71: Watership Down (1978) Section 12: Captain Holly

Script by Newell Fisher, with script-assistance by John Ruths

This section covers 36 minutes 20 to 38 minutes 40 and the equivalent chapters from the book are Chapters 19-21.

We are in the Lane leading away from Nuthanger Farm, following Hazel and Pipkin's farm expedition earlier.

The camera pans right to show the lone tree on WD in the distance and zooms in on the ditch on the Eastern side of the lane.

This ditch is where the events of the next two sections of the film will take place.

Cut to the interior of the ditch, as the rabbits run past, heading away from the farm towards the Down.

Bigwig, bringing up the rear, stops and turns back, listening. We start to hear an echoing cry of "Zorn!" the lapine word for destroyed or finished.

The rest of the group are now with them. Bigwig moves towards the sound. Hazel asks if he can see what it is. Dandelion says he can hear it. Something big is approaching.

And then Bigwig is struck dumb with terror as whatever it is calls out his name. The terrified Bigwig says it is the Black Rabbit of Inlé.

Cut to a close up of the edge of the ditch. Two grey paws appear as the voice, clearly not supernatural, cries "All dead! All zorn!"

A bedraggled and scratched grey rabbit appears and tumbles, at the end of his strength, into the ditch.

It is Captain Holly of the Sandleford Owsla.

Holly looks up and opens his eyes, recognising his old fellow Owsla member and repeating "I've found you!" in sheer relief.

Holly says he remembers Fiver. How he was the one who saw "it" coming.

We hear Dandelion ask what happened.

We see trees tumbling in a spiral as Holly says the warren was destroyed. There is a rumbling sound building.

We hear Silver ask how.

In the background of the tumbling trees we could see a circle. That now becomes clearer. It is a view of the entrance of a burrow from underground.

And then we see earth falling into the burrow, covering the view.

Holly's voice says men came and filled in the burrows. We see another hole being filled. And another.

Holly says they couldn't get out. There was a strange sound. A hissing.

We hear the sound and see a terrified rabbit. In the dark of the filled in warren, his fur is blue and his eyes a deep red.

And then we enter the realm of the surreal.

Six disembodied rabbit heads move along converging burrow forms. pursued along every path by a yellow gas.

They converge and press together, pressing upwards as the paths behind them are closed.

Holly says "The air turned bad"

We see six terrified heads pressed together in another blocked run.

Holly says "Runs blocked with dead bodies"

There is a building sound of voices echoing in despair.

We see five heads desperately reaching upwards, the yellow gas all around them. The camera zooms in on one as its eyes close in pain.

Holly repeats "Couldn't get out!"

And now rabbits crushed into a narrowing run, some with their eyes closed, some pathetically still trying to press forward.

As Holly says "Everything turned mad" we zoom in on a rabbit's eye closing.

The closing rabbit eye cross-fades and becomes a rift in turf that rips open, revealing red earth underneath.

Holly says "Warren, earth, roots, grass. All...pushed into the air"

As he says this, we see pointed fence posts, two of them tipped with blood. Behind them we see red trees and purple rabbit corpses flung into the air, with a fiery sky behind.

We see the green turf again. A human mechanical digger scrape into it, scoring a set of parallel red lines as it disappears into the background.

The red lines move and swirl in a circle. More tumbling tree branches join them, as the camera pans down to rejoin the rabbits in the ditch.

Dandelion says "Men have always hated us"

Holly replies "No. They just destroyed the warren because we were in their way."

Fiver, in close up, looks away and says "They'll never rest until they've spoiled the Earth"