Ok I'm a softy and don't like seeing animals dying ... and have held off watching this as I have been told the "red pony" dies ... is that true?
shareYes, and the scene of the boy discovering his pet's body is the most harrowing in the picture. See the "Buzzard Scene" post before deciding whether to watch. I wouldn't recommend the movie to most children under 10 or so for this reason. The rest of the movie is quite good and watchable.
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Yes, the pony dies, but I thought the "carcass" was so obviously fake looking that I thought maybe it was one of the boy's fantasies, rather than fact. It seems odd that the pony's body was so fake looking, but the buzzard scene was remarkably real looking.
Nobody gets to be a cowboy forever.
I was a young child when I saw it, it was sad about the pony's death, but in the 1950s it was not uncommon for children to see dead animals. A sick pet was more likely to be put down than taken to a vet. Dogs roamed freely and were often hit by cars or trucks. It was a less complicated time.
shareI'll just have to go and have a soda pop before that scene arrives. Don't think I could take it.
shareThe movie had a happier ending than the books. Rosie (Nellie), the mother horse dies, too, in the third book. But Tom (Jody) gets his colt. He was sad she would die, but didn't put up the fight he did in the movie to stop it.
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Dylan Dog: You know what they say about hindsight: it'll screw you every time.
I thought it was quite ridiculous the Pony's death was meant to be tragic yet the Pony caused itself to die by wandering off in the rain for the second time. It felt like a silly element to the film.
"I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not".
So you blame the pony for its own death. Do you seriously think a pony has enough reasoning power to know it will die if it runs off alone? Please say you're joking.
"The value of an idea has nothing to do with the honesty of the man expressing it."--Oscar Wilde
say you're joking."
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He was joking.
The scene wasn't terrible and sort of predictable in that the film had --somewhat-- of a realistic tone. As for kids watching it that may be a bit rough. Like when Mitchum uses the knife on the pony.
Kisskiss, Bangbang
As a grown woman, I've now just viewed this film for the first time, and now I know why my parents shied away from letting me see it when I was a child! My mother put the same kibosh on Bambi...
Oddly enough we always had pets in the house and witnessed their demises, burials, etc -- yet I was strenuously shielded from....movies with dead animals?
I am sensitive when it comes to animal deaths in films. But the actual death of the animal isn't shown. So 'The Red Pony' does skip a lot of the poignancy of such scenes. Instead the film wards off the poignancy by showing the boy getting angry with the buzzards feeding on the carcass. Also the boy's closeness to his pony during the film was not so heart-warming as in other films. To me the boy seemed to be involved with the duty of keeping an animal. There seemed to be a lack of emotional bonding between the two shown in the film.
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