The Fake Life - Love movies? We do too!

Monday, October 30, 2006

Halloween@TFL: Real Animal Deaths

We enjoy horror movies because, on some level, we know they are just make-believe. We can be shocked and scared safe in the knowledge that it is all a trick. The problem is, once we work out what the tricks are, the shock and fear are gone. One way round this is to convince the audience that what is on screen is real. Once that safety net is gone, the audience will be terrified of anything and the film-makers have, in effect, won. Films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre have 'based on a actual events' plastered all over their front ends. Films like The Blair Witch Project try to convince us that they are using real, documentary or 'found' footage. These are still tricks though, and have varying degrees of success. Another way, for the bolder or infinitely less moral film-maker, is to actually make it real. This shows up in mainstream films with, for example, actors putting on or taking off loads of weight (Raging Bull and The Machinist) but its more extreme example is real animal deaths.

Warning: Article really does contain images of real animal deaths.

Tarzan: The first film of this franchise, made in 1918, depicts a lion hunt that uses, and kills, a real lion. It is absolutely terrible, by today’s standards, to kill a protected species purely for a movie, but perhaps it is a valid position for a film to actually show something that really happened? Have we become more humane, or merely more dishonest? Maybe it's the same thing, son, maybe it's the same thing.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory: Roald Dahl was a bastard. His stories are filled with deaths, mutilations and abuse, usually of kids. Kids, of course, love it. The 1971 adaptation of Willy Wonka adds to the list of ‘preparing you for the adult world’ imagery by including a bad psychedelic trip. As Wonka takes the kids on an out of control boat ride through a tunnel, blurred and disturbing imagery flashes across the walls behind him, including a chicken getting its head cut off with a cleaver. Chop!

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid: In the first of animal-lover Sam Peckinpah’s appearances on this list, we have a unique scene of target practice where chickens are buried up their necks in the dirt only to have their heads shot off by Kris Kristofferson. The crew ate the chickens for dinner that night, therefore making everything fine, apparently.

What they didn’t mention was that chickens will fall asleep if they feel pressure on their sides. They think they are lying down and so get some shut-eye. These chickens, buried in the dirt, flopped their heads over and had a kip until Peckinpah had the idea of attaching wires to their legs so they could be electrocuted just before he yelled action. They duly woke up with a start, all bright eyed, straight necked and photogenic. Then their heads exploded. Then Sam moved on to the next shot, wondering if he could do the same with the permanently stoned Bob Dylan.

Galaxy of Terror: In this Roger Corman produced Alien rip-off, he needed some maggots to crawl around on the floor, but the non-union maggots weren’t co-operating. Then an enterprising fx assistant suggested putting them on a metal plate and passing an electrical current through them. The shot, of maggots writhing in agony, looked great. The assistant was one James Cameron, who has used this technique on actors ever since.

After the maggot shot, one of the grubs grows really big and rapes a naked lady to death. Roger Corman, stay classy.

Also, never google image search 'maggot'. Don't.

Apocalypse Now: Francis Ford Coppola famously had no ending for his epic story about madness in the jungle and went mad trying to find one. He lost a lot of weight and almost all his money. His wife filmed a local tribe’s religious ceremonies which included the ritual sacrifice of animals. Francis saw this and, possibly while a bit peckish, decided he had his ending. In the film the sequence of Martin Sheen hacking Marlon Brando to death is intercut with Brando’s tribe ritually hacking an oxen to death. The death was justified by Francis eating that night as much of the oxen as he could prise out of Brando’s hands. The two deaths are heavy handed in their symbology, but it remains a powerful scene.

The Wild Bunch: In the second Peckinpah appearance on this list, the Bunch walk into a town in the first scene and see a group of kids watching scorpions, trapped in a makeshift arena, battling a swarm of poisonous ants to the death. The scorpions, giant compared to the insects, are seen stinging as many ants as they can but being overwhelmed by the sheer weight of numbers of the ferocious swarm.

The purely natural horror of this scene gives an horrendously visceral impression of the savage and pitiless land these men are moving through. It is an effect only heightened by being intercut with shots of the laughing children. When the scorpions are dead, the children cover the arena in straw and burn the whole thing. I have no idea if the crew ate the scorpions.

Oldboy: Continuing the eating theme, when the ‘Oldboy’ is suddenly released from his prison after fifteen years, he decides he wants something different from the dumplings he was constantly served. He goes into a sushi restaurant, orders something ‘alive’ and gets served a wriggling octopus, which he then eats while its tentacles squirm and suck at his nose. There are scenes of mutilation, death and amateur dentistry in this film, but this is by far the most squeam-inducing, which is odd as meals like this (sort of) are eaten every day. Would seeing scenes from a slaughterhouse stop you from eating that hamburger? I get the feeling that seeing scenes of the fast-food kitchen where it was prepared would be more likely to have that effect. At least the octopus was clean.

P.S. Watch this movie. Then watch it again. It is great.

Secret Africa: ‘Education’ is one of the other great excuses for getting away with morally suspect film-making. Secret Africa is the natural, and infinitely sleazier, heir to those National Geographic pictorials of ‘native women’ with their boobs out that your grand father supposedly beat off to, not that they had masturbation back in those days. Claiming to document a different culture, this film is a borderline racist excuse to gawp at naked ‘native women’, arcane religions and customs, and animal slaughter. The incredibly graphic neck-slashings of goats and oxen are gleefully smash edited into the trailer for thrill seeking white audiences. But don’t worry! It’s a ‘documentary’, and we are being ‘educated’.

P.S. The trailer for this (which is all I’ve seen of the film, I should point out) can be found on Volume 1 of 42nd Street Forever, a collection of trailers for the exploitation films that filled grindhouse theatres during the 70’s. It is great, and Volume 2 is coming out just in time for Christmas!

Cannibal Holocaust: The last great excuse for animal cruelty is ‘art’. Faces Of Death is infamous for it’s ‘real’ deaths, but almost all were faked. Cannibal Holocaust does not fake it’s animal deaths. The film tells the story of a western documentary crew who travel to the jungle to film the ‘savages’ only to show that they are more savage than the cannibals. In the end they are all savagely killed. This ‘statement’ was often used as a justification for the brutality and need for ‘realism’ during the various trials and public outcries that the movie faced.

Try telling that to the turtle who gets its head and flippers ripped off and eaten while still alive! Also the squirrel monkey (aww!) who gets its face machete’d off and its brains eaten. Also the pigs who were shot and their intestines used for the human ‘gore’. Also a bunch of insects (eww!) which I don’t really care about.

Cannibal Holocaust is nothing but a slightly better made exploitation movie, using the death of animals to give the audience an extra exotic taste of horror and brutality. It does remain a shocking, assaultive film today (if you can get your hands on an uncut version, anyway), but it’s the protestations of ‘art’ that really leave the bad taste in the mouth. Monkey brains are, after all, a delicacy.

I can’t really recommend watching this film to anyone but, if you haven’t seen it by now, you are a pussy.