In Rampage, Dwayne Johnson is just your average primatologist/body builder with a gorilla for a best friend, one who turns into the size of a skyscraper after a bizarre unauthorized experiment. This simple story of man-meets-mutated-primate inspires this week’s of 23 movie animal experiments that have gone wrong!
Them! (1954, 100%)
Nuclear tests in the New Mexican desert irradiate the local ant population, which then runs amok and attacks the now-puny humans.
The Island of Lost Souls (1933, 96%)
H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau is going to appear in this gallery a few times, natch. The first adaptation starred Charles Laughton as the good doctor, and the film remains notable for its overwhelmingly grim atmosphere and scenes of vivisection.
The Fly (1958, 95%)
“Waiter, there’s a fly in my molecular transporter!” An innocent inquiry into metaphysics goes awry when a common fly enters an in-progress scientific apparatus and splices its DNA with a scientist’s.
Jurassic Park (1993, 92%)
Think there isn’t a price to pay in bringing dinosaurs back from the dead? Life finds a way…
The Fly (1986, 91%)
Jeff Goldblum sings the body horror with flesh slicer David Cronenberg in this update of the 1958 movie that’s just a scant four percentage points off on the Tomatometer.
28 Days Later (2003, 86%) 28 Days Later may have introduced fast zombies to the popular culture at large, but don’t forget that it was monkeys that were experimented on (and released by protesters) that spread the virus in the first place.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011, 81%)
The race to find the cure for Alzheimer’s results in monkeying around with vengeful, super-smart chimps.
Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams (2002, 75%)
What can you find on the Island of Lost Dreams? Shrunken zoo animals who have all taken a dip in the enlargement pool, creating a new set of angry, mutated bigly fauna.
Splice (2010, 74%)
Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley play romantically-involved scientists who use their DNA along with some animals’ to create a fast-evolving human hybrid, with kinky results.
Jurassic World (2015, 71%)
B.D. Wong doesn’t make a right; the actor reprises his role as a dino embryo scientist from Jurassic Park, though his character has now taken a much more sinister turn.
Black Sheep (2006, 71%)
Peter Jackson’s Weta provides the effects for this blaaaack comedy, about livestock that go on a man-eating rampage after some secret genetic engineering.
Mimic (1997, 61%)
Two scientists breed a new type of insect to deal with New York’s cockroach problem, but the living solution presents a new set of issues when they evolve into a Guillermo del Toro movie.
The Plague Dogs (1983, 60%)
Two dogs infected with the plague by humans break free from their laboratory and go on the run.
Deep Blue Sea (1999, 56%)
Like in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the search for a cure for Alzheimer’s goes awry once more.
The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977, 47%)
The second adaptation of the H.G. Wells story, but the first to use the original’s title.
The Wasp Woman (1959, 45%)
Cosmetics scientists have learned the secret to de-age a person’s appearance by decades in a weekend: royal jelly. It just happens to also slowly transform the subject into a murderous wasp person…
Kingdom of the Spiders (1977, 44%)
Pesticides (and William Shatner) are forcing all the spiders in Verde Valley, Arizona to band together and kill all humans!
The Day of the Dolphin (1973, 43%)
In this rather unlikely tale from director Mike Nichols, dolphins are trained in secret to murder the President of the United States.
The Kindred (1987, 40%)
John’s mother is a scientist who, upon her deathbed, reveals that she created a hideous son in the lab. Now it’s up to John to gather and hide the evidence…
The Ape (1940, 40%)
Dr. Boris Karloff’s research for a polio cure is destroyed by a loose ape, so naturally Karloff wears the ape’s skin to begin a killing spree.
The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996, 24%)
Leave the story alone, folks: This was one of the most troubled productions in movie history, including budget and time overruns, bad weather, multiple personnel firings, and ego clashes.
Food of the Gods (1976, 24%)
H.G. Wells strikes again! In the novel, man develops new sustenance that accelerates human growth, though the movie uses the ‘mother nature strikes back’ pretext that was seen in other sci-fi horror movies at the time, like It’s Alive and Prophecy.
Carnosaur (1993, 11%)
Before Jurassic Park. Before Theodore Rex. There was… this thing!
