When watching Hong Kong cinema, it seems that the East has a very different attitude towards animals. Snakes get opened up, chickens are beheaded, and rats get burnt alive. Some of the movies dealt with in this article are isolated examples of animal cruelty in Hong Kong cinema, and some of the doggy deaths and chicken choking discussed are faked, but not all of them. If you are a wheezing, unhealthy vegetarian who complains that beagles smoking is a bad thing (if you can muster the strength), you had better stop reading now, because I'm not always going to condemn such cinematic moments. In fact, I'm mainly going to take the piss.

"It looks like a caramel sweet. With legs"

The Yeun Woo Ping directed 'Dreadnaught' (1981) is a good example. In the film, Mousey (Yeun Biao) is stalked by a crazed killer named White Tiger against the backdrop of a Chinese opera company. At one point White Tiger spends a psychotic few minutes perched under a table, finds a cockroach, and does the obvious thing. He slowly pulls its head off, treating us to a close-up shot of a cockroach head being removed, drawing icky invertebrate roach guts from their crispy shell. It looks like a caramel sweet. With legs.

Later in the film we see the funniest death of a toad in cinematic history. While obviously (hopefully?) faked, I never thought that the death of an amphibian could be so hilarious. Mousey is hiding in one of several water barrels, and White Tiger sees bubbles rising to the surface of the water in one of them. It isn't Mousey making air biscuits after a dodgy chow mein as you might think. On reaching into the water, White Tiger retrieves the culprit, a toad, which he throws at high speed into the wall next to him. We all know what the last thing to go through the toad's mind was. Its spine.

Just in case you are in any doubt that White Tiger is nuttier than a squirrel's doo-doo, he then picks up a chicken, and rips its head off with his bare hands. It's an impressively clean amputation considering the method, but just in case the audience suspects some clever trickery, the head and body are thrown at Mousey, and the back end of the chicken does a backflip that puts the rest of the cast to shame.

"We all know what the last thing to go through the toad's mind was. Its spine"

In the classic 'Mr. Vampire' (1985), a newly resurrected blood sucker is confronted with two goats. We hear, but don't see, the sounds of something bleating, and a real dead goat falls to the ground. Fine, it is obvious that the goat was killed by a local butcher, and not the actor playing the vamp, but as Pink Floyd once said, 'Hey, creature! Leave those kids alone'

The longest suffering animal seems to be the chicken. Bare in mind that it is not uncommon across Asia to buy a live chicken, and kill it yourself in time for supper. We in the vacuum packed, fresh-frozen West might not like the idea, but the animal is still going to be eaten, and killing it yourself at least guarantees freshness. In this context, is killing a chicken for a movie necessarily such a shocking thing? It's not like they're cute or anything.

In Sammo Hung's 'Encounter of the Spooky Kind' (1980) Courageous Cheung, played by the oversized yet athletic Sammo, is victimized by a Taoist priest/wizard who has been employed to use his powers to dispose of the chubby chappy. One of the many tools the priest uses is a headless chicken's blood, taken from a chicken which clearly had a head at the start of the scene. One slice ensures that we get to see the collection and consumption of the life giving fluid. Surprisingly, the scene was present in the UK version of the film, despite the British Board of Film Classification having very strict rules on the portrayal of animal cruelty.

In the aforementioned 'MR. Vampire', Lam Ching Ying seems to revel in animal slaughter. Portraying the vampire-busting priest he came to be best known as, he uses a couple of animals in the name of factually dubious Taoist rituals.

"The longest suffering animal seems to be the chicken"

Spotting the possibility of a local man going for a posthumous walk, he turns to his assistants Ricky Hui and Chin Siu Ho. He requests 'yellow paper, red brush, black ink, a chopper and a wooden sword', and then produces a sacrifice. 'Master, another chicken?' asks Ricky Hui. Obviously Mr Vampire has done this before. He pulls its head back, allowing Chin Siu Ho to make a swift slice through the neck. Before the chicken has a chance to write to the Actor's Guild, its blood is collected in a bowl and mixed with ink.

