Many a period English film featuring aristocracy also features a hunt scene. Let us know what other movies should be on this list with a fox hunt and foxhounds!
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The Belstone Fox AKA: Free Spirit * Year: 1973 * Country: UK * Breed content: High
The preeminent English Foxhound movie, with not only a main pack but a starring hound, “Merlin”, who grows up with a fox as a best friend. Based on the novel The Ballad of the Belstone Fox by David Rook, and inspiration for Walt Disney’s animated feature The Fox and the Hound (1981). Although the Disney Studio bought rights to adapt the Daniel P. Mannix book after it won the Athenaeum Literary Award, and there was an initial screenplay draft that followed The Fox and the Hound novel, producers rejected it (presumably due to being too dark and violent for Disney audiences). The final animated film version shares almost nothing with the original novel beyond the title and some character names, yet it does include many elements from The Belstone Fox.
Becoming Jane * Year: 2007 * Country: Ireland/UK * Breed content: Low
With a fox-hunting scene.
Brideshead Revisited * Year: 2008 * Country: UK * Breed content: Low
Both the 2008 movie and the 1981 TV miniseries include hunting scenes. The image above is from the TV adaptation. Based on the novel by Evelyn Waugh, also the author of A Handful of Dust, which was adapted into another film featuring Foxhounds.
Doctor Dolittle * Year: 1967 * Country: US * Breed content: Low
Only in one quick scene when a fox is chased into a barn.
Gone to Earth AKA: The Wild Heart * Year: 1950 * Country: UK * Breed content: Medium
Both women and foxes are endlessly harassed in this film. Based on a 1917 novel by Mary Webb and released in North America with a different edit and titled The Wild Heart.
A Handful of Dust * Year: 1988 * Country: UK * Breed content: Low
With a hunt scene.
The Hound of the Baskervilles * Year: 1959 * Country: UK * Breed content: Low
Brief but unique shots of foxhounds by night instead of the usual Devon-type countryside daylight fox hunt.
Into the West * Year: 1992 * Country: Ireland * Breed content: Low
About two boys and a magical horse who everyone wants to catch.
Lassie * Year: 2005 * Country: France/Ireland/UK/US * Breed content: Low
Hunt scene right at the start of the film. Of course, a Rough Collie is the star of this excellent dog film.
Murder She Purred: A Mrs. Murphy Mystery * Year: 1998 * Country: US * Breed content: See note
A Disney TV movie about a crime-solving cat and a Pembroke Welsh Corgi, based on Rita Mae Brown’s series of novels featuring a cat named Mrs. Murphy. Although the setting is in the eastern USA, the pack of foxhounds looks more like the English type than the racer lines of the American Foxhound, although they could be the latter.
Omen III: The Final Conflict * Year: 1981 * Country: UK/US * Breed content: Low
A few wonderful shots of the pack during the hunt scene, although the Omen films are better known for the featured Rottweiler.
Private Peaceful * Year: 2012 * Country: UK * Breed content: Low
The dogs play a small but signifiant part at the beginning of the film.
Ultime grida dalla savana AKA: Savage Man Savage Beast * Year: 1975 * Country: Italy * Breed content: Low
This infamous exploitative docudrama merges scripted footage with occasional true documentary footage as it follows violence against humans and animals, wild and domestic, around the world. The fact that most of the incredibly brutal animal cruelty shown on film was staged, including animals tortured, forced to fight, disemboweled, and killed for the demands of the filmmakers makes it unbearable to watch. The fox-hunting scene with a pack of English Foxhounds was entirely staged, including an Afghan Hound in heat used by hunt-saboteurs to lead the pack of hounds into a van. The hounds are unharmed, but the same cannot be said for the fox, held up by his tail by the huntsman and then thrown to the pack to be torn apart, still alive, for the cameras.
Splitting Heirs * Year: 1993 * Country: UK * Breed content: Unconfirmed
Tom Jones * Year: 1963 * Country: UK * Breed content: Low
This time the hunt is after deer.
The Winter Stallion AKA: The Christmas Stallion * Year: 1992 * Country: UK * Breed content: Low
Only a glimpse of a pack trotting through a Welsh village. The main dog is a Border Collie who is led up the street and through the pack by two of the human characters. The dog panics and twists away, pulling his collar and racing off soon after passing the hounds, although the actors go on walking and talking as if nothing happened so as not to spoil the scene. Presumably the fed-up Border Collie was simply running back to his trainer.
Know more English Foxhound movies? Please send info to [email protected]. Thank you!