Topic: Real animal cruelty in mainstream films

[Chedney Honks]

Love a good bit of fish or a nice roast but I don't want to see it on film 😂😂😂

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

I don't eat meat either, St Eddie, but this is an interesting thread about the terrible mistreatment of animals throughout film history.

I doubt anyone is reading it while enthusiastically tucking into a succulent gammon steak.

[Rev+]

Already mentioned, but Cannibal Holocaust is one I'm really conflicted about on a...  well, let's call it a theoretical level.

Should it have happened?  No, absolutely not, there's no justification for the animal cruelty in that film.

Does it improve the film?  Yes, absolutely.  The reality of those shots really sells the legitimacy of the fake ones where we see the human characters meet their ends.  They make the whole film feel horribly real, which is the intended effect.

Not that it's a film I slap on for a laugh very often, but I've seen the BBFC approved version a few times and the uncut one only the once, because fuck watching that again.  I can't deny, though, that the effect those brief scenes have on the whole atmosphere of the films works.

Still not worth it and unjustifiable, to be clear.

[holyzombiejesus]

.

[Thomas]

Fixed that for you.  State of these threads where people bemoan the suffering of animals on film, shortly before tucking into their meat supper.  Some of the most horrendous animal suffering that I've seen on film has been footage from slaughterhouses.

Well, I was talking specifically about those filmmakers, the subject of the thread. I didn't have a meat supper tonight myself as I don't eat meat.[1]

1.	also, supper is for biscuits and hot chocolate and things like that surely. Mcvities Gold Bars.

[mothman]

I don't eat meat either, St Eddie, but this is an interesting thread about the terrible mistreatment of animals throughout film history.

I doubt anyone is reading it while enthusiastically tucking into a succulent gammon steak.

Though now I really want one.

[madhair60]

Interestingly, Hitler was a vegetarian, which rather negates the idea of it being a compassionate thing.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

And Frank Beard is the only member of ZZ Top who has never slapped a dog.

[jonbob]

Milo and Otis is notorious for being a horrifically cruel movie, but none of it appears on screen. The other one that springs to mind is lemming being herded off a cliff for a 'documentary' film
'White Wilderness'

[Dr Rock]

Interestingly, Hitler was a vegetarian, which rather negates the idea of it being a compassionate thing.

Yes, completely negates it.

[Dusty Substance]

Cannibal Holocaust included real animal deaths and the killing and ripping apart of a sea turtle.

Seems like there must've been some quite wrong people behind it.

The only scene in a film to ever make me physically sick.

[ImmaculateClump]

I was under the impression that we're all lefty, sensitive outsider type wanks on here, Eddie!
You've just given us all an excuse to tell you and the world that we're vegetarian now, which is a vegetarians favourite thing to do! :D

Its' different though, I think. An animal losing a life so that another one can prolong their own like some god forsaken hairy vampire, you can argue the toss for that ethically.
For entertainment, or even the loooongest of art, I think it'd be a longer conversation.

[phantom_power]

Ted Kotcheff is a vegetarian. Get out of that one

[Prison Biscuits]

The only scene in a film to ever make me physically sick.

Same. Fuck that film. Beautiful soundtrack, though.

[Prison Biscuits]

Also, I eat meat and I care about animals. Fucking hell, what an amazing paradox!!!!

[greenman]

The idea that cinema is frivolous relative to taste of a certain kind of food is I think pretty questionable though, personally I'd consider good cinema significantly more important.

[ImmaculateClump]

A chicken gets beheaded in Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. Could be stock footage though.

Haaa!

[Dex Sawash]

I am just not eating meat now. You see I am not one of those tedious vegetarians who goes on and on about the choice. Just not eating meat now.

[Ignatius_S]

No images please.

Pretty much a rarity nowadays I think but the Wake In Fright thread made me think of films where this has taken place.

My mum used to talk about a film called Charge of the Light Brigade and would say how cruel the filming methods were.

Although one still could make the point of tripwires being used with horses, there is a lot of dubious and/or bad information about the making of Charge of the Light Brigade - e.g. Curtiz wasn’t in charge of the charge scene, he didn’t come to blows with Flynn (on that film anyway) and the numbers mooted about horses being killed vary wildly but could be four for the entire film

I recently watched the Errol Flynn episode of the Discovering series and one of the contributors (Derek Malcolm, I think) made largely the same claims in what you quoted, plus that one of the stuntmen had died. In another thread, I was going to mention this but thought best to double-check figures and that a stuntmen was definitely killed and quick web search virtually no mention of the latter and the amount of horses that died ranged from 10 or over 100 (in one article, it was over 200).

One of the main sources for the claims is David Niven’s memoirs, written decades later, and although they are fabulously entertaining, factual accuracy isn’t a hallmark. Although the blame for the charge scene is put on Curtiz, it was shot by second unit director, ‘Breezy’ Eason, who was also responsible for the chariot race scenes of the earlier Ben Hur, which caused the deaths of many horses; the figure of 100 to 150 is invariably cited.

The claim about Flynn physically having a pop at Curtiz over the charge scene has been debunked from what I’ve read - it’s been pointed out that the two got into an confrontation on another film several years later, so think that’s a reason for the story.

The best source of information I could find is this article: https://alankrode.com/the-true-story-of-the-charge-of-the-light-brigade/, which is written by a biographer of Curtiz, who accessed legal documents and studio records. From this, four horses were definitely killed during the making of the film; Rode doesn’t exclude the possibility that more died but there is no evidence for that or that the studio engaged in a massive cover-up.

