Heads Up, Ears Down

This blog accurately identifies depictions of violence and cruelty toward animals in films. The purpose is to provide viewers with a reliable guide so that such depictions do not come as unwelcome surprises. Films will be accurately notated, providing a time cue for each incident along with a concise description of the scene and perhaps relevant context surrounding the incident. In order to serve as a useful reference tool, films having no depictions of violence to animals will be included, with an indication that there are no such scenes. This is confirmation that the films have been watched with the stated purpose in mind.


Note that the word depictions figures prominently in the objective. It is a travesty that discussions about cruelty in film usually are derailed by the largely unrelated assertion that no animals really were hurt (true only in some films, dependent upon many factors), and that all this concern is just over a simulation. Not the point, whether true or false. We do not smugly dismiss depictions of five-year-olds being raped because those scenes are only simulations. No, we are appalled that such images are even staged, and we are appropriately horrified that the notion now has been planted into the minds of the weak and cruel.


Depictions of violence or harm to animals are assessed in keeping with our dominant culture, with physical abuse, harmful neglect, and similar mistreatment serving as a base line. This blog does not address extended issues of animal welfare, and as such does not identify scenes of people eating meat or mules pulling plows. The goal is to itemize images that might cause a disturbance in a compassionate household.


These notes provide a heads-up but do not necessarily discourage watching a film because of depicted cruelty. Consuming a piece of art does not make you a supporter of the ideas presented. Your ethical self is created by your public rhetoric and your private actions, not by your willingness to sit through a filmed act of violence.

London in the Raw

London in the Raw. Arnold L. Miller, 1964.
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Edition screened: BFI Flipside Blu-ray #002, released 2009. English language. Runtime approximately 76 minutes.

Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.

Addition Comments:
London in the Raw is both titillating and boring, sometimes alternately, sometimes simultaneously. The film begins with a display of stodgy I say now my good man British traditionalism, then declares that we will peek into the seedier side of Swingin’ London. The vignettes that follow are mostly of three types: Clubs and Restaurants of nostalgic or ethnic interest; the Sex Industry represented by glimpses into exotic dance clubs and a silly staged encounter with a prostitute; and the Fitness Craze and related issues of vanity.

Much of the film is at least slightly entertaining just for the settings of 1964 nighttime London and for the squinty discomfort of unattractive erotic performers sparsely clothed and threatening to remove more. The scenes in ethnic restaurants seem like nothing other than advertisements, while the documentation of a genuine hair transplant operation is one of the most alarming things I’ve ever seen on film.

The most inscrutable inclusions are interminable amateur musical performances that offer a glimpse into nothing but sheer boredom. We get, for example, two musical-comedy numbers by a small Jewish community theater troupe performing to a tiny audience. Their performance is distinguishable from a junior high school play only by the age of the performers. These and the numerous pub and nightclub performances provided in near entirety offer nothing seedy, beguilingly quirky, or even of dated tourist interest.

The BFI package includes an Alternate Cut of London in the Raw that runs only 47 minutes, losing most of the musical performances, the hair transplant, and some staged scenes of interest, but adding more sexually explicit content including some 1964-style full nudity and a transvestite stripper. Also included are three short films by Peter Davis documenting London’s underclass: Pub, Chelsea Bridge Boys, and Strip. These are much closer to real documentaries than the staged-and-silly style of the feature title, with Strip being particularly engaging and valuable.


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