If you’re referring to the rumors of killing animals during filming, those appear to be false. Several Humane Societies even put their names on the movie. The belief might come from them using so many different cats and dogs, but that’s because it took 4 years to film and they kept aging.
That’s fantastic if it’s true. It was my favorite film growing up and the reason my family got a few pugs in the late-90s/early-00s (Holy shit, did the poor things have problems). But I’ve read time and time again that animals were hurled off cliffs, had their feet broken to force limping, etc. I never stopped loving the film itself, but it certainly cast a very dark shadow over the entire production.
Edit: Marked unproven (the animal abuse) on Snopes and basically appears to be a giant “who knows?” at this point, given the evident suffering seen in some of the shots (cat howling in pain with a crayfish hanging from its lip, being thrown from a sea cliff into the ocean, etc.), but despite tons of articles about it during the '90s, too much time has passed to really paint a clear picture anymore.
If you’re referring to the rumors of killing animals during filming, those appear to be false. Several Humane Societies even put their names on the movie. The belief might come from them using so many different cats and dogs, but that’s because it took 4 years to film and they kept aging.
That’s fantastic if it’s true. It was my favorite film growing up and the reason my family got a few pugs in the late-90s/early-00s (Holy shit, did the poor things have problems). But I’ve read time and time again that animals were hurled off cliffs, had their feet broken to force limping, etc. I never stopped loving the film itself, but it certainly cast a very dark shadow over the entire production.
Edit: Marked unproven (the animal abuse) on Snopes and basically appears to be a giant “who knows?” at this point, given the evident suffering seen in some of the shots (cat howling in pain with a crayfish hanging from its lip, being thrown from a sea cliff into the ocean, etc.), but despite tons of articles about it during the '90s, too much time has passed to really paint a clear picture anymore.