In 1973 animal rights were not in the forefront as today. Yet, in the scene where the little dog was killed seemed awfully real. Given the fact of primitive special effects and poor editing, I tend to feel that the slaughter was real.
Someone tell me "it aint so"!
I saw the film last night - and I thought the same thing. Im pretty sure the dead dog was for real; especially considering the other blood effects just looked like curry sauce..
Plus that guy did look like he really whacked the poor thing with his stick =(
Oh my gosh, I can't believe I found this post! A friend of mine actually snuck this movie into my collection because he's amused at the size of my DVD collection and likes to sneak in obscure movies to see if I'll actually notice. Funny stuff! Anyway, I actually watched it and I agree that a dog was killed in this movie and was completely shocked after seeing it. I personally love dogs but I couldn't help but laugh as I watched the scene over and over again. Not because a dog was possibly killed, but because something like that could actually make its way into a movie!
"In other words, Ron Burgandy was..The Balls."
How many do you have? I have almost 3,600 (half of which are in collections).
-Nam
It looks like they really did kill the dog otherwise they gave it some kind of tranquilizer.
shareas long as the crew ate the dog after filming the scene, I'll be okay...
Come to me! I vant to schtatt!
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No way! That dog was somebody's pet and the owner was probably makin' sure the anesthesia they were giving him was done so properly. Did you see how well he performed? Besides, we don't see the stick hit him. Plus, he disappears out of the burial hole after shaft offs the slave trader. That dog died 10 years later, otherwise they would of used him in Porky's.
shareSurely you jest. The dog was slaughtered.
shareAnd "Faces of Death" is real too, right?
shareThe reaction from the dog getting hit from the stick cannot be faked, it looked very real to me, i recall you actually do see it getting struck, perhaps some saw an edited cut.
Kinda disgusting they would kill a dog just for a movie.
Even more sick is the fact some IMDB board members think it's a joke and laugh about it, says much about them, maybe they are just immature kids though.
M
http://www.darkrealmfox.com/
I find it bizarre that no definitive information can be found on this subject (and, yes, I've looked hard). This leads me to conclude that the "dog slaughter" isn't real.
I've watched an uncut version of the film, and no, you do not see the dog hit with the stick. But the shot with the assailant then kicking the "corpse" of the dog away looks awfully real.
I'm extremely uncomfortable with the whole thing, though. Spoils my enjoyment of the film.
I was drawn by that scene too. It really looked awfully a lot like that was a real slaughtered dog. And given these movies aren't exactly blockbusters, I totally expect they did not went through the trouble of creating a realistic prop and it really just was a real dead dog. How they found it and how it came to its end is another (unknown) story of course.
shareReal dog?
I feel it is.
Was it killed for the production?
I don't think so.
For the most part movies are rarely film in sequence. A to B to C. Things get in the way: bad weather, sick actors, poor location management, equipment failure; the list goes on and on.
It's common to film the ending first since they may only have that particular location available to them for a limited time. With that in mind, it's shoot what we can and when we can - fix it in editing. Unless you have a huge budget and a director with the clout to do as he/she pleases, "Shaft In Africa" wasn't one of those pictures.
Here's what I think happened. They saw an opportunity and seized it. The production was filming and finds a dead stray. They write up a scene to incorporate that animal. The payoff, the line about about only one man dying and two dogs.
They film the burial and Shaft's fight with his would be assassin. They then do a search for a dog which looked like the dead canine. Not all that hard to do. Scenes with Shaft and the living dog are lensed. Bring it all together in editing; a graphic moment. And a great line.
It was suppose to disturb you. They succeeded.
It was very likely a real dog. Indicators:
- The movie was made on a $2 million budget. To make a scene like that and make it look real without being real would cost a lot, and the scene is simply not important enough to the plot to justify spending a lot of money on it.
- It was 1973. "Animal rights" were virtually non-existent then. The "Bible" of the animal rights' movement, Peter Singer's Animal Liberation was not published until two years later, in 1975.
- Again, it was 1973. The technology to make it look that real was also almost non-existent. It could be done, but would cost huge amounts of money.
- The movie was filmed on location in Addis Ababa, not in a studio. To stage a scene like that on location would be very difficult.
- Ethiopia, where the movie was filmed, has a huge problem of stray dogs causing human deaths. So huge that in 2007, the government wanted to kill tens of thousands of dogs by putting strycnine-laced meat out for them. You can read about it on: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20591166/ns/world_news-africa/t/ethiopia-kill-tens-thousands-stray-dogs/ . So, if the film crew wanted to kill a dog, they would probably have no problems with the local authorities in doing so.
- The biggest hint, however, is that the studio has never denounced using a real dog and killed it.