alligator, about an alligator who mutates into a giant killer animal after being flushed down the toilet as a baby (kids: please don't do this) used a fake alligator designed by the very skilled Richard Helmer, who had previously worked on Jaws.

And according to a 1980 article in Cinefantastique Magazine, "real alligators were filmed on miniature sets or optically enlarged and matted into live-action photography."

Long story short, the alligators in Alligator look good. And director Lewis Teague creates a savage, grindhouse atmosphere with a top-notch cast that inlcudes Robert Forster and Bryan Cranston, who would later reunite on Breaking Bad.

Teague also directed another very scary animal attack film that is coming up next on our list.

Cujo (1983)

Directed by Alligator helmer Lewis Teague, this adaptation of the terrifying Stephen King novel of the same name is the story of a rabid St. Bernard who terrorizes a small suburb, and especially mom Donna (Dee Wallace) and son Tad (Danny Pintauro), who spend much of the film trapped in their Ford Pinto, stalked by Cujo.

The Los Angeles Times reported in 1983 that Cujo was played by four different St. Bernards, various mechanical dogs, and a black Labrador–Great Dane mix... wearing a St. Bernard costume. Also donning a dog costume was stuntman Gary Morgan, as Bloody Disgusting explained in a piece about Lee Gambin’s book Nope, Nothing Wrong Here: The Making of Cujo. (That's Morgan, above, with Wallace and Cujo director Lewis Teague.

Does Cujo pull off its mix of real dogs, a human dressed as a dog, and a dog dressed as a different dog? Doggone yes! Cujo is terrifying, and you never doubt the threat posed by the pet-turned-monster. It's one of the best killer animal movies because it feels so grounded in everyday life.

Liked This List of Deadly Animal Movies That Used Real Animals?

You might also like this list of the Scariest '70s Horror Movies — including the best deadly animal movie of all time, even if it didn't use a real shark.

Main image: David Arquette and Kari Wuhrer in Eight-Legged Freaks. Warner Bros.