Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Rijndri Load of rubbish!!

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

mattlow This is by far the most underrated film of the early film era. The composition and editing is way beyond its time, the acting was beyond words, and the direction was superb. Why it was snubbed at the 1904 Academy Awards, I will never know, perhaps it was a race issue, but I digress. Topsy the elephant's performance is really outstanding, and we would not see a performance of that caliber until Jake Gyllenhall's in Donnie Darko. My final thoughts are that this film is an American triumph of not only film, but artistic expression in general.

Christopher Evans This film captures the real life execution of an elephant by electrocution. The elephant was killed for two reasons, firstly because it had killed people on more than one occasion, secondly because Thomas Edison wanted to publicise his experiments with electricity.Some leap to defend this film and the great inventor Thomas Edison who made the film. They claim that Edison's brilliance as a scientist and the advancement in electricity safety he was supposed to be trying to bring about make this an important and legitimate scientific experiment which needed to be captured on film. They claim the fact the elephant had killed people makes it acceptable to kill it in this way. They also claim the elephant would not have suffered any more than any other form of execution.The flaws to their arguments are this:Firstly the elephant had been very cruelly treated and had only killed as a result of this cruel treatment. Apparently it killed a man who had deliberately burned the end of its trunk with a cigar. That kind of cruelty is totally unacceptable and an animal killing in those circumstances may need to be 'euthanised' for its own good but does not deserve to be punished cruelly or made to suffer further than it already had. Electrocution obviously is a painful and horrific way to die. No person would choose this death over an overdose of sedatives or a bullet in the brain so if you would not choose that death you cannot claim it is the best method for killing an intelligent animal that also feels pain. A humane way of killing the elephant would have been to put it to sleep with sedatives/tranquilisers then either shoot it in the brain or gas it or give lethal injection. There were plenty of guns capable of doing the job and tranquilisers, gas etc were easily available. Therefore the only reason to electrocute was for the purposes of demonstrating the effect of electrocution to publicise Edison's advancement of technology. To kill with unnecessary suffering for a publicity stunt is totally wrong and cruel. It is like making films of animal testing nowadays. Some tests may be scientifically necessary but many are not and none of them should be done for entertainment, publicity or money making.Edison was indeed a brilliant scientist with an important place in many scientific advances but that does not mean that he is allowed to do whatever he wants. There is plenty of evidence of him stealing other scientists ideas, suppressing other scientists inventions and acting unnecessarily cruelly or immorally for personal gain. His demonstrations of electricity were primarily for his financial gain and to promote his position as a foremost scientist. Killing that elephant did not advance the technology or improve our understanding of electricity it was just a cruel publicity stunt. Capturing it on film has created one of the worst films you will ever see. It has no film making quality of any kind and is purely a record of how humans treat animals in terrible ways. Sadly a fact that is true to this day.

Michael_Elliott Electrocuting an Elephant (1903) Edison made thousands of films in his career but this here is perhaps his most notorious. The elephant Topsy was a performer at Luna Park on Coney Island and after killing her third person she was sentenced to death. Edison, being a businessman, wanted to film her electrocution and the end result is this movie lasting under a minute. There's really not too much to be said with this film without entering the debate field. People complain about the violence towards the animal but from everything I've read this is how they were handled back in the day and apparently many places still use this form of death. I think the biggest problem is that Edison would want to film it in order to make money. I can certainly see why people would be offended by this today but apparently those in 1903 were okay with it as apparently this film made quite a bit of money. On a technical level there's certainly nothing impressive about it and today it will just be viewed for a form of exploitation.

rooprect We see Thomas Edison, with a glowing smile on his face, trying to electrocute a 5 ton living being. Eventually he was successful, and so the first animal snuff film is born, cleverly disguised as an amazing achievement in technology. This is scientific arrogance at it's worst, folks. It ranks up there with the doctor who decapitated a monkey just to prove that he could keep its severed head alive for 22 minutes.Oh yes, there's the absurd excuse that the elephant had been convicted of "murder" and sentenced to death, and that this was a fair and humane "execution". To all the people who are satisfied with this sophistry, please form a line on my right. I'm going to give you all a big collective Three Stooges slap across the head.Go watch "The Advocate" (1993), a movie based on the true story murder trial of a pig in Mideval France. 500 years later, humans are still a bunch of morons I see.What's next? We arrest birds for stealing our blueberries? Arrest pricker bushes for assault and battery? Thomas Edison, I hope you have a big fat worm crawling through your eye socket right now. Oh wait, that would be trespassing, wouldn't it? lol