Film scenes of actual animal cruelty that would no one would get away with today

If I were particularly strident about animal rights, I think I'd get pretty annoyed by the "no animals were harmed" line: if there were cold cuts on the catering table or leather on the screen, then animals totally went down for this enterprise.

Modern Italian cannibal films (shot on digital video, and presumably straight to vid in Italy) still have the animal cruelty!

Some chicken cruelty in Lacombe Lucien.

Crucified monkey in Even Dwarfs Started Small. The camel that can't stand up and is being laughed at by the main dwarf is more debatable.

Cat juggling in The Jerk.

Course, it's debatable whether that's cruel.

(the more I think about that film the more convinced I am that I dreamed it)

Scorpion vs. Ants intro "The Wild Bunch"

Modern Italian cannibal films (shot on digital video, and presumably straight to vid in Italy) still have the animal cruelty!
-- Raw Patrick (rawsweate...), February 9th, 2007.

They still make cannibal movies in Italy?! I guess I'm appalled that they are still killing animals in gore flicks, but I would still kind of like to see some of those.

And if you want to talk about animal violence today, check out Korean films like The Isle (live fish getting chopped up) and Oldboy (where the protagonist eats an entire live, squirming octopus onscreen).

Andrei Rublev - Horse falling off of ledge after being shot (in the head?)

The horse falls from the landing of a staircase to the ground in the 180 minute cut of Rublev, but in the 205 minute rough cut (the Criterion DVD), the shot is longer and shows the horse being killed with a spear after falling. It's one of the more reprehensible shots of animal cruelty in cinema history. And don't imagine it wasn't planned, as Tarkovsky once mentioned in an interview that the horse was picked up from a butcher's shop the day before it was scheduled to be slaughtered.

There was a long, interesting discussion of this on a Criterion forum years ago. I dug up some of my comments from there, since they seem applicable here:

The scenes of animal violence have an opposite effect from what Tarkovsky desired. I am taken out of the film by this violence. I begin to focus on their meaning as actual acts, rather than their contribution to the film’s message. The spell is broken. I don’t mind films that represent animal violence (after all, films are a reflection of life and in life animals are the subject of great cruelties), but when actual violence is committed a discomforting line has been crossed. I know there have been denials that any cruelty occurred on the set, but several scenes look very real. I find the 185 minute version more palpable on that front.

The Tatar raid was certainly intended to be a vision of Hell - Rublev’s Last Judgment made flesh; yet obviously Tarkovsky went too far in his depiction. While I don’t wish to defend or excuse animal abuse, I am willing to try to understand Tarkovsky’s position.

At the end of the film, Boriska the bellmaker can be seen as a stand-in for Tarkovsky the filmmaker - a young man in over his head struggling to oversee a massive project, a creative act which has a purpose or reward beyond his understanding, where failure could mean death (the Soviets were not above executing artists, or at least imprisoning them for life). Boriska is not a likable individual. He is willful, disrespectful, demanding, and cruel. Part of the message of Andrei Rublev is that great achievements take great sacrifice, that monuments are raised by many broken backs.

After reading the quote by Tarkovsky, "When I’m looking at a horse I have a feeling I’m in direct contact with the essence of life itself," one recoils at the disconnect between this thought and the horse’s murder in Andrei Rublev. Is it possible that within the course of making the film (or perhaps in general) Tarkovsky could not keep art and life in the proper perspective - perhaps he was even a bit insane? Did Tarkovsky wish to make the Tatar raid so horrific that he engaged in behavior that was repellent even to him? Could he have believed that art was so important and so central to the good of humankind that it was worth the suffering of animals - much in the same way that people will tolerate animal torture in the name of scientific research? These are arguments that most of us will reject as exoneration - the act is unforgivable - I’m just trying to examine the apparent contradiction between Tarkovsky’s thoughts and actions.

And here's Tarkovsky himself commenting on the edits:

Nobody has ever cut anything from Andrei Rublov. Nobody except me. I made some cuts myself. In the first version the film was 3 hours 20 minutes long. In the second - 3 hours 15 minutes. I shortened the final version to 3 hours 6 minutes. I am convinced the latest version is the best, the most successful. And I only cut certain overly long scenes. The viewer doesn’t even notice their absence. The cuts have in no way changed neither the subject matter nor what was for us important in the film. In other words, we removed overly long scenes which had no significance.

We shortened certain scenes of brutality in order to induce psychological shock in viewers rather than mere unpleasant impression which would only destroy our intent. All my friends and colleagues who during long discussions were advising me to make those cuts turned out right in the end. It took me some time to understand it. At first I got the impression they were attempting to pressure my creative individuality. Later I understood that this final version of the film more than fulfils my requirements for it. And I do not regret at all that the film has been shortened to its present length...

His friends and colleagues were probably saying, "You crazy bastard! You can't kill horses on-screen!"

Herzog is a confirmed chicken hater. He's talked a couple of times about what frighteningly stupid animals they are:

"Stupidity is the devil. Look in the eye of a chicken and you'll know. It's the most horrifying, cannibalistic, and nightmarish creature in this world."

http://sjl-static14.sjl.youtube.com/vi/iv6t58YR9FE/2.jpg

Satantango - girl rolls cat

-- Eric H.

^ made me really uncomfortable. at least there was the rumor that the cat was ultimately unharmed and was taken by tarr as a pet...

They still make cannibal movies in Italy?! I guess I'm appalled that they are still killing animals in gore flicks, but I would still kind of like to see some of those.

Mondo cannibale

Nella terra dei cannibali

Some ants appeared to die onscreen, in close-up, in weirdo SF parable Phase IV. Poor fucking ants, eh?

Dude brought like a thousand bunnies into the desert, they all died from overheating/dehydration and he was forced to write their corpses into the script.

Clearly this a euphemism for "animal is really dead."

they actually killed the scorpion for the scene (rip, boo-hoo)

As well as the cannibal gutcrunchers, mondo/pseudo-documentary exploiters from Italy/Germany - Mondo Caine etc, or the Faces of Death series - are full of scenes of animal cruelty

As well as Cockfighter, Monte Hellman also wrote/directed the scenes of animal cruelty in Roger Corman's Last Woman on Earth exploiter. Cockfighter is banned outright in the UK, and the bargain basement UK DVDs of Last Woman all carry a fake BBFC 15 cert.

Isn't a cow slaughtered near the end of Apocalypse Now?

Dozens of sheep being buried alive in The Horse Thief, and beaten over the head as they try to escape.
A sheep "accidently" falling (ie, being thrown) off a cliff in Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. There was a similar scene in Las Hurdes with a goat.
The giraffe being shot in Sans Soleil? (What was the point of that?)
The backyard rabbit breeder in Roger & Me clumsily beating the pet rabbit to death then starting to skin it while it was still alive.
The horse being dragged along behind a tractor and then left to die in Landscape in the Mist.
The puppy being repeatedly thrown down the stairs in Ali Zaoua, prince de la rue. The chicken having its neck half sliced in the same movie.
The chickens being hung upside and then set on fire in Yeelen. (I felt like stopping the movie at this point, still within the first minute.)
The skewered frogs in Novecento/1900 (why weren't they killed? do they keep longer if they are skewered but still left alive?)

For me, the chicken scenes in Even Dwarfs Started Small were far more cruel than the monkey being tied up.

http://www.blacksheep-themovie.com/