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How many horses do they kill shooting this film?

posted 13 years ago by brunofortunati
3 replies | jump to latest

Just so it for the first time and i liked it a lot, i wasnt expecting it to be so good. The characters are memorable and well played, the story is simple but keeps u well intrigued, thers quite a progressist moral to the epilogue given it was shot in 39´ too. What impressed me the most was the indian attack on the stagecoach scene, it was simply awesome!

Those horses look like they´re really going fast! and the extras are really good! or maybe stupid idk, im pretty sure it wouldnt be possible to make a scene like that today, people wouldnt stand to what they do to the horses in this movie and i bet some of the indian stuntmen broke some bones too. Anyone has this info?

Anywho the scene is great and is well shot too, has some very nice angles on the horses. I wasnt really expecting well choreographed action scenes for the fights since i recently watched Red River and The Searchers wich are like 10 and 20 yers older respectively and both have dissapointing fight scenes. I wonder if it was Fords hand on both Stagecoach and The Searchers action scenes and why he couldnt step it up even with far better technology and experience 20 years later...

Have to say the stagecoach drivers voice was a nice surprise, well casted and directed, the characters where good all around (the drunken doctor was fun). I was surprised too about the indian characters being indians and the mexican characters being really mexican and speaking spanish having lines at all! Some of them had lines in spanish and they sounded very natural, hell! even Wayne has lines in spanish! Have to say i dont understand the regression on Hollywood films on this subject. Any ideas on this?

[–] rosarypliers 11 years ago

Yakima Canutt, who coordinated the horse stunts in this movie (and others) once claimed he did between 200 and 300 "Running W"s and never killed or maimed a single horse.
I don't want to defend the practice, but if you go into slow-motion you can see that the horses are actually taking a tumble in soft sand, and that they all continue to run after getting up.
Yak Canutt can be seen during the Indian attack scene, too, he's the Indian who rides up to the front, jumps on one of stagecoach horses, falls off it and is run over by the stagecoach.

You may cross-examine.

[–] zingzangspillip 11 years ago

The actor who plays Buck is Andy Devine. He was in quite a few John Ford films, in particular 'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance'.

We're all in it together.

[–] ScreenwriterVA 11 years ago

IMDB itself says the "Running W" caused "many horses either being killed outright or having to be destroyed because of broken limbs incurred during the falls. The use of the "Running W" was eventually discontinued after many complaints from both inside and outside the film industry." Makes the horse scenes very difficult to watch.