Top 10 Scary Horror Movie Pets!

Pets are cute. Until they’re not. No bullshite, have you ever had an unruly pet from hell? One you immediately regretted getting mere minutes after opening your doors and letting the little guy or gal run roughshod over your house. I once had a kitten we called “Pooh-butt” for his inability to control its own bowels. Yeah, what a f*cking mess!

But that’s not the literal kind of shite we’re talking about. Unh unh. It’s PET SEMATARY week around here, so we’re diving into the graveyard to dig up some species with a bit more bite. Word is even Stephen King prefers the 2019 iteration of his bestselling novel to Mary Lambert’s 1989 original, so it only seems right we honor the flick with some anticipatory inspiration. Enough chatter, it’s time to come face to face with our favorite Top 10 Scary Horror Movie Pets!

#10. RABID RABBIT (NIGHT OF THE LEPUS)

If Lepus is Latin for hare, then indeed, NIGHT OF THE LEPUS (1972) is American for arguably the most risibly asinine horror “comedy” since Ed Wood was rocking pink Cashmere. Holy f*ck. Shot with normal sized rabbits on miniature sets, the D-grade giant-killer-bunny flick from director William F. Claxton gets going after a little girl name Amanda takes a shine to one of the experimental, hormonally-injected widdle wabbits and coyly replaces it with one from the control group. Bad move. In fact, bad movie, but any halfway committed already knows that, as well as what good fun the flick is with a sixer and a spliff. As silly as it is, the image of a gore-sodden rabbit-face is good enough to get this f*cking bash underway.

#9. RAMON (ALLIGATOR) 

Not for nothing, but Lewis Teague is kind of the unsung hero of the entire freaky-pet subgenre (stay tuned), as not only seen in CAT’S EYE, but the severe subterranean sleeper ALLIGATOR (1980) as well. Written by the great John Sayles, ALLIGATOR picks up when young Marisa decides to buy a baby alligator in Florida (natch) and take it back home to Chicago as a household pet. Marisa names the gator Ramon before her parents flusher the f*cker down the john. 12 years later and the gator is an indiscriminate killing machine skulking in the underground sewer-ways. Shite’s hectic! I love how Melissa grows up to be the one zoological expert who can save the city from the very reptilian terror she was responsible for unleashing in the first place.

#8. IRENA GALLIER (CAT PEOPLE) 

We’ve often noted the sheer sexiness and wildly taboo subject matter of Paul Schrader’s 1982 CAT PEOPLE redo, and with good reason, it’s one of the undoubtedly better and balefully bolder horror remakes we’ve ever been privileged enough to see. One of the main reasons is Nastasja Kinski, who not only pulsates as the purring plaything to her brother Paul’s (John Heard) overprotective owner of sorts, she also happens to transmute into a were-black-panther and predatorily prey on any piece of flesh she can find. Here’s the kicker. She only transforms when rolling in the sack with anyone who isn’t Paul! Freaky f*cking family, those Galliers. Literally. Must be French! Seriously though, imagine walking into your bedroom to find this big sumbitch growling at you!

#7. CHURCH (PET SEMATARY)

Honestly, as a kid, I always found the cat being named Church to be as frightening as almost anything in the film. It wouldn’t be until much later, after reading the book, that I realized the name is short for Winston Churchill. I can’t tell what’s worse, that or naming a boy Gage. Whatever, point is, Church went from a silver shorthaired British tabby in ’89 to a dead-ringer for my own current cat, a longhaired Maine Coon. So yeah, color me double freaked the f*ck out! You know what’s up. Church is what springboards the action of King’s classic horror tale, in which Louis Creed buries his dead cat after its run over in the busy road. That first scene when Lou spots Church again in the garage is a legitimate hair-raising moment that first time you see it!

#6. BEN & SOCRATES (WILLARD)

“Ben, I was good to you!” While Crispin Glover is an ever-eerie specimen in his own right, never freakishly playing to his offbeat persona than in WILLARD (2003), we do want to remind the younger crowd that WILLARD is a remake, and that Bruce Davison is just as oddly compelling in the 1971 original version. A young outcast with a penchant for pet rats is told by his mother to dispatch his collection of vermin, but when he tries to drown them in a backyard pit, his sympathies simply won’t allow it. Instead, he curates the rats, names his favorite ones Ben and Socrates, then proceeds to telepathically mandate the rats to commit harrowing acts of terror. When Willard snaps in the end, he betrays Ben and squares off with the vicious varmint!

