Customer Reviews

Bless the Beasts & Children [VHS]

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I first started going to camp when I was 5 years old, just a year after this film was released, but I didn't see it until a few years later, when it was on TV. The first camp I went to was a co-ed camp. Kids ranged from 5 to 18 and were sometimes in a camp-wide group, but more often than not, age groups and genders were separated. As a group of hyper 5-year-old girls, we were taught some cheesy crafts, we went fishing, a little archery and "snipe" hunting. The purpose of snipe (an imaginary creature) hunting was to supposedly capture a live (never before seen) specimen.

One night we were told the entire camp was going to go on an Armadillo hunt. I was very excited... I had only seen armadillos on TV and I really wanted to be able to pet one (and sneak it home in my luggage if I could!). Little did I realize that some of the older boys had intended on really hunting one of these harmless creatures... right when I saw one, I got to see it blown to bits with a shot gun. There are moments like that that you never forget... a split second where one small part of you that was still a child, dies and turns into an adult... all in the twinkling of an eye.

I related to this movie in a million ways. I was one of those kids that no one noticed and if I had gone missing, no one would have remembered I was ever there until my parents showed up and asked for me. I was accustomed to being picked on at school, so I avoided interaction w/ the other kids and always did what I was told by adults... many of whom had no business being in charge of children.

The movie is slow in many places, but it exacerbates the feeling of lonliness and rejection felt by the group of outcasts in this film. I was in awe when I saw them stand up for what they believed in, rejecting authority and doing everything they could to save what could have very well been the last herd of buffalo on earth. They finally say, "no more! We're tired of crying, and now we're going to fight!"

A few funny moments, but those are there to break the tension... many poignant moments, boys confiding in their friends their deepest fears and longings... and there are the senseless tragic moments.

Even as a child, I was keenly aware from watching the news how endangered buffalo were at the time. While they're so common today as to be served up as alternative beef, when this movie was released there were less than 2,000 living specimens. This film must have certainly inspired a more fervent effort to increase their numbers.

Excellent performances by Billy Mumy, Barry Robins, Miles Chapin and others... not to mention the title song performed by The Carpenters. While I saw this film as a child and I survived the experience, I don't recommend this film for young children. The violence perpetrated against the animals in the film will be extremely upsetting to anyone, but especially to little kids... and some young children may find the film to be too slow to pay attention to at length.

If you haven't seen this film, it is a classic and abounding with great talent in these wise-beyond-their-years characters.

More than twenty-eight years after its release, this poignant and exquisitely affecting film based on the Glendon Swarthout novel still resonates deeply with this 41-year-old film buff. I first saw the film in January 1972 as a gawky, hideously homely 13-year-old who was taller than everyone else at Kennedy Junior High in Hays, Kansas and who faced constant cruelty and teasing - simply for being "different." Thus, I related to the "Bedwetters" as I was convinced no one else could have. The boys' camp counselor, portrayed with menacing conviction by Ken Swofford, was familiar to me as well. There was a "Wheaties" in every schoolhouse, townhouse and outhouse of my young life. Moreover, I was and have always been an avowed animal lover, and the young men's efforts to save a herd of buffalo from extinction touched my heart and stirred my soul. The excellent cast is notable for the presence of then-17-year-old Bill Mumy, four years removed from his starring role as little Will Robinson on TV's "Lost in Space." As the brooding, taciturn Lawrence Teft III, Mumy brings a sauntering, sexy charisma to his performance - light years away from the apple-cheeked cherub of the 1960's. This haunting and instructive film leaves us with disturbing lessons about the price enacted by pervasive rejection and negativity - and the redemptive power of unity and compassion.

I first saw this film at my high school back in 1978, when I was 14 years-old and in the 9th grade. My English class read the book some 2 months earlier, so I was ready for a different prospective on the story. Boy, did I get a treat!! Yes, there were some rather lame scenes, like the "Chamber Pot Baptism" and when the Bedwetters protested the killing of the buffalo on the grounds of the preserve, but I attribute that to "Bad Writing", not "Bad Acting". In fact, I think they couldn't have found a better cast for the six main characters. If someone was to ask me who Teft is, for example, the only logical answer would be none other than Bill Mumy, etc. My point is the movie would have worked better if Stanley Kramer stuck closer to the book than changing too many situations. I would have loved to seen Teft's airplane hyjinks or the Lally Brothers' letting all of the dogs out of the cruise ship's kennels. But despite this film's shortcomings (including some bad editing--chalk marks on the road in the "horse-breather" scene), this film did have a lasting impact on me and it is still one of my all time favorite movies. One of these days, I wouldn't mind talking to the surviving leading actors and see what their opinions are on acting in this particular film; I bet you that will be quite an inspirational exprience!!

"Bless the Beasts and Children" remains among my
favorite books and movies.

Both are extraordinary evocation of childhood, done in
reverie, poetry, that manage to appeal to all generations,
for the wind does still blow in all places, and the yearning
to be accepted for what one is, to say this is what I
believe, can never die, not until the human spirit itself is
extinguished. They haunt. Who has not had memories of
wanting to free their own symbolic helpless beast,? who,
in the trying, has not or will not pay the terrible price,?
though hopefully not so terrible as that paid by
Cotton--the buffalo are the clouds in autumn gray, always.
"Lost/stumbling blind/after a dream I just can't find..."
from the film can still make me weep, as does the whole
soundtrack, and glad to be able to.

Bless Glendon Swarthout forever for his unique bold
novel, and Miles, who was there to tell him. Bless Stanley
Kramer for making such a superb movie of it, and that
splendid cast, the lovely music, the sorrowful theme
performed so lovingly, so forlornly, by the Carpenters.
One of my cats was named Lally 2 after the character in
"Bless the Beasts..". My Lally had dreams also. I'd like to
think he has now found them come true.

