MANEATERS ARE LOOSE

US, 1978, 100 minutes, Colour.
Tom Skerritt, Steve Forrest, G.D. Spradlin, Diana Muldaur, Harry Morgan, Dabney Coleman.
Directed by Timothy Galfas.

A conventional disaster telemovie, focusing on a small town with its conflicts of morals and authority and highlighting the havoc that two escaped man-eating tigers have on the society. Needless to say, the hero policeman brings things to a satisfactory head and he is helped by the tiger expert who emerges from the town. This kind of material is always popular entertainment and received some emphasis with the disaster and animal menace trend of the seventies.

1. The impact of disaster films and audience enjoyment of them? excitement, animal menace, threat and danger? The impact and tone of the title? As part of the seventies' animal menace trend?

2. Qualities as a telemovie, sustaining interest and excitement for the home audience? Colour photography, the atmosphere of the small town, the editing for menace and excitement, violence and attack? The score ? and the plagiarism of the score from 'Jaws'?

3. Audiences identifying with the town and the people in it? The plausibility of the characters, the way of life in the town, the issues in the town? The plausibility of the suicide and the escape of the tigers?

4. The film's spending so much time in the portrait of the town? the prim people, the corrupt people, the police and the authority conflicts, Gosford and his being in the town and trying to work in with the police? The group with the peddling of pornography? The runaway girl and her ambitions? The expert on tigers being in the town as well as the owner and his suicide?

5. The film's using the regular expectations of good and evil, right and wrong, retribution for immoral behaviour, honesty issues, death?

6. Gosford as hero? home life, relationship with his wife, clash with the head of the police, his capacity for work, his investigations of the deaths, interrogations? His friendship with Burke? The defiance of the tigers, his being hurt? His liberating himself from his fears of authority, regaining his self-respect?

7. The introduction of the character of Burke, his presence in the town, his sensing the presence of the tigers, his advice, his tracking them down?

8. The presentation of the police, especially the Chief and his using his authority, the various officers and their work?

9. The people at the bank, the prim wife, the accountant and his going out with the girl, his death, the fear of the girl and her running away?

10. The Deacon and his self-righteousness, his arrogance towards his wife, towards the girl, his fear when she ran away and took the money, the irony of his pornography racket? His wife's final scorn?

11. The introduction of the runaway girl, her ambitions, clashes with her boy friend, her running away, her being rescued and the cause of the tiger attack?

12. The plausibility of the suicide and his letting the tigers go?

13. The visuals of the tigers, their attacks, the musical score, their deaths?

14. The media themes, the editor and his being in the small town, under pressure, finding out the truth, publishing it and defying authority?

15. The bush fires as a complication?

16. The appropriateness of the ending and the various threads being resolved? The Sunday night telemovie issues and their treatment?