Animal Safety and Frogs (1972)

The year is 1972.  Sam Elliott doesn’t have the mustache that everyone knows and loves.  The laws against animal harm in movies are lacking.  PETA isn’t as big of a force as it would become.  People were beginning to care about the environment and this care bled into the movies.  All of these things came together in a movie called Frogs.

I could go on and on about how insane the movie Frogs is.  I mean, it’s a movie about frogs that can telepathically tell other animals to kill people because of the damage that people are doing to the environment.  That idea in itself is an insane idea that was similar to the concept of a recent Sunday “Bad” Movie called Birdemic.  The ways that people die are equally dumb and hilarious as the concept of the movie.  Yet that isn’t what I am going to write about.  Instead, I want to take a look at animals in movies.

Animals have been as much a part of movies as people have since the birth of the motion picture as an art form.  Some of the earliest recorded films have horses in them.  There are birds flying in them.  And recent movies have focused more heavily on animals.  Movies such as Turner and Hooch in the 1980s, Babe in the 1990s, and We Bought a Zoo in 2011 use animals as star players.  They use real animals as star players.  The animals end up being just as important to the story as their human counterparts.  Not that humans aren’t animals, but you get what I’m saying and meaning.  I hope.

The problem with animals in movies are that there are no stunt performers for animals.  The animals are the performer and that’s that.  In the age of computer animation, if the animals have to do something that isn’t necessarily safe, someone behind a computer can work magic and make it happen without putting the creature in harm’s way.  Before there were computers to do this work, however, animals had to do a lot of the dangerous stuff.  This is why you frequently see a credit at the end of a movie stating that “No animals were harmed during the production of this film.”

But many times, animals are harmed during production.  This once again dates back to the beginning of film, when not only animals were harmed.  Frequently, actors, stuntmen, and extras were harmed too.  The 1928 film Noah’s Ark is a good example of people being harmed when three people died and one lost a leg in a scene in which there was a flood.  It led to quick regulations being put in place for the safety of the cast and crew of movies.  Animals took a while longer to get any precautions set up for them.  The Charge of the Light Brigade would be a movie that helped set up regulations for the safety of animals in movies.  The 1936 film caused three dozen horses to suffer from broken legs and be put down.  The result was regulations to keep animals safe that haven’t always been followed.

Just a couple of years ago, in 2011, HBO aired a show about horseracing called Luck.  There was nothing too noteworthy about the show while it was on.  It wasn’t a show that too many people watched.  Nobody talks about the quality of the show or how much they enjoyed watching it.  It kind of just came and went.  Except for one detail.  The one thing that stands out in the history of the show Luck is the cancellation of it.  Normally, if a show got cancelled, that was it.  Nobody cared anymore if it didn’t have a following.  And since Luck didn’t have much of a following, it should have faded into obscurity.  But the reason that the show got cancelled was due to horse deaths.  Three horses had died on the show, two of them the result of racing related injuries. Surely that wasn’t the only reason the show was cancelled.  It probably had low viewers to blame as well.  Yet the fact that horses died did play a part in the cancellation.

As for something older and with animals that aren’t horses, The Swarm was release in 1978.  The movie is about a group of scientists trying to prevent a large swarm of killer bees from attacking American towns and cities.  There are moments during the movie in which fake swarms of bees are flying through the air from one place to another.  There are also many moments in the movie in which real bees are flying around people and the places where the people are.  One scene that springs to mind involves a person hiding in a car while the bees coat the hood and windshield.  The person turns on the windshield wipers and wipes many of the real insects away.  This surely results in the death/injury of many bees that were situated on the automobile.

