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Twinkie: First film in the US and working with Charles Bronson


The Blood of Hussain: The unfisnished horse scene
Walter Lassally Film-maker
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So one day, for reasons I fail to understand, they allowed one member of the crew, who had no experience with horses, to take this horse into the centre of the city and there was an incident and the horse shied, and it became impaled on some railings. It tried to jump over some railings and it became impaled on the railings. Of course it had to go to the vet and it was okay. But it was quite seriously injured, and there was no question of shooting on it for the foreseeable future, so that was sent back to... I think they sent it back, after treatment by the vet, they sent it back to its home, some way away. It belonged to some high-up person somewhere.

In the end that turned out to be fatal. The film could not be finished without that scene with the horse. There's a scene, beautiful scene, where the horse bursts out of the earth. Because it's, sort of, symbolic. The horse is not only just a horse, it's also a sort of symbolic horse, and there's a scene where it bursts out of the earth. That scene was shot some months later when the horse was okay again, by somebody else. It was shot by Colin, in fact, by the make-up man who was also doing the special effects. And, of course, only I am credited as the photographer, so I got the credit for something I hadn't actually done. Although we had discussed it how it might be possible to do that. So you dig a pit, and I suggested that they cover him with brown cork chips, which would look like earth, and the horse could very easily, just at a point, he could be let go and it would naturally fight to get out of there. That's a beautiful scene which they shot in slow motion. But, to cut a very long story short, I couldn't finish the film myself. There were an increasing number of difficulties. The film had been... I would've thought 80% had been shot, and there was just certain things left to do, including this horse scene. So eventually I left and left the film unfinished.

And... and it wasn't until two years later that I suddenly heard that the film had been premiered somewhere. It had been shown at some festival somewhere. But because Jamil hadn't contacted me, he hadn't told me that he'd finished it. He hadn't told me that somebody else shot the horse scene. I would've been perfectly happy to go back and shoot it if he wanted me to. But by that time the relationship had, kind of, cooled to a point where obviously he didn't feel it necessary to approach me. So the surprise... It came as a surprise to me to find that the film had actually been finished.


Listeners: Peter Bowen


Tags: The Blood of Hussain

Duration: 2 minutes, 37 seconds

Date story recorded: June 2004

Date story went live: 24 January 2008