Watership Down was never meant to be the most horrifying kids' movie ever

In 2016, Channel 5 ruined Easter Sunday for a whole load of British children by showing an animated film about bunny rabbits: Watership Down. In the middle of the afternoon, with roast lamb and Easter egg chocolate settling in the stomachs of the nation's youth, they settled down to watch the classic 1970s animation. And then the screams started.

Those who grew up at the tail-end of the 1970s will likely never have forgotten Martin Rosen's film adaptation of the Richard Adams novel. It was a box office hit in Britain, with some of the movie's investors reportedly receiving a 5,000% return on their initial financing. In 2024, it's getting a new re-release. Perhaps fittingly, it's just in time for Halloween.

Because Watership Down isn't a cuddly animation about rabbits. It's a film about the violence and brutality of nature as well as its interaction with humanity. Its story unfolds in a world of slashing claws, suffocating animals, and endless bunny blood. No wonder those kids were traumatised.

The film follows a group of rabbits who flee an over-crowded warren to build their own utopian home at the titular Hampshire hill. But the story features plenty of brutal animal violence, including throats being ripped out and a horrific scene in which rabbits with bloodshot eyes suffocate to death as their warren is filled in by humans.

Read more: Watership Down: family-friendly BBC version risks losing the power of epic original (The Conversation)

Bizarrely, the BBFC saw fit to grant the film a U certificate on its original release, rather than the more restrictive 15 rating — the bridging certificates of PG and 12A did not exist at the time. In the original examiner's report, they wrote: "Animation removes the realistic gory horror in the occasional scenes of violence and bloodshed, and we felt that, while the film may move children emotionally during the film’s duration, it could not seriously trouble them once the spell of the story is broken."

Well, a generation of kids couldn't disagree more with that assessment. And in 2016, a whole new generation discovered the horror. A year later, Channel 5 repeated the Easter Sunday stunt and shocked parents all over again. The BBFC finally saw the light in 2022 and reclassified the film at PG, noting "mild violence, threat, brief bloody images, language". They're experts in understatement, it seems.

Rosen, for his part, is a little baffled by his movie's notoriety. For starters, he didn't intend it to be considered a film for children. In 2018, he told The Independent he was "very surprised when everybody got crazy about it" and "didn’t want to shock people at all", saying his own young children were left resolutely unscarred at the time.

The filmmaker added: "I did not make this picture for kids at all. I insisted that the one-sheet [the film poster] indicate how strong a picture it was by having Bigwig the rabbit in a snare. I reckoned a mother with a sensitive child would see that – a rabbit in a snare with blood coming out its mouth – and reckon: ‘Well maybe this isn’t for Charlie. It’s a little too tough’."

Read more: Watership Down: ‘It’s just a story about rabbits’ (PA Media)

But nonetheless, the lure of an animated film with a U certificate convinced parents that they were taking their kids to see something a great deal cuddlier than what Rosen had delivered. Certainly, Frozen would have been a different proposition if Sven the reindeer had been shot in the head by a hunter halfway through the movie.

It's doubtful whether Watership Down would have endured for nearly 50 years without its reputation as an endurance test for hardy young viewers. By becoming the sort of film that makes grown adults shudder at the memory of their childhood trauma, it has ensured the sort of legacy that means it's still getting re-released in cinemas today — and indeed remade by the BBC and Netflix in 2018.

Read more: The movies that scarred people from an early age (Yahoo Entertainment, 5 min read)

Whatever the BBFC or the schedulers at Channel 5 might say, Watership Down is not your average movie for children. It's a hard-edged, powerful take on nature and the way it interacts with humanity. Almost half a century after it first sent screams rattling through British multiplexes, it still boasts the same sort of power. You'll never look at your pet rabbit's cute little nose in the same way.

Watership Down returns to UK cinemas on 25 October.