Quote:
Originally Posted by scribbler  My mention of the 'animal cruelty free' version, an easy enough purchase if I wanted it (albeit with the full version), but I never have.
Because the animals aren't being slaughtered onscreen, I'm still aware that they were. |
Which I totally respect.
That to me is the only way to make a stand against this film IF you so wish to.
Buying (indeed even ****ing producing) the 'animal cruelty free' version is farcical hypocrisy.
For me the animal death WAS a problem and the only reason it took me many years to see the film.
On a visit to Amsterdam about 7 years ago (i'm 39) I found the old 'EC' DVD and...with much thought...decided to get it.
My reasoning was brutally honest.
I decided that quite frankly animals are routinely snuffed out for absolutely no good reason at all every second of every day all around the world.
From fur coats to battery chicken farms, to puppies in cages in a Korean market.
Indeed for less than a classic genre film.
NOT seeing the film will not bring the animals back or change a single thing about their deaths...as I have no time machine to stop the killing (and indeed why I fail to see how cutting a film - often to its ruin - somehow makes things okay).
The deed was done, it was done years ago without any help or support from me.
So I condemn the initial killings...but it's too late now and so we have to live with it if we want to see the film.
So my desire to see "Cannibal Holocaust" most certainly overruled my objection to animals deaths that had already occurred and had nothing to do with me.
Damned if I'm going to miss a chance to see a film so damn good (which it is) because of some long time dead animals, while all along countless other animals are dying just as (if not more) meaningless deaths everywhere while I think upon it.
The important thing is that it is not allowed to happen again or continue.
And Hell, If I was a little critter I'd rather die for "Cannibal Holocaust" than for an egg or a handbag.
And...
yes I'll say it...the fact is, in this superbly atmospheric and authentic Jungle environment, in a film such as this as far as story and other content goes, because you know that these are real animal deaths they DO add a bleakly powerful aspect to the film.
It adds that veneer of mondo grotesqueness, unsettling darkness and air of uncompromising brutality to the other extreme elements of the film that are fantasy.
I wish that the animal deaths had not
originally occurred...but that is out of my hands and can't be changed. So I'll see what film we actually have anyway.
And it's still a damn good one. And until my time machine turns up...I can live with that quite nicely thank you.