What does the word “animals” mean to you? Favoured creatures we have domesticated and turned into household pets? A species best kept under lock and key in a zoo, or simply a tasty element in the food chain? Or dare we say it, human beings who have reverted to the law of the jungle?

According to the film-makers Victor Schonfeld and Myriam Alaux, animals are a pathetic biological category that we have learnt to torture and treat to a violent death. First seen by a mass public on Channel 4 during its first week of programming, their famous documentary The Animals Film (1981) is now released on DVD 26 years after the groundbreaking event that turned several hundred thousand meat-munching viewers into staunch vegetarians overnight. This is not a cosy film but one of the scariest horror movies - ever.

First up is a sequence to soften you up with the “aah” factor - a cut-down version of the silent classic Rescued by Rover (1905), in which man's best friend rescues a cute child from the clutches of a cruel kidnapper. Then jumpcut to footage of Edwardian schoolchildren with baseball bats, merrily clubbing a pen of captive rabbits to death, accompanied by manic laughter, as the pile of bloody, twitching fur grows higher and higher. Shocking, but forgivable in an historical context, as kids of today have learnt to batter only each other. Children didn't “know better” back then, and neither apparently did the adults, as we then see them encouraging pitbulls to fight and tear each other to death.

So what? We all know about that illegal practice, surely history since the Dangerous Dogs Act of 1991? Today we take care of our dogs, don't we? Giving them to our children as presents for Christmas, until the novelty wears off and they are cast out on the streets: 200,000 a year, according to the RSPCA, which rescues and recycle them, often resulting in unwanted pets being put down and, ironically, ending up as pet food and fertiliser.

But what about food for humans? From the early days of childhood we are brainwashed into a world of nursery rhymes and makebelieve. Take the three little pigs, for instance: they have nothing to fear, not even the big bad wolf - safe in their house of bricks.

However, as the film documents, it's not the wolf they have to fear but Man, who in some farms has built them a house of brick (and steel) in the form of a grotesque torture chamber. It shows us in graphic detail the sows imprisoned in what are facetiously known as “rape racks” - metal pens in which the animal is tethered with no room even to turn around, leaving her at the mercy of ever-randy boars who are free to sire her 24/7, resulting in a constant condition of pregnancy and birth.

And it doesn't end there. In a shed housing 70,000 chickens in cramped, adjoining cages, the birds are so traumatised through lack of space that, given the chance, they would frantically peck each other to death. But of course, they are never given the chance because when still only chicks, they have their heads clamped in a vice and their beaks bloodily guillotined.

Man's manipulation of animals is not only in the service of nutrition but also to foster and study neurotic behaviour in family relationships. Deprive a baby monkey of its mother and observe its growing panic. Even worse, supply it with a surrogate mother with spiked electrodes that cause shocking pain when it goes to hug her and even more stress results. This and similar experiments were funded by the US Office of Naval Research to apply to torturing captives for information in Vietnam.

OK, that's enough. Isn't there censorship of such appalling images? The familiar tag “no animal was harmed” means a film has passed the rigorous standards of what is called the 1937 Animals Act. No appalling incident resulting in injury or distress for an animal is allowed to be shown on film, not if it's been set up for the camera. Anything that's not a documentable occurrence is banned. Sad to say, every one of the scenarios shown here are everyday experiences, happening outside the film-maker's intention.

So what sort of incidents would be against the law and regularly banned? The most obvious examples are to be found in westerns, where galloping horses are brought down by trip wires to simulate death by gunfire. Small ban!

Several vested interests have tried to ban The Animals Film, fortunately without success. Unfortunately, the horrors filmed 27 years ago are still happening today. Personally, I feel that this courageous masterpiece is essential viewing for every caring, humane being on the planet.

And remember, nobody needs a mink coat except a mink.

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