Many a horror fan in their 30s was more than likely brought up on a steady diet of the wonderful subgenre Made for TV Movies of the 70s. Sadly, a good portion of those pictures became little more than disjointed memories in our adolescent minds. However, being the extremely obsessive person I am has prompted a life long search for as many of the titles I can recall as possible.

Thanks to Wild Eye DVD, the search won’t be so difficult now. Dedicated to releasing some of the more obscure titles from the past, Wild Eye  recently unleashed a couple of TV Movies dedicated to another favorite subgenre – Animals Gone Amok. The end of 2006 marked the release of Shark Kill and Maneaters are Loose on DVD to the great pleasure of those who had spent endless hours on Ebay just hoping to find a bootleg copy.

Maneaters are Loose is a fun, if not very scary, thriller about two cuddly lions set loose in a small town. What turns out to be one animal attack catapults the town into a chaos of uncovered secrets. Tom Skerritt stays exquisitely befuddled by the whole mess, but it is Henry Morgan’s wicked turn as the rapist preacher that really stood out. Obviously fans of TV Movies are well aware of the lack of gore quotient, but the list of character actors rivals even the best episodes of Love Boat!

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Wild Eye  really outdid themselves with the release of the ultra rare Shark Kill starring Richard Yniguez and Phillip Clark as two wildly disparate men forced to protect each other when they end up lost at sea. There is an interesting resemblance to Open Water here and a few twists I wasn’t expecting. It’s a grand old look back to a time when movies liked to take their time unfolding. We call that a slow burn, kiddos. And there’s a pretty good fist fight too!

Wild Eye DVD isn’t stopping there either. Halloween of 2007 will bring the release of such underrated and obscure gems as Crawlspace and The Devil’s Daughter! They are also planning to release some other non-TV features from the independent and underground realm. With such an auspicious start, can one deny them?