No animals were harmed in the typing of this thread.

Factual Questions
1

I used to watch a lot of old American films when I was a kid and inevitably there’d be some sort of chase or battle on horseback. Often this would incorporate horses being shot or otherwise fictionally harmed with the result that they’d fall down, flail their legs a lot and roll over.

How is this managed? I wouldn’t have thought that horses would naturally make this move and it must be difficult to train them to do. I can understand the rolling over bit, they must do that fairly often naturally. It’s the charging along at full pelt and then rolling over that I am puzzled by. Doesn’t the animal get at least slightly bruised? Dangers of flailing legs getting entangled?

2

Those old scenes of horses falling violently are exactly why modern films have the “no animals were harmed” disclaimer, to distinguish them from the old films in which they were.

3

Cecil covered this.

4

I don’t know about the training involved or the frequency of bruises, but I remember reading that the horses would fall into a pit of soft sand to reduce the risk of hurting them or the rider. For a long time the horses were also always trained to fall onto the same side. That’s something you can watch for when viewing the old movies.

5

They used a device called a “running W”:

It is now banned under ASPCA regulations.

6

One of the most infamous movies in this respect was The Charge of the Light Brigade with Errol Flynn. 200 dead horses = one turkey of a movie.

7

I doubt if Apocalypse Now! had the “no animals were harmed” disclaimer when those guys hacked that water buffalo (wasn’t it?) to pieces. I seem to recall the docu about the “making of” saying they had to time the shooting of that scene to coincide with when the villagers did that bit as part of some local celebration or feast or something. All this from memory, so I may be wrong.

Anybody see Gummo?

8

For a look at modern techniques, the special features section of “The Return of the King” had a segment on the training of their horses for battle, liberty (ie Shadowfax), and trick scenes (such as when the horse lays down next to Aragorn – HILARIOUS outtakes of the horse that just could not learn that scene – they had to change horses).

Horses excel at learning sequences of behavior.

As others have said, things were different when the old-time westerns were filmed and yes, many horses were hurt/killed.

9

I was about to post this scene as well, anyone know the straight dope offhand?