The 15 Most Badass Animals In Movies

Anyone who’s ever puffed the magic dragon knows that a person’s first hit of weed is always followed by a hacking cough. Handling the potent herb takes a little bit of practice, unless you’re the dog in Road Trip. The pet’s owner blows a large smoke cloud into its face, yet the four-legged champ hardly winces. Like a true G, it wastes no time demanding snacks and grilling the blunt-holder with glassy eyes and a squinty brow. Snoop Dogg would be proud.

Proving that there’s strength in numbers, the titular hellraisers in Alfred Hitchcock’s horror standard decimate a quaint California town with extreme prejudice. In real life, the worst a seagull could do is drop a deuce on your head or steal your sandwich at the beach. Hitch took it many steps forward, though, adapting a short story by author Daphne Du Maurier into an assaulting siege film, similar to alien invasion flicks but with birds replacing CGI-made E.T.’s. And these gulls are seriously pissed off, leaving a trail of corpses and ultimately winning. In Hitchcock’s world, there is a fate worse than combing seagull shit out of one’s hair.

Early into his stay in the Old West town of Dirt, overachieving chameleon Rango (voiced by Johnny Depp) discovers a graveyard cluttered with tombstones of past “good guys,” foolish types that tried saving the innocent critters of Dirt from its governing set of tyrannical outlaw animals. Most animated characters would’ve hauled ass to the nearest Nickelodeon convention, but not Rango. Having long fancied himself as a swashbuckling hero, the Hawaiian-shirt-wearing chameleon elects himself as Dirt’s sheriff and cleans the town up, one misadventure at a time. He’s like the Clint Eastwood of children's movies.

One of film’s best bromantic adventures doesn’t even star any homosapiens. Narrated by Dudley Moore, The Adventures Of Milo And Otis is a Japanese-made live action kids movie about a rambunctious cat, Milo, and its pug friend, Otis. Milo is a real son of a bitch, constantly getting into confrontations with bears, seagulls, snakes, and a raccoon. If not for Otis keeping tabs on him, Milo would’ve ended up as road pizza, or, even worse, someone’s Chinese food takeout meal. We like to watch this one with Gza’s “I Gotcha Back’ playing in the background; every crew should have a member as loyal and determined to save his partner’s ass as Otis. For his troubles, Otis gets rewarded by the filmmakers with a hot piece of canine ass (in his eyes, not ours, sickos) named Sondra. We just hope he didn’t name Milo as one of his pup’s godfather.

Kid’s movie or not, Babe introduced the world to a truly badass little oinker. Despite his miniscule stature and respective phylum, Babe hustles his way to the championship of a sheepdog trial, corralling his wool-covered minions like a true capo. So what if his voice sounds like a nine-year-old’s before puberty and he breaks out in whimsical song? Babe will forever get props over here.

No matter what species he represents, a male who doesn’t protect his own might as well spring for a sex change operation. The only thing worse than a deadbeat father is one who won’t fight for his seed, like clownfish Marlin (voiced by Albert Brooks) does in the Pixar hit Finding Nemo. Marlin’s son, Nemo, is kidnapped by a scuba diver, so the water-breathing patriarch hits the open sea to find his little one. Along the way, he gets trapped inside the mouth of a blue whale and doesn’t back down from a crew of hungry sharks. Worst of all, though, Marlin puts up with the nonstop chatter of a blue reef fish (Ellen Degeneres). Can clownfish be sainted?

Let’s ignore the fact that Independence Day’s screenwriters couldn’t dream up a more creative dog name than Rover. At least they didn’t go with “Fido,” right? A better, and equally unimaginative, name would’ve been Lucky, considering that Will Smith and Vivica A. Fox’s pooch in the sci-fi blockbuster manages to survive a tunnel engulfed with fire. How? By taking an Olympic athlete’s leap across a car as flames roar towards him. Sure, the scene is total bullshit, not to mention a little inhumane (How many people do you think died as Fox worried about Rover?). Regardless, Rover deserves a round of applause for his athleticism, ability to perform in front of a green screen, and joy in the face of death. The grin on pup’s face looks like he’s hurdling toward a pack of Snausages.

