The history of children’s animation is filled with darkness. For every singing animal sidekick and fairy-tale ending, there are transgressive subversions, from the hellscape of Dumbo’s dream sequence to more recent offerings such as The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline. In a sense, this shouldn’t be surprising: horror has never been just for adults, but instead offers fertile ground for young minds to process the more macabre elements of human existence.
Brutality, though, has often been missing from kid-friendly fare, the horror found more in creeping dread or uncanny apparitions. Except that is, in Watership Down, the 1978 British animation about displaced rabbits searching for a home. Almost unequaled in its cornucopia of deeply upsetting violence, the film follows bunny brothers Hazel (John Hurt, a year before his chest burst in Alien) and Fiver (Richard Briers, famous at the time for the gentle sitcom The Good Life) as they lead their friends to safety, battling predators, people and a tyrannical arch-nemesis named General Woundwort.
Described by some as a “one-way ticket to post-traumatic stress disorder,” the film achieved mythic status – particularly among UK audiences – for its strange juxtapositions: with lush line work, talking animals, and even a hit pop song (“Bright Eyes,” sung by folk legend Art Garfunkel) it had all the hallmarks of generic wholesomeness… and scenes of unrelenting bunny bloodshed.
Perhaps more remarkable, the film was originally certified as “U” by the British Board of Film Classification (meaning it was “suitable for all” and that children – however young – should be able to watch it unperturbed). Although this decision was reviewed in 2022, with the certificate being raised to PG (“parental guidance for mild violence, threat, brief bloody images, language”), it arguably remains the most gruesome children’s film.
If you’ve not watched Watership Down – or perhaps blocked it out in an act of self-protective amnesia – allow me to paint a picture: it opens with a prelude of lapine mythology, where the god Frith commands rabbit prince El-Ahrairah to control his people from excessive vegetation eating. When El-Ahrairah balks at Frith’s command, the deity equips the other animals with claws and teeth to hunt the rabbits before mercifully giving the bunnies speed and wit. From the outset, this is a world of danger, where death can – and frequently does – come from all directions.
We then leap to modern times where sensitive soul Fiver experiences an apocalyptic vision, seeing their warren in Sandleford soaked in blood, the tunnels choked with suffocating bodies as they scramble for the surface. It’s a horrifying tableau, not least because we understand – even if the rabbits don’t – that this coming armageddon is the work of People, whose new housing development signals the wholesale destruction of the rabbit’s habitat. Bearing in mind that this is a film aimed at children, it immediately puts the audience in an uncomfortable, liminal space: we might be appalled by the incoming wave of death, but we also understand that our species is to blame. It’s a stunning volte-face, asking us to acknowledge our complicity in the bloodshed while empathizing with the rabbits.
And empathize we do, as Fiver, Hazel and a handful of others escape the warren under cover of darkness in a sequence that recalls WWII films of the era. A number of scary sequences follow, featuring a gloomy wood and the shocking death of Violet – the group’s only doe – when a hawk unceremoniously takes her. However, all of this is merely a precursor to one of the film’s most upsetting moments: the choking of Bigwig (Michael Graham Cox).
Cox has a rich line of playing no-nonsense soldiers – including roles in A Bridge Too Far and Ralph Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings – and Bigwig is no different. A member of Sandleford Owsla (read, rabbit police), he’s moral but coarse, so when the rabbits meet a new community and Fiver starts to feel that something’s off, Bigwig is the one to berate him, only to find himself trapped in a snare.
It’s a long, drawn-out sequence as Bigwig foams at the mouth with spit, then blood, his life ebbing away as his friends try to gnaw him free. They do eventually succeed (though not before he is presumed dead), but it does little to mitigate the sense of protracted pain he endures. Once again, this is a rabbit suffering at the hands of Men – here, a farmer looking for a meal – and once again, we are invited to reckon with ourselves.
As traumatic as this is, it pales next to what was to come. Hazel is shot by another farmer – leading to a near-death sequence scored by the aforementioned “Bright Eyes” as Hazel dances with The Black Rabbit – we get one of the most terrifying villains in children’s cinema in the form of General Woundwort (Harry Andrews). A hulking lump of savagery, Woundwort is a tyrant: when not overseeing insubordinates having their ears torn to shreds or ripping some unfortunate’s throat out, he oversees the slavery of does Hazel wants to set free. When they do finally liberate the captives, Woundwort brings down all his vengeance upon them, digging through the titular Down and mauling those who stand in his way.
The pivotal moments see Hazel mount a defense against Woundwort with the help of a dog. The despot is apparently killed (the voiceover warns his body was never found). It’s an arresting final image: Woundwort leaping through the air, the dog’s foaming jaws agape, both creatures splattered with the gore of their victims. Disney this ain’t.
In the 45 years since, the legacy of Watership Down has become difficult to overstate. As well as allegedly traumatizing a generation, it also inspired a deep affection in many of those same children, not least because of its brutality. Horror is arguably the most truthful of genres, unflinching in its refusal to look away or sugarcoat reality. And this film certainly fits that description, filled with images – though confrontational – plucked from the natural world and the things Mankind does to it.
Despite this, however, it is also tempered with some final notes of comfort. In the closing moments, set years later, an elderly Hazel is again visited by The Black Rabbit, with an invitation to “join my Owsla.” As Hazel lies down to die peacefully in his sleep, his spirit ascending to lord Frith’s side, the film is rich with promise that for all the blood and death and loss and pain that this world has to offer, one day – somehow – everything will be alright in the end.
