Just as Final Destination 2 would 25 years later, the Hanna-Barbera production The Beasts Are on the Streets begins on the highway, introducing us to various passengers in a handful of vehicles in such a way that you know a very bad wreck is about to be in effect. Sure enough, in a fit of road rage, two rednecks in a truck cause a tanker driver off the asphalt and into the fence of a safari park, immediately flooding Highway 417 with zebras, ostriches, bison, camels, bears, panthers and elephants, as if they were all waiting patiently by one particular section of gate to be taken down.
The deadlier animals try to get into cars to retrieve the human snacks inside. One dumb guy, ignoring all advice to the contrary, leaves the safety of his automobile, only to practically be raped by a tiger for doing so. But what about the zoo’s star attraction, the king of the jungle? As a particularly awful TV news personality reports live from the scene, “There’s no word on that famous lover lion, Renaldo.” Suspense!
For this disaster-minded take on the Ivan Tors family comedy Zebra in the Kitchen, one-time 007 director Peter Hunt (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) follows the efforts of park employees — played notably by disaster-pic staple Carol Lynley (Flood), fresh from pulling a baby camel from its mother’s vagina, and a pre-Miami Vice Philip Michael Thomas — to round up God’s creatures great and small from all over town, and return them unharmed to caged living. Running amok as nature intended, the poor things just wanted to get turnt — instead, they get tranq’d.
Pre-PETA, Beasts’ wild and wooly treatment of its four-legged cast members only adds to its watchability (a dune buggy careening downhill comesthisclose to mowing down a rhino). Don’t think the two-legged actors got off easy, either; the movie seems to radiate the kind of questionable crowd safety (in particular, watch for the toddler who is yanked up by his arm in a throng of panicked picnickers) filmmakers couldn’t get away with today — not that the networks make this kind of ready-for-prime-time schlock anymore. —Rod Lott