The Animals Film

I saw this movie after watching "Earthlings" and was impressed with how much footage this film had.

It's a bit eerie to watch this movie some 29 years later, the numbers are only compounded by time. I can only wonder how many millions, or billions, of tax dollars spent annually go towards testing random experiments in the name of science. We claim we can relate our findings from animals to humans, however we've found that some drugs that work well on humans don't have the same results on certain animals, The canned sea turtle was something I've never seen in my life, thanks to over-harvesting by those before me. How much better would life be if the generation before us was focused on sustainable harvesting over profit?

"The Animals Film" takes us inside the world of factory farming and meat production, looking as well at the behind-the-scene world of animal experimentation research. Much of the footage was shot guerilla-style, with small crews sneaking inside slaughterhouses and compounds. If the purpose of film as art is to change the way a viewer sees the world, then "The Animals Film" is cinema at its best. I saw this film in 1986 and have never eaten meat again. Some of the footage is shocking, but the power of the image to educate and inform is undeniable. In the current age of the 'Mad Cow', it is plain to see that this documentary was ahead of its time.

This is the most powerful and all-encompassing expose on the animal exploiting industries (including the meat, dairy, fur, and vivisection industries) I have seen to date. It (unfortunately) remains as valid today as it was over twenty years ago when it was made. This is the film that definitively turned me into a vegetarian. Most people choose to remain selectively ignorant about these issues because they are too painful and upsetting to look at. Doesn't that suggest that maybe there is something inherently WRONG with the way in which we treat animals in our society? A must-see.

Rina http://www.rrrina.com/

The Animals Film is one of the seminal documents of the animal rights movement. Along with Peter Singer's Animal Liberation, it helped bring the plight of animals under industrial agriculture and research to light. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it has both the strengths and the weaknesses of the animal rights movement.

The film's strongest point is its use of undercover footage at labs, slaughter houses, and other venues to uncover animal abuse. The footage and commentary obtained is graphic and genuinely disturbing. Although much of what is shown is easily available on the Internet today, for the time it was made it was a genuinely disturbing revelation.

However, the film also suffers from being overly radical, with some of its commentary pieces even inducing laughter. The film posits an extremist utilitarian argument that places animals on basically the same footing as humans in terms of happiness. One can oppose the mistreatment of animals and still eat meat. In probably the most laugh inducing scene, we see a pair of animal rights activists handing out pamphlets in New York. When one woman refers to her pets, the female animal rights activist tells her to "liberate her language." We can only presume they edited out the parts where passersby laughed at them.

The most disturbing bit, however, is the positive depiction of the Animal Liberation Front. The film follows a group of ALF "activists" as they prepare to do a raid on a lab. Given that the ALF has evolved into an at least borderline terrorist organization, it is hard to take the film's praise of them at all seriously, and it seriously undermines the film's overall message.

This movie is so goofy. The music is by Robert Wyatt, aka Soft Machine. It's a bunch of synth-y noodling and ambient, wannabe Brian Eno-type stuff. Still pretty effective, but says more about the filmmakers intentions than the actual footage being shown. Like the creepy music they play when they want to make someone with a mullet seem sinister.

Julie Christie narrates it, and she sounds really prissy. Other prissy people include the gay pro-animal rights man-on-the-street interviewer, the gay guy he interviews, the mixed Ziggy Stardust, foolish-looking woman, and several Brits. Ray Krock is also featured.

Highlights include the de-beaking of chicks, floors that drain poo, a wasp pestering a weakling chick ("a mother could have helped it"), on-set footage of a McDonald's commercial ("Ronald harvests the hamburgers from the hamburger patch"), guts spilling out of a cow (complete with exploding bladder), radiation experiments on donkeys ("anal ulcers", says Christie), post-nuke pigs, hog-sow "rape", Long Island-y/jewish lady, LSD test on a monkey, and the dramatic last gasp of a white lab rat.

The most unbelievable part to me was the footage of a Japanese experiment sponsored by the Harbin clinic. They attach the head and forelegs of one dog onto the back of another. It's freaky.

This film actually does provide food for thought about the purposes of animal experiments, suggesting that they may pave the way for how humans are teated in the future. The footage with monkeys is by far the most thought-provoking in this light. Frightening and sad at times, but also entertaining.