Endangered Species (1982) on Netflix
R19821h 37mDramaMysterySci-FiThriller
Ruben Castle leaves the New York City police force and brings his teenage daughter Mackenzie to rural Colorado. There Harriet Purdue, the new town sheriff, is looking into cattle mutilations.
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- Netflix2.9/5
- IMDb5.8/101,381 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
Ruben Castle quits his job as a New York City police officer and gets sober, which allows him to reunite with Mackenzie, his teenage daughter. He takes her to Colorado to begin again. On the way their trailer blows a tire near the small town of Buffalo, and Mackenzie drives off in her father's car for a tow truck, hitting the vehicle of Harriet Purdue, who has just been appointed sheriff there. The two park at a campground and get to know the townspeople. Ruben meets Harriet several times and finds out that she is looking into strange cattle mutilations, which have stirred up conspiracy theories among locals about UFOs and a Satanic cult in the area.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Endangered Species (1982)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- A new studio boss who took over the edit of Endangered Species demanded more cuts and eliminated Rudolph's final scene, which he said had put a twist into everything; that boss was later fired, and the film was left as it stands.
- While filming in Wyoming, Rudolph said the crew came across carcasses that had appeared overnight in a snowy field with organs removed by surgical precision and no blood or tracks, a phenomenon he said NASA attributed to aliens.
- Rudolph wanted Robert Mitchum, or failing him Lee Marvin, for the lead of Endangered Species, but MGM refused and gave him a list of actors under contract that he called completely different from what he had imagined.
- The film's mutilated cattle carcasses were real cattle due for the slaughterhouse, dressed to recreate photographs of actual mutilation cases and kept in cold storage until they were needed in a scene.
- Endangered Species grew from producer Zalman King's story inspired by real cattle mutilations reported in America since 1967; journalists Judson Klinger and Richard Clayton Woods spent two years interviewing ranchers, police and scientists across ten states.
