Friday Flicks: Horses in supporting roles

This week, Horse Nation movie critic Amanda Ronan spotlights some of the best (and worst) horse scenes of non-horse movies.

From Amanda:

I’ve been watching a lot of horse movies lately.  I mean a lot.  I’ve watched and reviewed at least one horse movie every week since mid-February.  So now, even when I’m watching regular movies I can’t help but notice horses… everywhere.  This got me thinking.  What are some of the best and worst horse scenes of non-horse movies?

Most recently, I fell in love with a scene in the new Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.  This little gem puts Robert Downey Jr. (you might know him from the little known flick The Avengers as Tony Stark) on a pony.  What could be cuter than that, I ask you?  Check it out for yourself.

The horse scene that I remember taking my breath away as a child, though, would have to be the infamous horse vs. tank scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  Indiana, aided by his striking, black Arabian, single handedly fights off the Nazis.

The Indiana Jones series happens to be filled with great horse (and sometimes camel) scenes.  They also happen to be this very persnickety movie reviewers favorite movies of all time.

But there are also really, really bad horse scenes.  The worst, again from my childhood, would have to be the horrible demise of Artax via the Swamp of Sadness in The Neverending Story.  There are no words.  You’ll just have to watch the horror unfold.

Why oh why did Artax give up?  Why for the love of all that is holy?!?  WHY!?!

(sniff)

Carrying on…

Here lately, horrible horse scenes have been associated with the horror genre.  I’ll never forget what happened to the poor horse in Jennifer Lopez’s horror/dream sequence/science fiction flick, The Cell.

And don’t even get me started on the TV series, The Walking Dead.  I love a good zombie flick as much as anybody, but they ate a horse!  I mean, honestly, human on human consumption is expected in the zombie genre, but attacking a horse!  It was just uncalled for.  You can put your mind at ease though because I found this picture of the infamous zombie dinner, aka Blade, with his real life owner Tommie Turvey.

So there you go, my most loved and most hated horse scenes of non-horse movies.  What are yours?