[St_Eddie]

Also, I eat meat and I care about animals. Fucking hell, what an amazing paradox!!!!

It's not a paradox.  It's just hypocritical.

[Keebleman]

Curtiz was the busiest of all major directors during Hollywood's golden age, but there have long been questions about his cruelty to humans, never mind animals.  He was notoriously bullying towards underlings and the following account of a much more serious event is from the Medved Brothers' Hollywood Hall of Shame, about famous box office bombs.  The film in question was Noah's Ark, an early talkie from 1929, that was designed to match Griffith and DeMille for cast-of-thousands spectacle.

Being sprayed with prune juice, however, represented only one of the many indignities to which the poor extras were subjected.  For them, the most difficult scene involved the flood's destruction of the gigantic Temple of Moloch.  This sprawling set had been constructed within a "studio tank", essentially a huge concrete lake.  For months, engineers worked on accumulating 15,000 tons of water in a series of reservoirs in the Hollywood Hills, then designing a complex system of chutes and spillways to carry it with maximum impact on to the set.  When the flood waters came whooshing down these channels cunning concealed atop the temple columns, the entire set was supposed to collapse and the studio tank would be flooded within minutes.  At the height of the devastation, the extras were supposed to scurry around the tumbling masonry and to splash about for a while in the rising waters.

The day before shooting this awesome scene, director Curtiz explained the procedures to chief cameraman Hal Mohr.  As he visualized the resulting chaos, Mohr asked, "Jesus, what are you going to do about the extras?" and the director calmly replied, "Oh, they're going to have to take their chances."  As cinematographer Mohr later recalled the episode, "When they started talking about how to do it, I objected, not as a cameraman but as a human being, for Christ's sake, because it seemed to me they were going to kill a few people with these tons of water and huge sets falling on them...We had stuntmen who knew what they were doing, but we also had several hundred other people who didn't know what it was all about...They would do anything you'd tell them, just to get a day's work, but they had no idea what the hell was going to happen.  I wouldn't have any part of it, but they insisted they were going to do it, so I told them to shove the picture and walked off the set.

During the filming Hal Mohr's worst fears were fully realized.  As the torrents slammed down on the unsuspecting hordes the expressions of terror were absolutely genuine.  Three extras died on the set, another lost a leg and half a dozen more were crippled by broken limbs.  Surveying this devastation, [Darryl F.] Zanuck and his henchmen merely shrugged their shoulders with the implied comment, "That's show business," and did their best to keep the scandalous story out of the newspapers.

[C_Larence]

Tampopo, a wonderful,  Japanese comedy “western” about food, which also happens to feature a scene where a chef stabs and bleeds a real live soft shell turtle

[El Unicornio, mang]

There's some debate about whether or not a cat was killed for Men Behind the Sun

https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2016/12/20/the-awful-truth-of-men-behind-the-sun

At the very least it looked to me like the rats were killed (by burning, from what I recall). It's a hard film to watch as it is, even with some of the ropey effects, particular as it's all based on fact.

A load of stuff in 1900 too (although I'm pretty sure Donald Sutherland didn't headbutt a real cat to death)

https://mostlyfilm.com/2011/04/26/watching-bertoluccis-1900/

[Poobum]

It's not a paradox.  It's just hypocritical.

It's not hypocritical, it's possibly genetic. The initial circumstances of keeping animals developed for pragmatic purposes, with those being more predisposed to caring about the animals in their keep leading to having healthier and more sustainable hunting companions, or meat herds. Even early proto-religions were largely about thanking the animals in the form of totemic spiritualistic representations of said animal. For the majority of human history, and even now with subsistence herders, caring about your animals is/was crucial for your own survival. Of course modern intensive farming is a different issue, as we are disconnected from the process, so there is a dichotomous relationship with animals, with no association of the product with the fluffy things we find adorable. Still, even there hypocrisy is too simple a description, in my opinion. Offers no excuse for killing animals for art though, to try and be relevant.

[St_Eddie]

Of course modern intensive farming is a different issue, as we are disconnected from the process, so there is a dichotomous relationship with animals, with no association of the product with the fluffy things we find adorable.

Preciously this and the cruelty to animals doesn't even touch upon the horrendous impact to the environment the meat industry has (one-quarter of the world's greenhouse gas emissions).  There's no reason for people in first world countries to be eating meat, other than "I like the taste", which is a monumentally selfish reason to contribute to an egregious industry which causes untold suffering.

People in Britain wouldn't eat their dog, but they'll happily much on a bit of bacon, despite pigs being of at least equal intelligence to dogs (in actuality; research suggests that they're more intelligent than dogs).  I guess it's okay to eat an intelligent animal, just providing that it's not cute and fluffy?  So I do think it's hypocritical for people who eat meat to say that they care about animal welfare (or the environment for that matter).

[chveik]

post about films or GTFO

[Jerzy Bondov]

I am very worried about the snowman in Jack Frost (1997), I think they made him do some pretty awful things and I'd like to know if he was well treated off-camera

[madhair60]

isn't it hypocritical to take any kind of high ground, then side with the dietary preferences of one Adolf Hitler?

[El Unicornio, mang]

Genghis Khan was notoriously into meat and dairy along with the 40million peeps he killed though, so...y'know.

[ImmaculateClump]

Men Behind the Sun

Oof. I tried to watch that during my hardman video nasties phase.

I was alright until the bit with the little boy, it was something about the way they were treating him, dead nice and everything, mock kindness and he didn't know what was coming. I can't remember, they give him an apple or something and his face lights up? Then they put him on a surgeons table. Off it went.
Brrrr. That's stayed with me.