Fans of the legendary film The Godfather are only just realising a gruesome detail about one of its best scenes.
The Hollywood classic is still enamoured by members of the public who were surprised to learn just how far director Francis Ford Coppola was willing to go to achieve his vision. Interviews given after the making of the movie revealed it to have been a nightmarish experience.
From Marlon Brando refusing to learn his lines to Al Pacino nearly being fired by producers after just a week, the film went down in history despite the production problems.
One of its most infamous scenes however was brought on by a last-minute change from the production crew, who cited the “mock-up” which had been made for the scene was unsatisfactory.
A delivery to the set just in time for the shooting of the scene has since meant a gruesome moment has gone down in history. Fans of the film took to Reddit to share the stunning detail.
One user shared the horse’s head used in The Godfather was in fact a real animal head. A mock-up which had been made for the scene did not look realisitic enough according to Coppola, who sent his art director to find him a real horse’s head.
The post reads: “The studio had encouraged Francis Ford Coppola to use a fake horse head, but he didn’t like the mock-up. His scouts found a horse ready for slaughter at a dog-food plant in New Jersey.
“The art director picked one that looked like the horse in the film and said, ‘When that one is slaughtered, send us the head.’ Coppola later remembered, ‘One day, a crate with dry ice came with this horse’s head in it.'”
The switch-out may still horrify viewers, but the horse’s head chosen for the scene produced a minor plothole that only keen-eyed movie fans may find.
A user wrote: “An extra bit of trivia about this scene is that horse’s whose head is in the bed supposedly belongs to a fine race horse that Woltz is going to put out to stud, but the horse head seen in Woltz’s bed has noticeable cataracts in its eyes, which a quality race horse would not have.
“Since they used a horse on the verge of slaughter, it was more likely an older, ‘lower quality’ horse than the one Woltz owns in the movie and that would explain the cataracts that were not present the first time we are shown the horse.”
Another user says they had thought the cloudy eyes of the horse, which can be seen in the film, were a result of the animal’s death and not the cataracts.
They wrote: “That makes so much sense. I thought the cloudy eyes happens to horses when they die. It makes much more sense that it was an old horse.”
A third added: “Khartoum, the racehorse, had a large white star pattern between his eyes. We see this when he is showing the horse to Tom. Coppola neglected to paint this on the horse head found in Woltz’s bed. It was a glaring error.”