Claude Jarman, Jr. & Flag

What makes you cry at the movies? Farewell scenes like the one between Kirk Douglas and Jean Simmons in Spartacus? Joyous reunions like the one at the end of Dodsworth? Or maybe the death of a child (The Marrying Kind) or someone struck down in their prime by a terminal illness as in Dark Victory or Terms of Endearment? No matter what you come up with though, nothing works on a more primeval level for me than an on-screen animal death. Yes, it’s sad to see humans die too but animals, particularly pets, seem so much more innocent and defenseless, especially when they meet their end at the hands of men. And probably the first film to really leave a scar on my psyche was Old Yeller which I saw as a child during its original theatrical release.  

Old Yeller (1957)

I haven’t seen it since and have no idea how it would hold up now but I still have very clear memories of the movie because it was more intense and dramatic than any live-action children’s film I had previously seen. Part of its appeal was identifying with the two boys, Tommy Kirk and Kevin Corcoran, left to help their mother (Dorothy MacGuire) manage their Texas farm while the father (Fess Parker) was away on a long cattle drive. The real emotional connection, however, was between Kirk and the stray dog his family adopts. What child couldn’t relate to that? What I didn’t expect – from a Walt Disney movie, no less – were scenes of frightening intensity; Kirk being attacked by a wild hog, his dog being wounded while attempting to protect him, and an attack by a rabid wolf later in the film which gives Old Yeller rabies. The most upsetting part, of course, was watching the dog go mad and try to attack his owners, resulting in an ending where Kirk has to shoot and kill his beloved companion. What a nightmare scenario for a boy and his dog. It might as well have been a Greek tragedy considering the profound emotional impact it had on me. It also sparked an intense but short-lived obsession with rabies and the fear of getting it.  Thanks to Movie Morlock RHS, I am now hooked on Polish film posters so I have to include this one of Old Yeller. 

Old Yeller

The Yearling (1946)

A few years later I was enjoying a summer film series for kids every Saturday at the Westover Theatre in Richmond, Virginia. It was a great lineup with Jerry Lewis in The Geisha Boy, The 7^th Voyage of Sinbad, The Littlest Hobo and others but one film stood out from the rest and didn’t seem to belong in the series at all. I didn’t have the words to describe it at the time but morbid and depressing will do just fine in expressing my feelings about it. The Yearling also felt like a movie for adults, not children, and the specter of death hovered over the entire film. One of my most vivid memories of the movie is the character of Fodderwing (Donn Gift), the crippled friend of Jody (Claude Jarman, Jr.), whose premature death is followed by a string of tragedies. After Old Yeller, though, I was prepared for the worst in regards to “Flag,” the fawn who becomes Jody’s constant companion. When “Flag” becomes a threat to the family’s corn crop, the deer must be destroyed. And part of Jody’s passage into manhood demands that he put his pet out of its misery after his mother seriously wounds it with her gun. The Yearling was probably the blackest day of my kiddie matinee moviegoing. I couldn’t even shed a tear over Flag’s death because I was too numb.  

The Yearling

 Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)

I haven’t seen too many films where a duck figured prominently in the plot but this exciting fantasy-adventure based on the Jules Verne novel (and currently in theatres as a 3-D remake starring Brendan Fraser) introduces a character named Hans (Peter Ronson), who joins an expedition into the bowels of the earth and brings along Gertrude, his pet duck. As they journey into the unknown, they are stalked by the evil, corpulent Count Saknussem (Thayer David) who wants to sabotage their mission in order to establish his own reputation as a discoverer. Desperate circumstances force the explorers and the Count to team up and, Gertrude eventually becomes the Count’s dinner after a particularly exhausting encounter with giant lizards and a centrifugal force field leaves everyone exhausted and asleep. Luckily, we are spared the sight of Gertrude’s slaughter but we do see the tell-tale trail of bloody feathers that Hans discovers after the fact. And despite the just desserts awaiting the Count, I missed Gertrude’s presence the rest of the movie. 

Gertrude the Duck, Lorenzo Lamas & Arlene Dahl

The Three Lives of Thomasina (1963)

Karen Dotrice & Thomasina

This one may be a bit of a cheat since the title character doesn’t actually die but has a near-death experience. Thomasina is a cat that roams a bucolic village in Scotland and is instrumental in altering the lives of several characters in it. After she is injured in an accident and slated for extermination by her owner (Patrick McGoohan), a veterinarian who believes the cat has tetanus, Thomasina is “brought back to life” by Lori (Susan Hampshire), a mysterious local healer but not before having a major out-of-body experience in cat heaven…or more appropriately in some waiting room outside cat heaven. This sequence is bound to raise all sorts of questions with kids such as “Is there a separate heaven for cats than dogs?,” “Will I be reunited with Snowball (insert your favorite cat name) when I go to heaven?,” “If there’s a cat heaven, is there a cat hell?” Of course, it’s clear to me that cat afterlife – at least according to Walt Disney – is some crazy pagan fantasyland mixing up Egyptian iconography with Michael Powell fever dreams like A Matter of Life and Death. I remember not caring for Thomasina’s voiceover narration or Karen Dotrine as Mary, the little girl who loves her and becomes deathly ill after her cat’s disappearance. The intriguing thing about the movie was the passionate relationship that develops between Karen’s uptight, repressed father and the beautiful, free-spirited Lori and is brought to an emotional head in a tearjerking finale accompanied by thunder, lighting and Thomasina’s reappearance. 

