Works of literature or film featuring taxidermy or taxidermied animals?

February 15, 2013 7:18 AM

References both great and small are welcome.

Seeking references to literary works (of fiction, primarily) and films that include or depict taxidermy or taxidermized animals. I'm less interested in TV shows with taxidermy (Scrubs, Immortalized, American Stuffers), but if you know of anything good I'd still be happy to hear about it. A few pieces I'm already familiar with:

--Psycho (film)
--Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel
--The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving

Even minor/brief mentions or depictions of taxidermized animals are welcome. Many thanks!

posted by fleetofblimps to media & arts (35 answers total)

First thing that comes to mind for me is Twin Peaks.
posted by avocet at 7:21 AM on February 15 [2 favorites]

You want taxidermy? HA HA HA HA, HA HA HA HA!
posted by adipocere at 7:22 AM on February 15

Dinner for Schmucks
posted by wallaby at 7:22 AM on February 15 [1 favorite]

Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson (The Bloggess). I mean it is right there on the cover.
posted by magnetsphere at 7:22 AM on February 15 [1 favorite]

The Most Dangerous Game.
posted by payoto at 7:24 AM on February 15

There's a funny bit in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises: "Road to hell paved with unbought stuffed dogs."
posted by steef at 7:28 AM on February 15 [1 favorite]

Easy. Naked Gun 33 1/3. Nice beaver!
posted by fingersandtoes at 7:30 AM on February 15

In The Man Who Knew Too Much, Jimmy Stewart looks up the wrong Ambrose Chapel and ends up at a taxidermist's shop. Instead of being filmed on a set, apparently they filmed the scene in an actual taxidermy shop...one which supplies (or maybe did, back in the 50s) actual animal props to Hollywood.

In a King of the Hill episode called Hank's Bully, Peggy and Dale get into small critter taxidermy (squirrels and the like) and enter a contest. One of their projects is a bunch of squirrel founding fathers signing Constitution. Awesome.
posted by phunniemee at 7:30 AM on February 15

Taxidermia. Don't say I didn't warn you.
posted by mattholomew at 7:31 AM on February 15

Tideland (warning: wiki, contains spoilers) involves taxidermia, but, um, it's not the usual animals, and it's crazy disturbing.
posted by Juliet Banana at 7:41 AM on February 15

There is a taxidermied armadillo that plays a small role in John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meaney.
posted by erst at 7:44 AM on February 15 [1 favorite]

The climactic vampire fighting scene between David and Michael in The Lost Boys.
posted by MoonOrb at 7:48 AM on February 15

William Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet, Act V Scene I:

And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,
An alligator stuff'd, and other skins
Of ill-shaped fishes;

posted by Jehan at 7:48 AM on February 15 [1 favorite]

Alice(1988) is a Czech surrealist version of Alice in Wonderland in which the White Rabbit is a taxidermied rabbit who constantly leaks sawdust.
posted by Naib at 7:53 AM on February 15 [1 favorite]

Bill Murray's character in The Royal Tenenbaums has a stuffed javelina.
posted by zoinks at 7:55 AM on February 15

The Hotel New Hampshire includes a[n eventually] stuffed Sorrow the Dog.
posted by Ink-stained wretch at 8:18 AM on February 15

One of my dad's favorite movies. Chevy Chase's Funny Farm. Boy, I miss my dad.
posted by beccaj at 8:35 AM on February 15

The music video for George Harrison's "Got My Mind Set on You" is pretty hilarious, and features taxidermy. Not sure what the rules are for linking to presumably copyrighted content but it's easy to find on YouTube.
posted by Wretch729 at 8:39 AM on February 15

The Judge Dredd story, 'The Taxidermist' is available as a graphic novel.
posted by biffa at 8:42 AM on February 15

The Cabin in the Woods (spo-o-o-o-i-lers!). There's a wolf head that, while it doesn't have an extended role in the story, is the center of a setpiece.
posted by theatro at 8:42 AM on February 15

I believe that Werner Herzog's WINGS OF HOPE has a sequence filmed in a museum or zoology dept with taxidermied animals...
posted by OolooKitty at 8:45 AM on February 15

The Landlady a short story by Roald Dahl
posted by wsquared at 8:49 AM on February 15 [2 favorites]

Not fiction, but Susan Orlean wrote a memorable piece in the New Yorker about the World Taxidermy Championships here.
posted by rustcellar at 9:20 AM on February 15

Bill Murray's character in The Royal Tenenbaums has a stuffed javelina.

Actually, it's Gene Hackman's character, Royal Tenenbaum, that has the javelina.
posted by Flamingo at 9:25 AM on February 15 [1 favorite]

If you're including children's books, there's some funny business about a taxidermied great horned owl in Beverly Cleary's Henry and the Clubhouse.
posted by dlugoczaj at 9:36 AM on February 15

Oh, another children's book (and another stuffed owl, which actually plays a fairly major part in the story): The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder.
posted by dlugoczaj at 9:40 AM on February 15

Little tiny bit in L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Windy Poplars: "Little Elizabeth," the emotionally neglected child next door, says that there's a stuffed crow in her bedroom and she's afraid of it because her grandmother's elderly servant told her it would pick her eyes out if she cried. And, in Montgomery's Emily of New Moon, there was a stuffed owl in Aunt Elizabeth's spare room that scared Emily when she was shut in there as a punishment.

I'm guessing Montgomery was frightened by a stuffed bird when she was a child.
posted by dlugoczaj at 9:52 AM on February 15

Surprised no one has mentioned the brothers quay. Check out their movie Institute Benjamenta.
posted by pynchonesque at 10:01 AM on February 15

In Philip Ardagh's ridiculously silly and enjoyable children's books, a stuffed stoat called Malcolm (or possibly Sally) features prominently. The Eddie Dickens Trilogy

David Sedaris' new one will have a taxidermied arm, I believe. :-) Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls. Although that's more embellished fact, rather than fiction.
posted by pootler at 10:43 AM on February 15

The publisher I work for just published a cultural/social history of taxidermy called The Breathless Zoo: Taxidermy and the Cultures of Longing by Rachel Poliquin. While it's really much more focused on taxidermy as used in the visual arts and science, it does have a few references to literature and film. I also recommend the author's Web site which is a cornucopia of all things stuffed.
posted by Toekneesan at 10:56 AM on February 15

The protagonist in the Argentine film El aura is a taxidermist.
posted by dr. boludo at 11:13 AM on February 15

Matteo Garrone's stunning film L'Imbalsamatore.
posted by progosk at 11:18 AM on February 15

The short film The Singing Trophy is full of (very vocal) taxidermied animals.
posted by Paragon at 11:55 AM on February 15

The Landlady (note: spoilerific wikipedia entry), one of Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected.
posted by rjs at 12:38 PM on February 15

Come to think of it, there is also a sonnet by William Wordsworth featuring a stuffed owl, which was the inspiration for a collection of notably awful verse. Wordsworth said of it: "This is taken from the account given by Miss Jewsbury of the pleasure she derived, when long confined to her bed by sickness, from the inanimate object on which this Sonnet turns."
posted by steef at 6:18 AM on February 16 [1 favorite]