Scene: Two cowboys riding along side by side. Close-up on the riders’ faces.
Cowboy 1: “Fine-lookin’ horse you got there.”
Cowboy 2 (looks down at his saddle horn): “Yep.”
All you can see of the two horses are their ears! (arrggghhh). 
The movie is Robbers’ Roost, story by Zane Grey.
Almost any western that has cowboys riding to a sliding stop and pulling full weight on the reins…horses wild eyed and jaws gaping. I just hate to see that
I like these fantasy movies where the horse(s) are faced with some serious predator and do NOTHING. I remember Dragonheart, where a huge dragon lands directly in front of a group of knights. No reaction from the horses at all. CGI is a good thing. Or recently in Game of Thrones where a pack of wolves including one extra huge one, surrounds a character camping in the woods with her horse. Her horse was initially agitated, but goes silent when the wolves appear. Is that because it ran off to the next kingdom?
Horses are not cars and cannot just be parked someplace. I am not sure why this is so hard to figure out.
Clip clopping on a sandy beach “Wonder Woman”
I have justified this by imagining that as soon as the horse realized the wolves were circling Arya, he was not going to do anything to distract them from her. First we go south, then we go north, now wolves… yeah, go ahead guys, eat her, I’m tired of this. LOL
Western movies are oh so interesting because of all the horses, but the rough around the edges riding is definitely painful to watch.
In the horse whisperer, the horse supposedly was injured so bad it needed to be put down, the vet said, as the frightened horse is galloping around away from them, completely sound. the most serious wound was the flesh torn away from the chest. Which I’ve seen first hand on real horses, and healed up quite nicely.
EXACTLY! When I first saw that movie, I leaned over to my friend and said, “A couple of cans of Granulex spray will take care of that! I’ve treated worse!”
All the unnecessary added horse sounds always bother me. The posse is galloping through the desert? Throw in several neighs for good measure. Grazing? Walking calmly? Clearly not looking like they’re making any sound? Throw some in. The public needs those sounds so that they know these are horses, I guess.
The TB/Morgan mare that I fell in love with as a young teen, had been ridden by Omar Sharif in the movie “Mackenna’s Gold”. Her name was Double Shot.
There is a scene like you describe in the movie, and I can only imagine the rehersals it took to get the shot. And if you’ve seen the movie, I’ll let you decide on his riding. She’s shown in part on the right in this photo:
http://thegreatwesternmovies.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/McKennasGold3.jpg
I knew and loved her after the movie had been made, and you couldn’t get a bit in her mouth for love nor money. She was a mare who was just all done with that. I rode her in a bosal.
And she looks none too happy in that photo.
One of the “Black Beauty” remakes - early life of the colt, with mom in a pasture. “Colt” turns, walks away and flicks tail…clearly a filly, based on physical attributes under the tail
Same movie, stand in Black Beauty horse, PERFECT white diamond on forehead - appeared to be sprayed on using a cardboard cutout, with sharp edged lines
I believe it was CBS that got nailed on adding bird songs in the PGA broadcasts… an astute viewer told them the “bird songs” were of birds that were from no where near that state
our then four or five year old daughter caught that in the movie theater … she told me in a pretty loud voice about the problem… and the prefect star was also noted by that time most of the others watching were more intent on listening to her
Caffeinated, you know that no self respecting horse would be placidly tied to a tree when the wolves arrived. That leather halter would have broken or slipped out of in a moment. I will only be happy if we next see Arya walking or maybe riding her wolf friend. All too often horses are looked at like cars; something that can be started and stopped with no reaction to the environment. I remember when I was first dating Mr. IF. We were discussing cavalry and I told him to take riding lessons in order to see how challenging it was to fight while mounted. He did and has a much great appreciation of history as a result.
FWIW, I loved Tom Jones, not just for the realism of the hunting scene, but that his real mother died in a carriage accident, something that happened often enough back then.
The entirety of War Horse. OMG I tried so hard to suspend my disbelief, but come on. The horse teaches the other horse how to pull a plow by sticking its head in the collar to demonstrate? And the other horse gets it? Puh-leez!
Horses whinnying all the time, all places, all situations, for no apparent reason. I’ve complained about that before but I’ve been told by some in the industry that the general rule of thumb when making a movie is: see a horse, hear a horse.
Also, I can’t recall if this was in the movie, The Horse Whisperer, but the book drove me mad: Well-to-do mommy and daddy have to go all the way to Kentucky from New York to find daughter a competitive H/J mount. And they come back with a Morgan. AYFKM? As a writer and wannabe novelist, I can tell you that in all creative writing classes they stress that you should “write what you know.” The clown that wrote that romance novel obviously knew NOTHING about the H/J world, let alone horses.
Because of course the fabled trainer (spoiler alert) would choose to commit suicide by standing in front of a wild stallion and banking on the fact that he would get trampled to death? Razzzzzz.
I got the book before the movie (should have known better)
HATED it.
shadowy side figures influence what the main characters do, etc…
and I so wanted to watch Robert Redfort in Wranglers…I skipped the movie, because the book was so bad!
And sadly, the horrific first chapter was the best part of it…
Obvious marks from ill fitting saddles on the wild mustangs.
“And sadly, the horrific first chapter was the best part of it…” Yes!
I can’t stand how every single horse race in a movie it takes them about 15 minutes to get around the track.
And I was watching an episode of Mysteries at the Museum a couple of weeks ago and the story was about some horseback race across the country from many years ago and this one guy caused a huge stir because he decided to ride a mule instead of a horse. But in the all of the fake/pretend footage, they showed him mounted on a horse so clearly the producers had no idea of the difference between the two.
Not a movie, but there is a TV commercial right now with a woman just THROWING the saddle onto the horse’s back…
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