The Wind Will Carry Us (Bad ma ra khahad bord.) Abbas Kiarostami, 1999.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #1261, released 2025. Persian language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 118 minutes.
Summary: A turtle is marooned on his back but gets righted. An uncredited cameo by one of Iran’s leading dung beetle actors is a delightful scene in the film.
A rewarding and enjoyable experience, like every Kiarostami film I have seen.
Total Pixel Space. Jacob Adler, 2024.
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Edition screened: Watched online. English language. Runtime approximately 9 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
A short film that reminded me how simple a wonderful thing can be and what the word wonderful means.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpAeygE4d1A&t=1s
This Is the Way the World Ends. Dee Austin Robertson, 2007.
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Edition screened: Included on Arrow Blu-ray Southland Tales, released 2021. English language. Runtime approximately 10 minutes.
Summary: This short animated film tells of human extinction and animal mutation as the result of military bombing. Mutant invertebrates are depicted but they are silly and wiggly rather than alarming. No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Southland Tales. Richard Kelly, 2006.
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Edition screened: Extended “Cannes Cut” included with Arrow Blu-ray, released 2021. English language. Runtime approximately 159 minutes.
Summary: Very brief discussion of monkeys used in a NASA-like flight, with a one-second image of a monkey sitting unprovoked in something like a space capsule or simulator. No particular depictions of violence or harm to any animals.
In a normal world Southland Tales would be a great YouGetItorYouDon’t film. Under the current regime of vulgar disfunction nearly identical to the film’s content, it’s more of a YouAllowYourselfToGetItorYouDon’t.
The Arrow release includes the theatrical cut, the longer Cannes debut cut, and the 2007 animated short This Is the Way the World Ends.
Keyholes Are for Peeping. Doris Wishman, 1972.
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Edition screened: Included in AGFA Blu-ray set The Films of Doris Wishman: The Twilight Years. English language. Runtime approximately 70 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
A curious film even on The Wishman Curve. Perhaps because of hurt feelings at a cocktail party, Boy I’ll Show Them Wishman intentionally sets out to make a comedy and casts semi-cult legend Sammy Petrillo as the lead. Petrillo’s performance is engagingly entertaining to whatever degree you look back fondly on the guy from high school who worked hard to be voted Class Clown, and a no-speak-good-English Puerto Rican janitor is played for coarse yucks in his too-large role as the titular Keyhole Peeper. But for my tastes, the funniest aspect of the film is that none of the peeped-through doors actually has a keyhole. We repeatedly see our kneeling janitor pressing his forehead against a door above the knob where a keyhole isn’t, or squinting at the key slot of a knob. [Why Oh Why is there not a Wishman film called Key Slot of a Knob?] Rest assured, this is not a career arc-changing narrative conceit on the part of our director. It is just Oh Whatever Doris being Oh Whatever Doris, setting herself up for the next cocktail party.
A Full Day’s Work (A busy day or nine unusual murders in the same day by a single man whose job it is not / Une journée bien remplie ou Neuf meurtres insolites dans une même journée par un seul homme dont ce n'est pas le métier ). Jean-Louis Trintignant, 1973.
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Edition screened: Kino/Lorber Blu-ray, released 2021. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 95 minutes.
Summary: Disregard for killing domestic animals.
Details:
1) We see the perpetrator planting a bomb with a timer in a utilitarian building that is overcrowded with turkeys, 14:36-15:00. In addition to the anticipatory dread that these birds will be blown up, the scene is distressing as the turkeys are crammed together, crashing into one another and their food dispenser.
2) The perpetrator murders a woman who lives alone with many cats (25:45), leaving the cats locked in a house without a caretaker.
3) We return to the shabby building filled with turkeys at 1:24:30, then see it explode from a distance at 1:25.
eXistenZ. David Cronenberg, 1999.
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Edition screened: Buena Vista Blu-ray, released 2012. English language. Runtime approximately 97 minutes.
Summary: Killing of fantasy creatures.
Details:
1) Amphibian-like fantasy creatures are dissected and used in biomechanical processes, 51:32-55:11.
2) An iguana-like fantasy creature is beheaded in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant, 1:09:04.
The Eight Mountains (Le otto montagne). Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch, 2022.
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Edition screened: Janus/Criterion Blu-ray, released 2023. Italian language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 157 minutes.
