February 01, 2006

Animal Snuff For Kids via the usually insufferable critics at The Onion AV Club.

I am among the Nation's Traumatized by way of Old Yeller--the movie so scarred me that I never read the book, though I hear it's aces. Where the Red Fern Grows had a similar effect, though as a kid I was strangely much more disturbed by the bad kid falling on the axe than by the death of the dogs--at least, that's the image that stayed with me from it. So, any monkeys still have nightmares about animal deaths in film/literature, either on or off this list? Any you'd add? Yes, I'm bored.

  • A "friend" once invited me over to watch a movie all about dogs. He failed to mention that the Latin film (can't remember the name, either translated or in Spanish) was all about dogs dying, in bad ways (in dogfights, being shot, in car accidents, falling through holes in apartment floors, etc.). At one point he said "that looks so real, I wonder if it is" about a dog that had just died. Awful, just awful.
  • for some reason I find animal death/animal cruelty much more difficult to handle in movies that the deaths of people. I don't have any childhood animal snuff horror stories, but to this day I am deeply disturbed by my long-ago watching of Five Corners (the penguin scene made me leave the room, nearly in tears) *shudder*
  • I know what movie you're referring to, minda. It's Amores Perros, from Mexico. I didn't see it as a snuff film, though the movie is quite violent (to both people and dogs), more that the dogs in the movie served as both symbolic proxies for and the proverbial innocent victims of the people in the movie, for some of whom it could be said were more like animals than humans.
  • Thanks, chimaera. I had a feeling someone would know which movie it was. Also, that's a really good point about the movie; I hadn't thought of it that way before. Also, this news story made me want to cry.
  • If someone wanted me to watch a movie like that, I'd keep kicking them in the balls until their outlook improved.
  • *kicks pete in the balls, steals his dog*
  • When I first watched Amores Perros, we tried translating the title for a little while. We came up with "Love's a Dog". We thought it a pretty odd title. Watching it, we immediately found out the title was "Love's a Bitch". Shoulda been able to figure that out, I guess. I love that movie.
  • Man, I expected Old Yeller to be #1. I guess I'm getting old.
  • Perhaps the use of Perros (with an "-os" instead of an "-as" that for people the likes of me who are passingly familiar with spanish, but not fluent may expect for "bitch") threw you off the trail, Mr K.
  • Oh God, The Red Pony. /shudders