Like the boys in the film and novel, he was gentle, and he
was sensitive, and he stayed with me all day long when I
was so ill. All those months. Those wise large brown
eyes, that seemed so concerned, so warm, and the paw he
always kept on my wrist as we lay in bed most of the day,
like he wanted to be sure he knew I knew he was there.
How like the movie and novel he was.

It was summer when I read the heartbreaking novel.
November when I saw the sometimes sad beyond bearable
film. It has helped make always November a very sweet
month, and summer finer, because of them. If you are a
parent, reading this, see the movie, read the book, then
consider carefully and then pray that your children do or
do not become Bedwetters at the Box Canyon Camp for
Boys--"send us a boy--we'll send you a cowboy" becomes
in the misfits world, "Send us a sad child; we will
accidentally send you a human being of worth and
strength and precision of sight." The cost, though, as one
critic wrote, the terrible cost involved.

There are some movies that become a pattern of memory,
as there are some books. And if one has the hope of
believing in something no one else sees as worthwhile, and
if one can pass by the portals of fools successfully, you
can follow, and your dream may blow up in your face and
it may end in such a sad lesson, but to be pushed in a mud
puddle by bullies, in only your underwear, to be laughed
at, and called names, and to have a boy named Cotton
come along and talk with you, and make you feel like
somebody, and start you on a heroic adventure, then
sometimes the terrible wracking cost is worth it. Maybe.

Why the movie did not do well at the box office is beyond
me. It is prescient right to this second and always will be.
Stanley Kramer was known for making epics like
"Judgment at Nuremberg," another fine film. But this
"little movie" is an epic of the heart. It maintains
Swarthout's free form dream like sometimes caustic
character studies. It shows how parents caught in booze
and fights and delusion and divorce, can destroy their
children. The opening of the film shows this so
frighteningly, so chillingly. And then shows the specificity
of each child's nightmare. That turns real.

Though "Lost," the most haunting song in the film, has
been for some years now the theme song of the soap,
which is, I believe, "The Young and The Restless," it
deserves hearing as it should be heard with those aching
lyrics, in this movie.

It is about the world children and animals secretly see. It
is about the world they see too well, and turn their backs
on. It is about crying too often, feeling too much, and
being too scared, or too weak, or too thin, or too fat, or
too sissy. It is about the depth of deftness and conscience,
and how sometimes to free buffalo from monstrous
deaths, is to free something so intangible you never can
quite pin it down, which is as it should be, and to try. And
God forever bless the beasts and children, please "keep
them safe," please "keep them warm." They are the most
deserving of all. And the most in need.

And also, keep in your prayers, please, Glendon
Swarthout (who wrote books, this one especially, as
lovely as his name) and the fine film makers who put
everything they had in this film. It is unique, unwavering,
courageous, and a little plea of sanity and hope to all of us
Bedwetters out here.

I first saw this movie when I was 6 ,7 years old. It was my favorite movie as a child. I wouldn't be tough enough to watch it now. The movie is very hard, showing the pain and lonliness of being a misfit, and the graphic shooting of Buffalo standing still in a pen. I think this movie made me cry for the first time in my life, about something other than a skinned knee. It changed my life. I used to kill things when I was a young boy, and after this movie I said to myself "enough..killing for no reason is sick". And the Karen Carpenter song " Bless The Beasts and the children", Knowing her personal pain that she was going through at the time, Just makes me want to cry right now!!

"Bless the Beasts and Children" is a deeply affecting original film that is a parable for American history; i.e., the disturbing hunt of the defenseless, be it the nearly exterminated buffalo, women, or the American Indian.

"Thelma and Louise", filmed twenty years later in 1991, copied many scenes, characters, props, elements, and themes from "Bless the Beasts and Children", the details of which can be viewed at the web site http://www.mosaicspinner.com/blessthem.html

The bottom line is, we must save the defenseless to protect the American Dream, else what is best of America will be lost.

I saw this movie originally in the movie house in 1971, and purchased the VHS recently. I am still thrilled and overtly excited about the movie. Great music, screenplay, everything ! Set in 1970/71 Arizona, the story deals with the brutal reality of those that would hunt Buffalo for sport (sick), and the negative vibes against those with long hair (hippies). One of my favorite movies of ALL TIME. I even searched out Bill Mumy's webpage to offer thanks and praises ! Only a COMPLETE Loser wouldn't like this movie. I gave it 5 Stars !

I saw this movie in the theatre as a child soooo many years ago and loved it even though I had a hard time dealing with it (although at 11, I fell in love with one of the characters, Cotton). I remember it was on tv a few years later and again, I put this movie into my top ten favorites, but it wasn't until I was 40 that I heard the Carpenters song - Bless the Beasts and the Children on the radio, the title to this movie, and a flood of memories came back. I had to have this movie in my collection
I found this movie on Ebay one day and ended up spending a lot of money for it because I just had to have it, but I wish I would have come to Amazon.com first to get a better deal.
If you are liberal, vegetarian, hippie, animal loving or just a good hearted normal person, this movie will move you too.

This movie is nothing like the repetitious camp films that come a dime a dozen. This film went deeper than that. I saw this film at 14 I am now 41. Still my favorite film of all time.

I rented this movie once, at my mom's request, and found myself totally in love with it after having seen it. The emotional undertow was amazing: the triumphs and defeats of the six teenage boys brought me to gloating happiness to tears of rage and sorrow. The raw adolescent feelings were something I could readily identify with (being a teenager myself), but it shouldn't be written off as just another tear-jerking coming of age story, but something deeper than that. The message it imparted was strong but not heavy-handed... I recommend this film to everyone who has feelings.