ONE of the most eagerly awaited screenings at this year’s Edinburgh Film Festival was cancelled last night after the organisers learnt that the film violated a 70-year-old animal cruelty law.

Cockfighter, a brutal American drama set in the Deep South, was shot on a shoestring budget and is notorious for its footage of real cockfights. It made little impression on its release in 1974 but is now regarded as a cult classic by many critics, who say that the magnificent, brooding performance of Warren Oates as the cock trainer is proof of the film’s merit.

The Internet Movie Database describes it as “one of the most extraordinary movies of the 1970s, and further proof that Monte Hellman is one of the most underrated directors of all time”.

Rarely shown in Britain, Cockfighter appeared to be an ideal choice for the festival’s retrospective of obscure 1970s masterpieces. However, according to the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), showing it in public is illegal.

The festival organisers said that they were unaware of this until they received representations from the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SSPCA).

“Of course it’s disappointing,” Ginnie Atkinson, the festival’s managing director, said. “It is a very anomalous, strange situation, because there is a genuine, historical context for showing it.”

A spokeswoman for the board said that the film contravened the Cinematograph Films (Animals) Act 1937 because the cockfighting scenes were organised for the purpose of filming. “There’s nothing the festival organisers could have done,” she said. “The Act makes it illegal to show any scene which was organised or directed for the purpose of the film involving actual cruelty to animals. If you cut the cockfighting scenes from Cockfighter it doesn’t have anything in it.”

She added that the legislation, which was introduced in response to complaints about horses being made to fall in westerns, applied to video and television. The BBFC recently cut an old Tarzan film.

Cockfighter had a gala premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival in 1974 and was shown at the National Film Theatre in 1995. Both screenings were illegal, according to the BBFC. The film is not available in this country because it has never been classified in Britain, but it can be bought on DVD abroad and imported.

Mike Flynn, head of the SSPCA’s uniformed division, said that the society had been tipped off anonymously. “Had it gone ahead, somebody somewhere would have complained to us and it would have ended up with a report being made to the Procurator Fiscal,” he said.

Jim Hickey, who was deputy director of the festival when it screened the film in 1974, said: “It is powerful and some of the scenes are disturbing, but I don’t remember it as controversial.”