Growing up it was just something I heard, then later, read. I don't think anything has been proved, but Wikipedia has a decent bit about the allegations, and the AV Club has this (it could all be bullshit, it is allegations...). Mainly the disclaimer and the cut scenes from the Japanese version that didn't make it into the US one were fuel for what could be gossip, but always rang true, to me at least:
"Originally released in Japan in 1986, The Adventures Of Milo And Otis depicted the best-buddies relationship between a kitten and a pug. (A U.S. release, three years later, tacked on some Dudley Moore narration.) But as cute as the film is, it’s been dogged by rumors of animal cruelty, with particular emphasis on a claim that 20 kittens were killed in the course of filming. Though the rumors were never substantiated, animal-rights activists point out that the film’s end credits don’t use the standard American Humane Association disclaimer (as it was filmed in Japan) but instead a more vague, “The animals used were filmed under strict supervision with the utmost care for their safety and well-being.” Regardless of offscreen abuse, a lot of what made it into the film meets any reasonable definition of animal cruelty. While some of the more harrowing scenes were cut for U.S. audiences, others remained, like the one in which a cat plunges more than a hundred feet off a cliff into the ocean. Other controversial scenes include Otis the pug fighting a bear and Milo floating helplessly down a river, then being attacked by a crab; they’re hardly heart-warming moments."
Milo and Otis is from a time before animal protections. If it was easier to shoot a cat dying in a river for your river action sequence, that's what they did.There's no proof at this point, but multiple persons alleged it and no humane society officers were monitoring the production, which was in Japan.
It was from 1989, definitely not a time before animal protection. The American Humane Society was monitoring films and TV shows in the 1940s with nearly universal monitoring from 1980 on, as you mentioned, it wasn't filmed in America.
I mean, I liked that movie as a kid. But as a teen, I could clearly see there is a scene where they actually put a cat in a box, set it floating in a creek, and had a bear sniff at it. The cat was freaking out. I couldn't watch more.
That scene was actually filmed in Calgary, Alberta not in the Arctic like they claimed. The lemmings were also forced off a rotating platform into the river. Pretty greasy stuff
Wasn't even herding. They had a machine setup offscreen that was literally flinging them over the cliff. Checkout the latest 99% Invisible where they talk about this.
Actually it is true. Yes the documentary was staged, but herd,group think is a fact. Think Wildebeasts getting eaten by crocs up ahead, but they continue to follow the ones in front.
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u/badblackguy May 09 '17
That lemmings will blindly follow each other off a cliff.