The Animals Film

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.

One day, back at High School, on an excange trip, some vegan Animal Rights hippies were showing us some films in class, trying to brainwash us, the students, and the teachers in to becoming vegans and animal rights activist.

Sure, I love animals and I support Animal Well Fare, but Animal Rights is not a glamorous nor good thing. The people whom did this documentary portray scientists whom research and test on rodents to find cures for diseases or try new medicines (To help BOTH people and animals) as being psychotic and taking pleasure out of killing, which is NOT true most times! In fact, I think the Animal Rights organizations are more cruel than the scientists and farmers.

Besides, most people in the world do not take pleasure out of killing animals and letting them rot. Most who do, are either poachers or psycho/sociopaths.

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/

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?

On a cold afternoon in January 1982, after a protest against the sale of live animals in street markets, I attended a screening of this film in a London hotel. The screening had been arranged by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection, one of the sponsors of this film. I could not have been prepared for what I would experience during the two hour + film. It was an experience I would never forget and one that would change my life The film deals with the abuse of animals by humankind, in laboratories, for sport, as pets and for food production, it is a mixture of modern and historical footage from around the world, horrifying, haunting scenes that assault the senses. It is impossible not to be moved to tears, to feel shame at the abuse of the non human species in the name of science, greed and vanity. It is monstrously horrific from beginning to end, but it is also a must see movie. Having watched the film make just one change in your life and make the world a little better for our animal friends. The film has been released on a 25th anniversary DVD. Buy it, watch it and pass it on to someone else!