As I have described recently, Moi and I have begun to watch our old DVDs. One we watched yesterday was The Wild Bunch, released in 1969 and starring among others William Holden and Ernest Borgnine. It was directed by Sam Peckinpah and is widely regarded as his finest film.
However, I found it unnecessarily cruel in several respects.
Actors and animals mistreated
First of all, parts of the film gave the leading actors an excuse to grope the “bit part” performers.
The story is set near the Texas Mexican border in 1913. All the characters seem to be baddies – even the goodies were baddies. There are several scenes where the men were enjoying drinking and merriment with the local ladies, but it seemed obvious to me that the bit part actresses thought the actor was not acting and didn’t like it, though they probably thought they had to put up with it.
A scene at the beginning of the film shows children sat around a cage that had ants and scorpions fighting to the death in graphic detail and then the children were supposed to have set them on fire. It didn’t show the actual children doing any of this, but somebody did it – presumably the production team – as again it was shown in graphic close-up detail. This was one of many completely unnecessary scenes in the film.
Other unnecessary cruel scenes involved horses, either being thrown into a river from a bridge as it was destroyed by explosives, or being tripped or thrown to the ground by the stunt rider. Not only were the horses thrown to the ground in this way but the film crew also used what was called the running W trip wire, whereby a wire was stretched across in front of the horse at ankle height, which was dangerous for both the horse and rider.
Real guns and real violence on set
Sam Peckinpah would certainly not be described as an animal rights activist. In the opening sequence of another of his films, Pat Garret and Billy the Kid (1973), it shows the main characters shooting the heads of chickens. I thought this was an excellent film, and I had always assumed that this scene was clever trick photography but apparently it was not.
Proper guns and live ammunition on a film set, what could possibly go wrong. The answer to this question could be best answered by Alec Baldwin. While rehearsing for the film Rusk as recently as 2022, the gun that Baldwin was holding discharged, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchings and injuring Joel Souza. The blame game has continued ever since.
Walt Disney – not so squeaky-clean
Sam Peckinpah was by no means on his own with this cavalier attitude towards animal safety; even the squeaky-clean Walt Disney Corporation have had questions to answer. It was revealed in the 1980s that their series called White Wilderness, filmed in the Canadian Arctic and released in 1958 included two very controversial scenes.
One involved dozens of lemmings. It had been assumed that lemmings migrate in huge numbers and will follow the one in front no matter what, even to the point of leaping off a cliff into the sea – a kind of mass suicide. In fact, people in some parts of the world may still describe someone who blindly follows as a lemming. I think in Britain we would use sheep to describe the same tendency,
Any-road-up, the Walt Disney crew were determined to find this happening in the wild, but couldn’t – mainly because it doesn’t happen. This didn’t stop them, though. What we now know is that they collected hundreds of unsuspecting lemmings and pushed them off a cliff and into a river (standing in for the sea), with the commentary suggesting that the little animals were sadly compelled to do so. (The Walt Disney studio maintains that the photographer staged this event without its knowledge or approval.)
In another scene a polar bear cub was seen trying to keep up with its mum in the bleak and barren Arctic wilderness, when it lost its footing and went sliding and tumbling down a steep and long hillside. The cub was in fact taken on its own to the top of the film set hillside – in a Calgary film studio – and pushed off.
The Charge of the Light Brigade – deadly in both film and reality
The taming of the American Wild West gave film makers boundless opportunities to see horses and riders falling over or the rider getting his foot caught in the stirrups and being dragged by the galloping horse; indeed, no Saturday afternoon matinee was complete without such scenes. But the Brits weren’t beyond criticism either. In the film The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968), produced by Woodfall Film Productions, 25 horses were killed.
It is estimated that 335 horses were killed in the actual battle on 25 August 1854. In December of the same year 1854, the first Baron Tennyson, better known to us as Alfred Lord Tennyson, Poet Laureate to Queen Victoria, wrote an excellent poem, ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’. Compulsory reading in every English school much of the time since.
This is one of my childhood books that I still own. I would stare at the picture for hours. This would have been the image that the Russian artillery would have had just before their day was spoilt. This charge of the Light Brigade during the battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War was regarded as a disaster, but had the heavy brigade followed up behind as planned, it could have turned out much differently. Both sides claimed some success.
Interestingly, The Charge of the Light Brigade was the film that eventually and belatedly caused the American film industry to put in place guidance for animal safety.
Something lighter to round off
This ramble requires some light refreshment. How about this quiz question?
Question: What starts with E, ends with E, and has only one letter?
Answer: Envelope.
