The Animals Film

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.

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.

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!

"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.

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.