100 Rifles (Tom Gries, 1969)

Hm, which exact positions should one be looking for? All depends on whether they just used the UK maser or had their own…

No in such cases only the UK versions are censored. Nothing else.

You’re right. According to dvdcompare.net, only the UK DVD version is cut (four seconds were removed for horse cruelty).

The BBFC’s decisions are strange and incoherent. They won’t allow horse falls but they’ll show most of the animal cruelty in Cannibal Holocaust.

The point is not what you see on the screen, not that it is cruel, point is that the horses were brought to fall in reality.

They won’t cut falling CGI horses.

I wonder what happened to the UK version of The Charge of the Light Brigade, cause for that final action scene countless horses were badly injured and killed.

The animal cruelty in Cannibal Holocaust is real, as well. Why are we allowed to see a turtle have its head cut off and its body mutilated but not allowed to see a horse fall?

Then it is inconsequent, but censorship is often (if not always) inconsequent.

Maybe the film’s makers were able to convince the British Board of Film Censors that the animal cruelty was simulated. I’ve never watched Cannibal Holocaust and never will.

Great film, probably Richardson’s best. I watched the MGM region-2 DVD, which runs 125 minutes. Is there a longer version?

I meant the original, the one from 1936 with Errol Flynn. The charge at the end is spectacular, but the film has also a negative fame for butchering many, many horses for this scene: “So many animals were killed during production that laws were created to protect them”

The Richardson film is any regard a completely different kind of movie.

If they convinced the board that the animal cruelty in Cannibal Holocaust was fake, they did a wonderful job. When watching the movie, I had no doubt at all that the scenes involving tortured animals were real.

About the horse falls: I can imagine that you want to prevent them in the future, and therefore warn directors that they will be cut before the movie is shown to the public, but imo it doesn’t make sense to cut horse falls from movies from past decades. There’s of course this theory that violent scenes might have a stimulting effect, that, in order words, screen violence causes violence in real life. But would anybody go out to make horses fall by watching a movie like 100 Rifles?

Watching it now on YouTube. Decent(ish) little romp I suppose, not quite as gritty as I thought it might be having read this thread but the spag comparisons are fair and Burt Reynolds/Fernando Lamas’ apparent game of “Who’s the orangest and most mustachioed out of us two?” is proving a pleasant distraction.

I agree. It’s not like cutting these scenes out is going to change anything. The cuts made to Ulzana’s Raid were probably the worst I’ve watched.

And obviously never has: the Cinematograph Films (Animals) Act became law in 1937.

It’s not going to unhurt those horses, no, but many, many people don’t want to watch movies featuring scenes of animal cruelty, so removing those scenes might make 100 Rifles or whatever movie a more palatable experience for the audience.

I’m not into cuts which alter an artistic vision because of some arbitrary, subjective definition of what I should be allowed to see, but cutting sequences which never should’ve been filmed in the first place in order to improve the integrity of that vision… yeah, I can live with that, and I think scenes depicting genuine animal harm fall inside that parameter. I can certainly live without those scenes.

As to the movie itself: It was pretty good, really. Burt seemed to be chewing the scenery, more in Cannonball Run mode than in Deliverance mode, but I don’t mind; I enjoy Burt either way. Jim Brown made for a decent leading man too, I thought.

That is of course true. As a vegetarian and animal lover I don’t like to watch animal cruelty at all, but once we start cutting scenes from existing works of art because people might take offence at them, when or were will this ever stop? Should we ban Dante’s Divine Comedy because it is offensive to certain groups of people?

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Apropos of absolutely nothing (apologies therefore for the off-topic), but I named my son Danté, after Dante Alighieri (I whacked an accent over the “e” though, just to make his name slightly more windswept and interesting than it already was).

I don’t know scherp, it’s a knotty one for sure. Of course part of me feels these things should remain intact, if for naught but historical context (you know: That’s what they did back then, and it’s important we don’t forget that), but in that case I feel those movies should then hold academic interest only, and not be viewed for entertainment purposes. But then, why shouldn’t 100 Rifles be enjoyed for the piece of entertainment that it is, but for some horse falls? Maybe it shouldn’t be for a censor to decide retroactively, no, but it might be nice if the companies who own the rights to distribute films featuring scenes of genuine cruelty took the decision themselves to make their movie more attractive to a paying public. I appreciate of course that once one sets off down this path, who dictates where the line is (although I also think that “wilful and genuine animal cruelty or distress” is a pretty clear line)? Thank God this sort of thing isn’t as prevalent anymore in movies.

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It’s not an easy thing. 100 Rifles is of course no Divine Comedy, Tom Gries no Dante, and there’s this Latin saying Quod licet Iovi non licet bovi, meaning that things that are permitted to the Gods (in this context the Shakespeares, Dantes or Dostoïevskis of this world) is not permitted to men (authors of minor stature). But it remains tricky: I think you must have very good reasons to ban a book, movie, or a part(s) of it. I mean, in my country we’ve had discussions about smoking people in movies from the fities, sixties. I do not smoke and i think it’s better for younger people not to start smoking, but I’m not going to support any censorship in that aspect.

I thought something like that might happen sooner or later.

Later they can cut out all nudity cause it is degrading or something like that …

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In that case my guilty pleasure won’t be much of a pleasure anymore …

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