I saw a film a couple times in elementary school. In it, a boy is given a horse. Eventually, the horse gets stuck in mud and maybe they had to shoot it. The whole thing is shot in an extremely soft-focus. It’s not animated. It creeped me out.
Anyone have any ideas?
Crap, I think you saw a home video of the horrible summer I spent on a farm when I was a little kid. I loved that horse, and the incident haunts me to this very day.
Neverending Story? No guns, but the main character’s horse does drown in some mud.
Artax! Artax!!!
This would have been before that. I was in elementary school from '73-'79.
Possibly Run Wild, Run Free (1969).
The horse does most definitely get stuck in the mud/bog, but to say more would be spoiling.
And, BTW, If this is it, I have a copy.
The Disney film Swiss Family Robinson features a zebra stuck in the mud, but they get it out.
Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel The Hound of the Baskervilles has a pony stuck in the mud and dtying, but I don’t recall if that made it into any of the filmed versions.
I can’t recall anything with a boy, though, as you describe.
Run Wild, Run Free is the movie I was about to suggest.
“fuh-hill-ip”
If you remember a shot of a grim reaper who was thrown in for no reason, and is just supposed to be a figment of the boy’s imagination and a cheap way to startle the audience, RWRF is the film.
This reminds me of a similar memory that’s been bugging me. Instead of a horse in mud, it’s this scene:
A poor black family in the South, maybe sharecroppers, in a decrepit old house. The scene is out in front of the house. The young boy has a pet rooster in a small cage, and the mother tells him the family needs to eat his rooster. The boy cries, etc. The mother sheds a tear but is stoic and firm, tells him they must eat the rooster. Obviously trying to put on a brave face and teach the boy to be tough about such things. Then she pulls out a big carving fork, one of those two-pronged things you use when cutting a turkey, and tells the boy to kill the rooster with it! He eventually does as he’s told and starts jabbing the rooster in the cage with the big fork, crying hsyterically but, I assume, learning to be a strong man. Mother sheds a tear but seems firm in teachign her boy this lesson, whatever it is.
Horrible scene that still makes me shiver. I saw it when I was very young, and I think it was on PBS or at least was something ostensibly educational. Any ideas what this was??
It wasn’t one of these. The whole movie, as I remember it, was about the boy and his horse. Nothing fun like treehouses or Sherlock Holmes.
This has promise. I’ll do some more investigating this evening.
Does it look like it was shot through a haze of vaseline? And please spoil it. Maybe something else will sound familiar.
Either that or shot in really heavy fog
Philip cannot speak. He loves his horse. Boy and horse are riding at night. Horse gets stuck in bog. Rescuers find them. Boy is safe. Horse seems lost. Boy goes to horse, encourages it not to give up. Boy say “fuh-hil-up” a few times. He gives the horse the will to live. All live happily ever after
Definitely *Run Wild Run Free. *Saw that as a six year old, in the theater. Mark Lester was my first serious crush.