Summary: A dead goat hanging outside a house is slit open and the internal organs fall out into a bucket with blood all around, 2:02-25-2:02:47.
Black Emanuelle 2 (Emanuelle nera N° 2). Bitto Albertini, 1976.
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Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle, released 2023. English language with original Italian as an option. Runtime approximately 91 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals. 0.5/5❤
Rat Pfink a Boo Boo. Ray Dennis Steckler, 1965.
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Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set The Incredibly Strange Films of Ray Dennis Steckler, released 2002. English language. Runtime approximately 67 minutes.
Summary: An outdoor pen of pigeons is jostled slightly during the fight scene that comprises the last third of this film. The birds are not touched.
Psychomania. Don Sharp, 1973.
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Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror Volume 2, released 2024. English language. Runtime approximately 90 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Pigs and Battleships (Buta to gunkan). Shôhei Imamura, 1961.
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Edition screened: Criterion DVD #472 included in box set #471 Pigs, Pimps and Prostitues: 3 Films by Shôei Imamura, released 2009. Japanese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 108 minutes.
Summary: General disregard for animals.
Details:
1) An officer opens a hessian bag and we see two dead dogs inside, 33:13-33:17.
2) A whole pig is served for dinner around the 49 minute mark.
3) We see what appears to be a dead pig on the back of a mini truck, 1:43:05.
4) Many pigs run through the street toward the film’s end and there is a scene in which humans are squishing on top of a few pigs. Neither of these scenes shows injury to the pigs.
Lethal Ladies 2 Collection. Cirio H. Santiago and Steve Carver, 1973-1975.
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Edition screened: Shout! Factory 2-DVD set, released 2012. English language. Cumulative runtime of three films approximately 235 minutes.
Summary: The Arena includes a bloody chicken plucking scene.
The Roger Corman’s Cult Classics Triple Feature ‘Lethal Ladies 2’ Collection includes:
The Arena (1974 Steve Carver) — mediocre as expected
Fly Me (1973 Cirio H. Santiago) — substantially better than expected
Cover Girl Models (1975 Cirio H. Santiago) — even worse than expected
The Immoral Three (Hotter Than Hell). Doris Wishman, 1975.
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Edition screened: Included in AGFA Blu-ray set The Films of Doris Wishman: The Twilight Years. English language. Runtime approximately 74 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
If you are compelled to watch a Wishman film, The Immoral Three would be a good choice.
The Enchanted. Carter Lord, 1984.
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Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror Volume 2, released 2024. English language. Runtime approximately 90 minutes.
Summary:
The film includes several quick scenes of calves and dogs depicted as dying just after being attacked by a predator. Despite these realistic depictions the director conveys a prevailing care for animals, not just in these scenes but also in the film’s enveloping world view.
Each just-attacked animal is shown lying on its side with the appearance of a bloody wound at its throat. The animals clearly are breathing and panting, presumably tranquilized and cosmetically treated with theatrical effects. Tranquilizing animals for film production is not to be applauded, but the decision and effort to do so in an era when it was common simply to kill the animals is laudable.
The chicken and quails probably were killed, evidence of our lingering stratification of animals perceived as food or not.
The film is set in the Florida everglades and features portentous closeups of woodland animals. Owls, snakes, and squirrels watch the story unfold in montages that make them omniscient audience, jury, and innocents to all they survey. A kitten appears late in the film. She provides an excellent performance in her important role and is not threatened or harmed.
Details:
1) Several quail are shot by a hunter and fall into the brush, 2:05-2:11. The scene is in the style of stock footage and includes no closeups or details.
2) A dead fish is pulled from the river and the hook disengaged, 4:49-5:10.
3) Depiction of a dead calf with a bloody neck wound, as described above, 32:46-32:58.
4) A calf is attacked and killed, 53:18-53:25.
5) A man presents the body of a chicken just decapitated off-screen, 1:04:53, and we see the chicken’s body lying on the floor at 1:05:14.
6) Another dead calf with bloody neck wound, 1:05:54-1:05:57.
7) Dead hunting dogs, depicted in the same way as the calves, 1:11:35-1:11:55.
8) Men shoot at a black wolf, 1:18:19, and we see the dying wolf (also visibly panting) 1:18:44-1:19:00.
The BD also includes Lord’s 1973 short film Swimmer.