#5. LOVEBIRDS (THE BIRDS) 

Let’s be clear off grip. The pets in Hitchcock’s aviary nightmare THE BIRDS aren’t of the deadly variety we know the movie for. However, the lovebirds that Melanie (Tippi Hedren) purchases and brings to the Bodega Bay cottage are directly responsible for bringing said ferocious fliers to the crime-scene. So for that, while still a bit low on the list for a Hitchcock flick, this one’s for THE BIRDS! What will always strike me about the flick, perhaps even more than the truly horrific scenes, is how purportedly abused star Tippi Hedren was during the production, often at the calculating behest of jilted Hitch himself. But Hedren must love animals so much that she would go on to star in another flick on our list, one that ranks high as a quasi-documentary horror-show!

#4. CUJO (CUJO) 

Strike this as one a sweeping nod to all the killer pooch movies – MAN’S BEST FRIEND, HELLHOUND, DOGS, THE PACK, THE OMEN, you name it. But when all is tallied, you know the mighty King is bound to reign supreme. Indeed, King’s CUJO still holds serve as the preeminent killer-canine-pet picture, namely in the way it makes us feel just as badly for CUJO (1983) – just as you would a real pet with no real agency to avert its deadly instinct – as we do for poor Dee Wallace in her busted-ass Pinto. Of course, there’s nothing like seeing a paunchy St. Bernard slavering gruesome drool from its menacing maw, chasing kids down like inspired the Beast from the goddamn SANDLOT. The real King though? Director Lewis Teague, notching his second entry on this here litany. Well done, Lew!

#3. ELLA (MONKEY SHINES) 

Yo, we recently put George A. Romero’s MONKEY SHINES (1988) up against the Test of Time, and not only does the film hold serve, f*cking hell, Ella is still one jarring little jackanapes! It’s one thing to see a psychotic simian swinging a scalpel or injecting humans with hypodermic needles, it’s quite another to actually foster a genuine sense of adoration for the ferocious beast. And one that reciprocates the love just as much to Allan (Jason Beghe) early in the film! That tiny cute bastard wins hearts in the first act, only to damn near cut them out and eat them raw by the third. The way Romero was able to get Boo, a real Capuchin monkey, to give such a convincing turn really lends credence to the adage that “even a monkey could do it!”

#2. MOGWAIS (GREMLINS) 

Yeah yeah yeah. F*ck the water. F*ck midnight. And damn sure f*ck the no food rule. GREMLINS (1984) is at its best not because of the cuddly doe-eyed Gizmo, hell no, it’s all about the evil incarnation of the Mogwai (Cantonese for “Devil”) – Gizmo’s vile and vociferous brethren – that really puts the capitol G in GREMLINS. Call Billy boy the culprit if you want, after-all it was his idea to show Gizmo to his dumb buddy Pete, who in turn spilled water on the cute little sumbitch until a fivefold hell-spawn came trundling out. By the way, which is your favorite Gremlin? Tough not to like Stripe, but I always kind of gravitated toward that beer swilling madman in the barroom. That fool can party!

#1. WILD LIONS (ROAR) 

Speaking of foolish, it’s either that or nothing more than impassioned bravery that the stars and filmmakers showed on the 1981 docu-horror, holy-f*cking-you-won’t-believe-it-till-you-see-it insanity known as ROAR (1981). My lord. Noel Marshall’s story of a family traveling to Africa to live with wild lions is a damn autobiography, with stars Tippi Hedren, a real animal rights hero, and young daughter Melanie Griffith put into real danger when commingling with untrained felines onscreen. I mean, the image you’re looking at is quite possible the from the same day Griffith was so brutally mauled by a lion that she required 50 stitches and major plastic surgery to save one of her eyeballs. While that shot luckily did not make it into the final film, one of her hair being grabbed by lion did. As for the pet angle, despite the horrific attack, Hedren and Griffith kept many of the lions from production in their California sanctuary.