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The Animals Film 1982 (Victor Schonfield and Myriam Alaux)
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How do you even begin to try and describe this?
I should warn anyone who gets triggered by descriptions of unpleasant and distressing scenes should stop reading right away, for 'The Animals Film' is over 2 hours of animal cruelty, exploitation, experimentation, and killing.
Made in 1981 and released briefly the following year, the documentary was shown in full that year on Channel 4(in the UK) without commercial breaks. The film then disappeared following heavy censorship issues regarding footage supplied by the Animal Liberation Front. A 'Director's Cut' honing back the ALF footage, and providing a more optimistic ending was released in 2008. I never saw the original broadcast, but purchased the DVD(which contains both versions) in 2013, the same year I went from Vegetarian to full blown Vegan. Coincidence? Absolutely NOT!!! This was what tipped me over the edge.
This is no cheap 'scary' propaganda film, this is an intelligent and well assembled piece of work, featuring a narration by Julie Christie, a score by Robert Wyatt, and a theme song from David Byrne. The film features contemporary interviews by the film makers coupled with tons of archive footage.
So let's take a look at the film's content, and once again be warned, this will get deeply unpleasant.
The film begins with quirky old footage dating from the silent era; animals being used as stunt performers in old movies; dozens, maybe even hundreds of rabbits/hares being rounded up and bashed to death, their bodies thrown in a huge pile, some still twitching; a fox-hunt; a horrific dog fight(to the death), show-jumping and steeple racing horses crashing their legs against fences or landing on their necks at unusual angles as they fall over hurdles; living mice being put into some kind of liquid nitrogen deep freeze; and Thomas Edison showing off his new fangled electricity by killing an elephant by electrocution. All accompanied by David Byrne's jaunty theme song. I've often wondered about this opening sequence, but I think the film makers are saying "Trust us folks, this is as light-hearted as it's going to get. If you can't handle this, back out now!!".
And then we're plunged into almost two hours of genuine animal cruelty and suffering.
The film begins on the freezing streets of New York as stray street dogs, abandoned as Christmas presents are rounded up, given a brief window for adoption before being euthanized. The bodies are then unceremoniously crushed up to provide animal fats for make-up and "food". We are informed that there is a law trying to get passed to stop this.
Then it's into a large section on the meat industry. Cattle are shown in horrifyingly cramped and putrid confinement, never seeing daylight, never being allowed any kind of exercise, basically just living out a horrible existence until they're slaughtered. The main culprit of course is the company with the golden arches(I won't soil my article with their name, so I'll just call them McBotulism, which is nearer to the truth!) We're then given details of how veal is accrued, and it is REALLY unpleasant, so I won't go into detail. I'm not sure if veal is still eaten now, I never hear of it these days, but if you do eat veal....ABSOLUTE SHAME ON YOU!! Watch this film, THEN try eating it.
Next it's battery hen farming, every bit as horrible as the cattle sequence with poultry reduced to eating their own faecal matter out of boredom. There's also a sequence of baby chicks all being de-beaked so they don't peck each other to death in the cramped confinement they'll soon find themselves in. This scene is particularly horrible with the mono-toothed Billy Joe Jim Bob farmer casually listening to light country music while he mutilates a seemingly endless supply of fluffy baby chicks.
Then it's an almost obligatory traipse round the 'killing floors' as pigs, chickens, and cattle are all executed before our eyes. The guy trying to kill the cattle with an electric stun-gun is so useless he often misses completely, meaning the cows are terrified before they are killed. It's the laughable juxtaposition of the seemingly carefree farmers who seem to genuinely believe that the animals have a pleasant life, and humane death as the rivers of gore and offal flow by that hammers the point home.
Then we're on to hunting and the fur trade. Hunt footage is always unpleasant, but it isn't helped by come withered old harridan chuckling as she tells us she's hunted almost all her life. "The fox has an honourable death" she says. The interviewer counters "being ripped apart by a pack of dogs is honourable?" "Well, it would have happened in the natural world anyway" she goes on, Interviewer: "But it wouldn't have 50 men on horses chasing after it at the same time though, would it?" She rolls her eyes and giggles as if it's we who are the weirdos. A female hunt saboteur is seen being punched and sprayed with some chemical by one of these 'honourable' men.
Cut to women in fur coats preening about interspliced with footage of various animals being caught in medieval style traps that the Witchfinder General would probably find a tad savage. The women are asked if they are animal lovers, to which they reply they are. "Why are you wearing their skins then?" "I didn't buy the coat, it was bought for me" they uniformly answer, as if this somehow absolves them of guilt. This is also a similar answer given by 'animal lovers' who eat meat. "I wouldn't eat meat if I had to go out and kill it myself". Yeah, no shit Sherlock!
As this film was compiled in 1981, circuses and performing animals are given little coverage. It wasn't until about a decade later that the whole story about what was going on with animals in circuses was eventually discovered, and now, thankfully, most circuses are animal free.
Performing sea life is missed out altogether. If you're interested in the mistreatment of 'performing' sea mammals, check out a documentary called 'Blackfish'. It shows the absolute distress Killer Whales go through in captivity. You learn three major things from 'Blackfish'; 1) Killer Whales are highly intelligent and don't like being separated from their family unit and kept in a small solitary cage for close on 23 hours a day; 2) no animal knows that it is 'performing', it is simply going through the motions it expects to be fed at the end of; and 3) Killer Whales are so called for a reason! Shamoo is not a toy, and 'Free Willy' probably had all kinds of maltreatment going on behind the scenes.