Later in the film, a real, but thankfully already dead, snake is opened up, and what looks like a blue M&M is removed. This is crushed and mixed into what looks like mint sauce.

"A real, but thankfully already dead, snake is opened up, and what looks like a blue M&M is removed"

It is unclear why Lam Ching Ying and the Taoist priest community hates chickens and snakes so much. Maybe some of them have childhood memories of being chased by particularly irritable beasties, or maybe they know something we don't. What happens, for instance, when chickens develop opposable thumbs? They will destroy us all - or beat us at Tekken. The fact is, in the movies, these guys just love to take individual pieces of animals and do magic tricks with them. They could run a nice sideline in doing children's parties.

"Portraying the vampire-busting priest he came to be best known as, he uses a couple of animals in the name of factually dubious Taoist rituals"

Speaking of snakes, 'Calamity of Snakes' (1986) is one movie which really pushes the boundaries of 'Snaixploitation' movies. A tower block is overrun by the legless wonders, which for the duration of the film get sliced, diced, stamped on, and even run over by a car - and not a long thin coffin in site.

Even family favourite Jackie Chan has a go. In 'Drunken Master II' (1994), Jackie (portraying HK mainstay Wong Fei Hug) has to pass through the first class compartment of a train to retrieve his father's valuable gen-sing. He is stopped by a guard, and decides to create a diversion by unleashing an army of ducks and chickens. For a moment, it seems that the fowl are staging a revolution. The winged proletariat decide to overthrow the featherless bourgeoise, and cause chaos amongst the buck-toothed humans eating their 13 course meals. One duck, however, doesn't seem to agree. One duck is so institutionalised that, in a blink-and-you-miss-it moment, throws himself into a flaming wok, and flaps like his wings are on fire, which they are. Then again, did he jump, or was he pushed?

Chickens are a common target, but even dogs don't seem to be safe. In Tsui Hark's bleak period masterpiece 'The Blade' (1995), a dog walks through the desolate streets of an impoverished Chinese town, and sees a tasty morsel perched invitingly in the jaws of an iron animal trap. The nearest McDonalds is obviously a bit of a long walk (and a 200 year wait) for the toothless peasants awaiting their dog-meat based meal, but the finished product was probably similar.

If there's one movie that genuinely disturbs even the most hardened viewer in its treatment of animals, it has to be the infamous 'Men Behind The Sun' (1990). It is well documented that many of the set-pieces in this uncompromising movie are 100% legit, and it is safe to say that a general release in the West is unlikely. In one scene, a live cat is exposed to dozens of hungry rats. What follows is not pretty, or faked. Later on, we witness rats being burnt alive, flailing and writhing in agony.

To put these scenes into a wider context, the movie deals with events which really occurred in a Manchurian concentration camp built by the Japanese during World War II to develop biological weapons. The viewer has to ask if the treatment of these animals is justified when weighed up against the strong message of the film.

"Chickens are a common target, but even dogs don't seem to be safe."

Whether actual or faked, there are many examples in Hong Kong cinema of animals being treated in a way that Hollywood, and the majority of the American themselves would find unacceptable.

Many American movies feature acts of fictional violence towards humans without any significant repercussions, yet if an animal is portrayed as getting hurt, the complaints come flooding in.

As for the treatment of actual living animals on-set, there is a massive cultural and procedural difference. Look at the fate of the chickens who met Lam Ching Ying, then consider what happened on the set of American prison drama 'The Shawshank Redemption' (1994).

In one scene, a maggot is found in the festering gruel that the protagonist is expected to eat. An eccentric elderly inmate asks if he may have it, and feeds it to a sparrow which he has been nursing back to health. The use of a live sparrow required a representativeaf the American Humane Society to oversee the welfare of the bird, but it wasn't until they came to shoot the scene that they realised that the maggot's safety also had to be catered for!

It seems that while the U.S. makes sure that every tadpole in a movie gets its own trailer, Hong Kong doesn't worry itself over such concerns. Personally, I look forward to John Woo's ultra-violent live action remake of 'Watership Down', or even better - Anthony Wong could do 'Bambi'. And I mean do Bambi.

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Russ Houghton
02/13/2002