After years and years of good taste and classy broadcasting, TCM (TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES) made a huge screw up today and showed the film TRADER HORN (1931) with film footage where two rhinos are brutally shot — one at close range who suffers horribly from a previous wound.
The footage is real and not staged.
I realize that this film is 80 years old and people used to kill big game for no reason, but today’s standards should have at least come with a warning from Robert Osbourne. He is quick to remind viewers when an upcoming film has racial language that seemed okay 70 years ago but is now not acceptable — he and/or TCM should have done the same thing before airing this film. It was disgusting to see. One rhino was shot at close range. You can tell the footage is real because the film has a different texture than the actual action shots with the real actors — probably second unit stuff filming actual hunters, but it was still staged by the actual hunters to match the actors.
TCM ought to air an apology for this horrible oversight. This sickened a lot of little children and any civil person who may have been watching. This aired at 8:20EST and already TheDamienZone.com has gotten 37 emails.
