Go to the 3:00 mark in this clip and tell me what you see.



There's nothing in the scene which indicates to me that the stunt is not real. It's a real man, riding a real horse, taking a fall off a very tall cliff.

I find nothing on the internet about this, but I cannot see how how horse and rider survived, especially the horse, who struck the cliff face multiple times on the way down.

Does anyone know about this?

Wow! My wife and I are watching this movie as I type. As I watched this scene a few minutes ago I was thinking this very same thing. How did they make this stunt look so realistic and not kill both stunt rider and horse? I am as perplexed as you are Para!

Hollywood murdered a lot of horses early on- The Charge of the Light Brigade is a notorious example. Supposedly more than twenty horses killed by using a device known as a 'running W'

This is err was a pulley system attached to the horse's front legs. When the rider yanked on the line, it caused the horse to fall because his front legs were jerked upwards. Anytime you see a running horse fall forward in an old Hollywood movie, you can bet that a running W was used.

However, here's the incident which tore it for animal rights goups, and, frankly, who can blame them?

https://www.cbr.com/movie-lege...animals-were-harmed/

Wasn't it Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid that had rider and horse going off a tall cliff and going in the water?
Mother took me to see that movie when I was pretty young and wondered how the horse ever lived.

No, just two stunt men jumping off a cliff.

You may be thinking of this scene from The Wild Bunch.

At the 2:30 mark

That sure looks like what it looks like. Only thing I can think is it was a dummy strapped in a saddle on a real horse that was shoved off a cliff. That does not look good.

Looking at it more closely, yes, its likely a dummy on the horse, but the horse is real.

The filming of the original Ben Hur killed many horses. The repeated takes of the chariot race in high heat killed them.
If you want a modern version of the horse off a cliff scene, where the scene was done without injury to the horse, watch the Tom Selleck version of Monte Walsh. A character called Fightin Joe rides off a cliff. Done with clever camera work and green screen.

In slow-mo the horse is kind of ridged going over, but there is some leg movement of a front and back leg. That could mean anything though. I'm not sure on that one.

A dummy horse and dummy rider is the only thing that makes sense. That's probably what they did, but at the distance they shot this, it sure looks real.

Really speaks to the talent of the stunt coordinators if those are both dummies, especially for the time. Here we are, decades later, trying to figure out if it was fake or real.

quote:

Originally posted by P220 Smudge:
Really speaks to the talent of the stunt coordinators if those are both dummies, especially for the time. Here we are, decades later, trying to figure out if it was fake or real.

yeah watching it I'm going with a 'prop' horse and dummy detach from the adjacent 'real' horse and rider.

the 'cut' is really quick as the prop detaches -- so it happens very fast.

looks pretty real no doubt. great scene.

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I watched it and came to the conclusion they were both fake before reading the rest of the thread.

If dummy horse and rider, it was a well done scene. What I can't stand in this film, is the use of the swing out double action revolvers both Van Heflin and one of the sons use when they are doing an informal shooting match (and at other times if I recall correctly). Given the year this was made and the proliferation of TV westerns, not to mention western films and the availability of Colt SAAs (original/real not to mention Great Westerns)at that time, this is ridiculous looking and inexcusable. There would have been a number of gun handlers in Hollywood at the time who could have taught them gun handling of a SAA for this film if needed.

The Colt New Service shows up in the holsters of gunmen in old Western films a surprising number of times.