The Victors (1963)

Although critics were particularly hard on this sprawling, episodic war epic – calling it pretentious and sanctimonious – I perceived it as an important and profound film as a teenager, having not yet seen more eloquent reflections on the futility of war such as Kubrick’s Paths of Glory. One incident, in particular, haunted me for years. Weaver (Peter Fonda), a naive, young recruit, befriends a stray puppy and then his outfit has to depart for combat.. The puppy faithfully tags along after the truck and Weaver’s jaded comrades-in-arms decide to get in a little target practice. We see the whole cruel episode played out on Weaver’s shocked and incredulous face.

Ken Loach's Kes

Kes (1969)

Still considered one of Ken Loach’s finest films, Kes is a harsh, unsentimental and ultimately heartbreaking story about Billy, a fifteen-year-old working class youth who lives in the industrial town of Barnsley, Yorkshire. Alternately abused and ignored at home, Billy’s life at school isn’t much better until he discovers the nest of a kestrel falcon and adopts one of the fledgings, learning to raise and train it with the encouragement of a schoolteacher. While on the surface Kes appears to be a simple story of a boy and his pet falcon, Loach’s film cuts much deeper in its exploration of England’s class-conscious education system which gives economically deprived students like Billy little hope for the future or preparation for it. The boy’s real education begins when he teaches himself how to care for his falcon; it’s a relationship that gives meaning to his life for the first time and also instills in him a confidence he never had before. Though the film ends on a tragic, emotionally devastating note – Loach gives you tough love all the way – there is still a glimmer of hope that Billy will persevere and continue on his road to independence.

Mad Max's dog

The Road Warrior (1981)

 

 

 

 

It’s hard to pick a favorite character in George Miller’s colorful, adrenalin-charged action-adventure but I lean toward Mad Max’s scruffy mutt with no name who has the survival instincts of a ninja and the demeanor of a junkyard dog. It never occurred to me that he might not make it to the end of the movie so his demise had an unexpected punch to it. At least Miller had the decency to shield us from his heartless murder by crossbow. You see the dog, growling and prepared to protect his severely wounded master, as a barbarian assassin approaches with the weapon. The villain aims it, fires and we only hear a quick, piercing yelp. That was one arrow to the heart that I really felt and I feel it every time I see the movie, one of the great escapist fantasies of the eighties. 

Sigourney Weaver as Dian Fossey

Gorillas in the Mist (1988)

I already knew in advance that this dramatization of Dian Fossey’s life and her work with the wild gorillas in the rain forests of Rwanda was going to be emotionally manipulative and a total downer. Yet the simian deep inside me compelled me to see it…but it was painful,.as if I was being forced to relearn a lesson I already knew. Do you think it’s wrong to cut off gorillas’ hands and market them to tourists as cigarette ashtrays? Do you think it’s wrong to kill adult gorillas and sell their children to zoos? Do you see gorillas as animals with any discernable human traits? The problem with movies like Gorillas in the Mist is that they only attract audiences already sympathetic to their viewpoint and the poachers of the world could care less. Still, my fascination with my furry ancestors compelled me to sit through this and toughen up for the inevitable tragedy that lay ahead. Fossey’s discovery of Digit’s body – his head and hands are cut off – is an overpowering moment even if you try to maintain an emotional distance from the horror. It might be only a movie but the reality is that it really happened and is still happening in places where the mountain gorillas are unprotected from poachers. 

Matthew Broderick & Willie

Project X (1989)

This is a lighthearted entertainment compared to Gorillas in the Mist but it shares a thematic concern with the latter film in its condemnation of man’s exploitation of primates for their own interests. In this case, the Air Force is conducting a secret experiment that tests how pilots are affected by radiation levels in the event of nuclear war. Of course, real pilots aren’t used. Instead, chimpanzees are the guinea pigs and you’ve never met a more lovable group of monkeys. There is a romantic subplot involving Helen Hunt, one of the chimp’s trainers, and Matthew Broderick, an Air Force pilot assigned to the project as punishment for insubordination but the movie is more effective in dramatic terms when it focuses on the endangered chimps. The scene that tears my heart out is one where we see one of the chimps in a flight simulator test and then, in a series of slow-motion shots, see his fear turn to sudden shock and pain as lethal amounts of radiation are sent through his body in waves. The scene doesn’t need James Horner’s sad, emotionally manipulative music to drive home the tragedy and coax your tearducts to open but it’s guaranteed to reach the bawling baby inside you.  

Project X

I’m sure I’m overlooking several other famous tearjerking scenes involving animal deaths in movies although I did consider mentioning the pigeon slaughter scene in On the Waterfront as well as sadly memorable moments from Birdman of Alcatraz and the recent documentary, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill (2005).