Why aren't there more horses in horror?

[roshiq]

Originally Posted by Angra

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0450336/

Yeah...that's a good example.

Though may be sometimes they even caused human deaths but in the course of human civilization, animals like Horses, Elephants & cows most of the time have been seen or treated as very helpful & harmless animals as we found themselves very useful in mostly traveling, sports/entertainment or even domestic household or agricultural purposes. From their physical outlook even a child find them pretty interesting or beautiful as an animal; and most of the time they never appears or seems threatening for us. Moreover, unlike dogs & cats, they (very) hardly sounds creepy. Even if we consider the incidents or accidents where they (intentionally or not) killed their handlers or others, we would see a common pattern which is somewhat less horrifying, chilling or gruesome in compare to other crazy or man eating animal attack. May be the problem is there is very few (or no) records where they killed a human or other animal through bites instead of kicking or beating badly.

Originally Posted by NightmareBreath

And then there are the frightening steeds of legend: the biblical Four Horsemen, the Headless Horseman, and the Nazgul riders in the Lord of the Rings, to name just a few. But the horses themselves are not the main focus, scary as they may be. The riders are the real agents of terror.

That's a good point you added. Actually by nature, we mostly don't like to see or think of horses without a rider. Even we think or dream of an unicorn we wish to ride it later on. To most of the people, Horse is an animal that needs to get a rider; without a rider a horse seems unfulfilled as a living thing on earth. It's born to have a rider.

Now, for the sake of a concept for a horror story/film I'm not sure but it may be turn out interesting to see a deadly or evil horse as the main threat. But to do so the writer or director needs to show or have a good deal of creativity to raise the terror in reader's or viewer's mind. Otherwise the reader or the audience would hardly buy it unless the whole thing is treated as comedy like Black Sheep.

But yeah...may be in a western scenario it'd be 'interesting' to see a vengeful horse who stalks & kills the killers of his mater or the bad guys who caused the wrongful death of its rider. But the question is how interestingly all those killings by that horse can be shown or described?

Otherwise, an evil or deadly horse we can easily be portray in a bizzaro scenario...where we can borrow some disturbing physical features from other animals or insects and give it a horrifying or weird outlook...for example, a horse with 8 or more than 4 legs (like spiders) and a venomous scorpion tail.:D

[crabapple]

In addition to Horse at the Edge of the Park, there is also Horse at the Edge of the Pork, which is the horse/pig horror film. Sort of the barnyard version of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.

And let us not forget Bad Horse, the Thoroughbred of Sin...!

[NightmareBreath]

Originally Posted by TheWickerFan

I suppose all a horse could do is trample. They don't really have mouths made for ripping into meat.

Neither do sheep. In fact, sheep don't even have any upper incisors, so the idea of "killer sheep", even as a joke, is plain ridiculous. And yet there is a movie about that.

[MichaelMyers]

They stab horses in horror, don't they?

[ManchestrMorgue]

I just remembered, Emanuelle in America features a horse.

[Fearonsarms]

Originally Posted by ZombieDrone

When I was fifteen I spent some time working at a stable.


The reason was that in England we have (I believe it still goes on) a period around that age where you go into work experience (which is you go out of class for a period of three weeks and into some unpaid work).

I got lumped with a stable because I was running out of options and I said that I liked animals. I am quite short and physically rather weak and so whilst I like horses in theory, I don't like getting too close to them.

They can be very vicious creatures. They can have a remarkably short temper, massive teeth, very large and devastatingly powerful kick.

You're right that there aren't many horses in horror and that seems a little odd considering horses have long been used in films (imagine a western without a single horse). I've seen clips of Tombs Of The Blind Dead where there were cloaked zombies riding them across fields in slow-motion. That looked pretty cool.

You beat me to it-I was going to say Tombs Of The Blind Dead-it's the blind dead who do the killing though-I would have liked to have seen the horses go for it too-maybe they do in it's sequel Return Of The Evil Dead which I haven't seen yet?

[Ferox13]

The William Hope Hodgson story, 'The Horse of the Invisible' has a malevolent ghost horse in it (sort of anyway). It was adapted for the small screen as part of the 'Rivals of Sherlock Holmes' series..

[Bizarre]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm_%28video%29

[ZombieDrone]

My brain:

Remembers hearing things about this video and certain...ummm...desires about animals.

Considers that it may be the animated version of the George Orwell book.

Dismisses this idea.

Decides to definately avoid clicking the link

[Bizarre]

Originally Posted by ZombieDrone

My brain:

Remembers hearing things about this video and certain...ummm...desires about animals.

Considers that it may be the animated version of the George Orwell book.

Dismisses this idea.

Decides to definately avoid clicking the link

Haha! Good call! Orwell this ain't! ;P