The BBFC has received a number of queries about the animal sequences in the feature film GUMMO, in which animals appear to suffer a level of cruelty which would be against British law if it were real. The Board has sought confirmation of the assurance in the final captions that 'no animal was injured in the making of this film'. In fact, all the animal action was monitored by the American Humane Association, counterpart to the British RSPCA, who have explained to us that each of the worrying scenes was shot using a fake or stuffed cat, and in one case a stuffed dog. They bear witness to the fact that no animal was harmed in any way during the making of the film.
The subject of the film is a community at the bottom of the scrapheap, in which every family seems to be dysfunctional and every character physically or psychologically damaged. It is a bleak, chilling look at the casualties of society, casualties that can be found in most western countries, including Britain, where Princess Diana drew attention to the plight of such people.
The first characters we meet are two teenage boys who fund their glue-sniffing by killing stray feral cats to sell on to restaurants for food. Indifferent to the suffering of humans or animals, these boys might have raised a classification problem had they been glamorised in any way, but that is not the case. Far from being role models, they are clearly no-hopers, failed by parents and schooling, and drifting through their destructive and aimless lives unattractive and excluded. It is a pessimistic and painful film, from a 23-year-old director who grew up in such a community and wants to show how such cast- offs live.
The film has been passed '18' uncut.