Pointless Animal Butchery

I'm sure in its time this film was considered groundbreaking for portraying a lesbian couple, bravely revealing the nature of their relationship in the last 10 minutes - after everyone else (even in 1968) has figured it out - as if the shock value could redeem the insipid tedium that preceded it. But for me it was more noteworthy for its relentless slaughter of real animals (no props, no squibs)in service to its clumsy simplistic metaphors.(A fox in a henhouse: so clever; vanquishing his rival with his big phallic tree: so subtle). The most egregious example was Keir Dullea pouring out a headless, still-writhing chicken's blood on the snow to lure out a fox, whom he then kills and we later see in ghoulish closeup staked out on the barn door. Director Mark Rydell could just as easily have hammered home his hamfisted images without such graphic real-life carnage. Killing animals for food, for warmth, sure...but for a movie?