Some of you may be sitting there reading this thinking “Who cares?  They’re bugs.”  Bugs are still living things.  Turning on a windshield wipers while the bugs are on the windshield might look nice from a visual standpoint (seeing one clean spot among a wall of bees is pretty cool), but the bugs are still living things.  Their lives are equal to those of frogs, birds, horses, dogs, gorillas, and humans.  Every life is a life, regardless of the vessel.  And yes, there are exceptions.  Killing for food, death sentence, put something out of its suffering… There are reasons to end the life of a living thing.  Killing for a movie is not one of the exceptions.  As much as you might find it interesting to see, that is no reason to end a life.  That’s like saying that you should kill your high school teacher because it will entertain you.  No.  You don’t do that kind of thing.

Now, what does any of this have to do with this week’s Sunday “Bad” Movie?  Why am I writing all of this stuff about animals being injured or killed in or as the result of movies?  Frogs is a movie that features a lot of real animals in it.  The title should tell you that there are real frogs in the movie.  They aren’t the only animals that you will see if you watch Frogs.  There are lizards, birds, snakes, and even a snapping turtle that help bring about the deaths of many characters.  Oh, and did I mention crocodiles?  Or are they alligators?  I never know the difference between the two.  Regardless, one of the two reptiles is in the movie.

It is my belief that animals were harmed during the making of Frogs.  Why would I make such a claim?  Let me give a few reasons.  First.  The opening scene involved the main character paddling his canoe through a lake filled with garbage and pollution.  Unless that water was already that dirty prior to filming, the people behind the movie did that to the water and likely caused the death of fish and other aquatic animals in the region.  Second.  People are throwing snakes like it’s nothing.  They could be fake snakes, but I doubt it.  They looked real.  Third.  A man is buried by frogs on the floor.  How did he get out of the frogs?  Did the entire crew come in take the frogs off of him one by one?  I don’t know.  This part likely didn’t cause injury.  Oh well.  Fourth.  A man wrestles an alligator/crocodile!  That is harm to an animal!

Even though regulations had been put into place to prevent any harmful actions involving animals, the movie business sometimes ignores these regulations in order to make something that looks fascinating.  Making an entertaining movie comes first to the people making the movie, and the safety of animals involved comes second.  Unless that animal is one of the bears named Bart.  Or that monkey from Animal Practice and Community.  In those cases the animals are treated like royalty.  In most cases, however, people don’t give a damn.  They just want entertainment.

Although animals have been important to the film industry since the beginning, they are still seen as far below humans.  Their safety isn’t as big of a concern as the safety of people.  In many instances, the safety of animals isn’t as big of a concern as the production.  That’s just the way it is.  Frogs helped to highlight why the safety of animals should be a concern.  Seeing harm done to them in order to make entertainment is frightening.

There are some notes that need to be left here before we wrap up for the week:

• Frogs was suggested for the Sunday "Bad" Movies by @JeramyWainwrigh.
• A man named Lance Taylor Sr. was in Frogs.  There is one other Sunday “Bad” Movie that he has been in.  That movie is Blacula.
• Other animal attack movies covered for the Sunday “Bad” Movies are Two-Headed Shark Attack, Shakma, Snakes on a Train, Big Ass Spider!, Birdemic, and the Anaconda movies.
• A few of the Sunday “Bad” Movies that featured real animals are Shakma, A Talking Cat!?!, Dig Your Grave Friend… Sabata is Coming, Winter’sTale, the Beverly Hills Chihuahua movies, and Old No. 587: The Great Train Robbery.
• Have you seen Frogs?  Have you seen any other movies that I’ve mentioned?  What movies featuring animal harm shocked you? What do you thing about endangerment vs. entertainment?  If you have any thoughts regarding this topic, feel free to comment below.
• If you have a movie you want to suggest for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, you can comment below, tell me on Twitter, or email me at sundaybadmovies@gmail.com.  Or you could do all three.
• The poll closed for what movie I will rewatch in two weeks for the two-year anniversary of the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  Four movies tied at one vote each, so I chose one of those four as the movie.  The winner was Winter’s Tale.
• Do you have questions for me about the Sunday “Bad” Movies, email me.  I’m trying to put together a post for the end of the month where I answer some questions.  I don’t want to be asking myself the questions.  Help me out people.  The email is in these notes.