For a second, we were going to throw Jaws on this list, but Steven Spielberg’s killer Great White seemed too obvious. To represent the dorsal-finned community, we’ve opted for the shark in Lucio Fulci’s grotesque horror classic Zombie. Presumably for no reason other than it’s cool as hell (which it totally is), the Italian gore master inserts a brief intermission of sorts into his otherwise traditional flesheater movie; one of the zombies finds itself under water, where an incredibly badass shark challenges the dead-man to a deep sea smackdown. The resulting brawl is equivalent to Randy Couture scrapping with Webster, as the ocean creature rips the reanimated corpse’s arm off and swims away with a “Come and get me” arrogance. Jaws, who?

How many other animals in cinematic history have been cool enough to get their own flashback sequences? As far as we can recall, none. Now that’s pretty damn badass. And not only does this crappy horror sequel’s dog star in its own whimsical aside, it also gets to whoop some inbred villain behind, chowing down on Planters’ Mr. Peanut lookalike Michael Berryman’s neck. Some people consider the film’s canine flashback as its death knell, but we beg to differ; if not for this ridiculous yet splendid moment, The Hills Have Eyes 2 would completely screw the pooch.

Lars Von Trier’s viciously bleak psychological horror flick Antichrist has its fair share of money shots. Amongst other nastiness, Willem Dafoe’s crotch area gets bashed in with a block of wood and Charlotte Gainsbourg gives her clitoris a skin-fade with a pair of scissors. So, yeah, Antichrist is a real hoot! With all of its grotesquery at play, though, the film’s most notorious scene doesn’t actually show any bodily harm, at least to a human. The victim is a poor little fox, which Dafoe’s character stumbles across in a forest. After giving a horrified Dafoe a peak at its intestines, the fox utters a two-word warning that’s been mashed up to hilarious degrees by YouTube users: “Chaos reigns.” As does a snipped clit, our furry little friend.

Over the course of one movie, Bingo lives the life of 20 canines. Starting the film off as a circus dog, Bingo evades his owner’s shotgun and then sparks a friendship with a bullied kid, with whom the little pooch plays pinball and, yes, skateboards. The kid’s parents aren’t having it, though, so Bingo is sent packing, leading to a road trip in which the hairy protagonist goes to jail and earns the respect of hardened inmates. Just don’t sing that goofy “B-I-N-G-O” tune 'cause he’ll take it back to the yard in a flash.

The next animal on this countdown literally pulls off a jack-move. The marsupial star of the altogether dreadful Kangaroo Jack rocks a hooded sweatshirt emblazoned with “Brooklyn” and pulls off a robbery worth $50,000. OK, so the ’roo doesn’t even know that there’s an enormous wad of cash in the gear it’s wearing as it runs away from Jerry O’Connell and Anthony Anderson, but that’s just pulling strings. It can’t be any worse than the felony O’Connell’s agent pulled on the actor by recommending this flop and accepting money for it.

Coming from the disturbed mind of horror giant Stephen King, Cujo has yet to be usurped from his badass canine throne after nearly 30 years. It’s easy to see why: Rabid and undaunted when it comes to his homicidal agenda, the once-friendly St. Bernard is a one-dog wrecking crew. Cujo could’ve picked harder targets instead of a scared little boy and his petrified yet resilient mother, but those are the hairy slayer’s owners, so it’s not his fault. Besides, that family dynamic adds a layer of tragedy to Cujo’s eventual demise. While the beast is alive and operating on overpowering rabies, though, Cujo is the anti-Beethoven.

Within the small yet proud community of bear actors, Bart is regarded as their Marlon Brando. Seriously, the late Kodiak bear had some legit chops. Fans of ’80s comedies know his work from the Dan Akroyd/John Candy funny movie The Great Outdoors, but the most ferocious of Bart’s 11 feature film appearances came in The Edge, an Alaskan wilderness-set survival tale starring Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin. Throughout the flick, Bart makes the actors’ journey a living hell, frequently popping up to tear ish up and upstage his human co-stars. Three years after The Edge was released, Bart passed away at the age of 23. He shall be missed.

In the action-comedy Every Which Way But Loose, Clint Eastwood takes on an atypically lighthearted character, a guy who dukes it out with an assortment of baddies on his way to reuniting with a lost love. We prefer Clint in Dirty Harry mode, but we can’t blame him for hamming it up in this flick; after all, his sidekick is an orangutan that flips the bird to Harley Davidson riders, drives a street sweeper, and performs its own death-defying stunts, all in one four-minute stretch. Stunt-apes stay unemployed.