Tomb

Animals are cute, they're filled with tasty meat and they're useful for accomplishing tasks for us humans. Check out these notable examples of animal utility:

• The Road Warrior (1981): In this outstanding post-apocalyptic action flick, an unnamed character played by Bruce Spence uses a trained rattlesnake as a security system to protect his gyrocopter. Well, the snake isn't his only protective measure — he also spends his days hiding under the sand with a breathing tube, waiting for somebody to mess with his ride, so he can pop out of the ground like a trapdoor spider and point a loaded crossbow at any would-be aircraft thieves. Man, that is one carefully protected gyrocopter. Oddly enough, not only do Spence's psychotic theft countermeasures fail, they aren't even the most excessive anti-theft methods in the film. Mel Gibson's car is protected by a fucking bomb. (Oh, and a vicious dog. And a concealed machete.)

The snake also serves as an emergency food source. (“It's my snake; I trained it, I'm going to eat it!”)

• Babe (1995): Co-written by the director of The Road Warrior (yes, really), this delightful family film puts a great deal of importance on the idea of animal utility. Here, a clever piglet realizes that animals without useful skills wind up as food, so he learns how to herd sheep in order to literally save his own bacon.

• Animals are Beautiful People (1974): The director of The Gods Must Be Crazy (1979) also made this lighthearted nature documentary. In one scene, a bushman shows us how to use a wild chimpanzee to find water in the desert. The little critter is offered rock salt, which it gobbles like candy, becoming so thirsty that it heads for the nearest water source. Handy!

• Kung Pow! Enter the Fist (2002): “The Chosen One” (Steve Oedekerk) was raised by woodland creatures as a baby, so if he asks nicely, he can persuade a pair of gophers to bite down on a length of fabric, thus becoming a set of “Gopher Chucks,” a furry variation on Bruce Lee's favourite Kung Fu weapon. (No, it isn't funny in the film, either.)

• Ninja Scroll (1993): Whew! Animals have more uses than a Swiss Army Knife in this anime classic. A bird is trained to not only deliver messages, but to catch them in midair. Poisonous snakes attack on command. Wasps deliver messages and attack. Then there's the ever-popular exploding rat.

• Phenomena (a.k.a. Creepers) (1985): Just as Jennifer Connelly is about to fall victim to an insane murderer, she's saved by a monkey with a straight razor. Hooray!

• The Road to El Dorado (2000): Trapped in the brig of a ship, Miguel (voiced by Kenneth Branagh) tries to talk a nearby horse into bringing him a pry bar. Miguel's friend and fellow captive Tulio (Kevin Kline) mocks him for expecting a horse to understand words, or to accomplish such a complex feat. The horse returns with the keys to their cell. Tulio spends a moment in stunned silence before petulantly observing, “Well… it's not a pry bar.”

• Swordsman II (1992): See those rats that infest your dungeon cell? Don't hate them — those little guys can be the key to your escape. The guy from Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum understood that and so does Jet Li in this wild martial arts movie. Cast into a dungeon, Li uses rats to deliver messages to neighbouring prisoners, and eventually uses one to thread a snare trap across the corridor. The snare trips a guard, causing him to drop his keys within Li’s reach.

• The City of Lost Children (1995). In a dream-like French fantasy film noted for its incredible visual set pieces, one of the most notable sequences follows a tiny trained flea as it travels across town, hopping from dog to man. The flea is actually on a rescue mission; it zeroes in on a trio of monstrous one-eyed cyborgs and alights on the head of one, administering a dose of mind-control drugs with a tiny syringe attached to the flea's mandibles. I guarantee that you've never seen anything like it.