Animals Are Beautiful People (1974)

Animals Are Beautiful People (1974)

Directed by: Jamie Uys

Starring: Paddy O’Byrne

This was a weird experience. I mean, modernly we’re all used to all nature documentaries being the same cookie-cutter format from the Discovery channel or something like that, and it’s strange to think of a theatrically-released nature documentary from the 70’s. Which is what this is.

Beautiful People is about the animals that live in the desert areas of Africa, and it’s all narrated by a jovial man who talks about the animals as though they were people with feelings, and also there are cartoony sound effects. It’s a bizarre combination of comedy and really fucking cool animal footage from the desert.

There are things besides your generic desert animals, of course, as they spend quite a lot of time in the greener parts of the area as well. But basically it’s a nature documentary… if it was made by Benny Hill. It’s a weird way to do it, but it’s pretty damn entertaining, so you really can’t fault it for being weird.