If you've stayed with me this long, then thank you, but we're now going into the part of the film that causes me the most upset; vivisection and animal experimentation.
And we're off to a flyer with tables of sliced open rats, cut from neck to tail, innards exposed, being shovelled up and dumped into black bags. Interviewer: "What are the rats used for?" Scientist: "I need to study the nervous system". I:"Why not use human beings then?" S:"It has to be living nervous systems". I:"And are rats nervous systems similar to humans?" S:"No, not really!" he shrugs. Other rats are deliberately given stomach ulcers before being 'killed humanely' with carbon dioxide. One rat valiantly struggles to breathe, before his last breath leaves him an anguished slump. And yes, it's every bit as heart-wrenching as it sounds.
A dog is seen lying on an operating table, it's beating heart exposed, with absolutely NO-ONE in the building checking on the animal. The footafe was captured covertly by the Animal Liberation Front.
Then come the monkeys. When I first watched this film just over 10 years ago, it was the scenes with the monkeys that refused to leave my every waking hour, so it was with some trepidation that I allowed this sequence to unfurl before me once again. Most of the time the monkeys are confined in booths with their heads through a porthole which makes them look very vulnerable.
A monkey is dosed with LSD(we are not told the exact reason), and watching his confused, frightened face, eyes rolling in his head, as he tries to grab his swing bars with clearly no sense of distance or perspective is just soul destroying. The giggling, smiling 'scientist' who clearly thinks this is all a great laugh doesn't help. If I invented a time machine, I wouldn't go back and find all the winning lottery numbers; I'd go back and find this guy and set about him with blunt and rusty dental equipment.
Then, comes for me, the most troubling image of the whole film. Monkeys are deliberately stressed and anxietised to monitor behavioural patterns. One monkey curls into a ball, his hands cradling his head like a human suffering a migraine. It's unbearable. For years the image haunted me, and now I've exposed myself to it again, and it just doesn't go away.
Rabbits have chemicals injected into their eyes because they do not produce tears, so their eyes cannot naturally wash the pain out. So they suffer an agonising blinding just so people who feel they need to cake themselves in slap before they head out, won't get a runny eye.
No human has been cured of cancer because of monkeys, rabbits, rats or beagles being sliced, diced, driven to madness or blinded! Only 10% of animal research has ever benefited humankind in any way, and thankfully vivisection has diminished greatly over the years.
Next, we're plunged into the laugh-riot of nuclear testing, as goats, pigs, cows, and in one horrifying scene illegally procured from the American military, a dog are all placed in front of nuclear blasts on various atolls. Was this really necessary? Couldn't the footage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki prove what a nuclear blast does to the human body?
By the very nature of the film, we get the feeling the film-makers are keeping something special up their sleeve for the finale....and boy, do they deliver a doozy!!
I won't go into the exact specifics as, believe me, it will tattoo itself onto your retinas, so I'll give a rough description. It's set in China, it's in the 1950s, and it features a Russian scientist performing a breakthrough medical procedure. When you see it you will immediately think it is terrible prosthetics or cheap and nasty special effects....but NO...it's real. A quick scan of the internet shows that this was a genuine event. It leaves you genuinely speechless, its grotesqueness is almost too much to comprehend. You can't even imagine what is going through the animal/animals mind as four laughing Kim Jong-Un lookalikes, a couple in fur coats point and seem really proud of themselves. It's troubling, nightmare inducing images will plague you for years, and maybe that's the film-makers intentions.
A final wrap-up with members of the Animal Liberation Front sees member Ronald Lees, twice jailed for his covert activities say directly to the camera, "If I broke into a Nazi concentration camp, freed all the prisoners, and smashed up the instruments of death and torture, would I be jailed and given a criminal record? But that's what happens if you break into an animal testing laboratory!"
So, would I recommend this film to anyone? Of course not. This is not something you can put on for light entertainment. You would really have to WANT to watch this film, but who wants to watch over two hours of animal death and suffering? The reason I watched this again after over 10 years is because I felt I really needed a bit of a reminder of why I follow certain paths(veganism, animal welfare, anti-vivisection, anti-fur trade etc), but felt I was becoming complacent.
If you are considering becoming vegetarian, vegan or wish to take a pro-Animal Welfare stance, then I would say WATCH THIS FILM...but know your limitations. It's a struggle to get through, it WILL leave you sad and depressed, but hopefully it will spur you on to do your bit for the animals. As the Anarcho-Punk bands from the early 1980s Crass and Conflict used to say "Until we stop killing animals, we will never stop killing our fellow man!". These days that seems truer than ever.
Thank you for reading,
Requiescant
Amazingly detailed impassioned review. I don't think I heard of that film. I'll check it out. Sorry if you don't approve of this cartoon in the same ballpark that i came across the other day.
Did you hear the good news that beavers have been re-introduced to Scotland after 400 years, in the Cairngorm area, showing if need be, that the wellbeing of animals and humans coincides?
Beavers in Cairngorms for first time in 400 years
The animals are part of a reintroduction project that could see 15 families released over five years.
www.bbc.com
It can't decide if it wants to be a camp classic or a serious biopic, so it ends up being neither. My biggest issue is that the characters feel like caricatures (the silly accents definitely don't help). We never get a glimpse into their minds, which is a shame. There was so much potential.
