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.

Scales

Scales (Sayyedat al-Bahr). Shahad Ameen, 2020.

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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. Arabic language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 76 minutes.


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


Scales is a beautiful and entrancing film. The drama is persistent but not taxing, every performance calmly likable, and the cinematography inventive without disturbing the serenity of the viewing experience. Highly recommended.



Red Beard

Red Beard (Akahige). Akira Kurosawa, 1965.

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Edition screened: Criterion DVD #159, released 2002. Japanese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 185 minutes.


Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.


Red Beard is a fitting sayōnara to a successful run of Hollywood-style Kurosawa films starring Toshirô Mifune. In a large supporting role rather than starring as the lead, Mifune masterfully portrays a 2010 Robert De Nero portraying a mid-1960s Mifune who plays a young doctor of the late Tokugawa shogunate.


The Present (Hsieh)

The Present. Hsieh Wen-Ming, 2013.

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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. Taiwanese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 15 minutes.


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


The effectively spooky animated short The Present accompanies and surpasses the feature film Io Island in the Severin box set.


Nang Nak

Nang Nak. Nonzee Nimibutr, 1999.

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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. Thai language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 101 minutes.


Summary: Brief fishing violence and dead rats.


Details:

1) A fish is speared in a river, 39:32.

2) Dead rats float in the water, 57:41.


Nang Nak is accompanied by an interview with the director (2024, produced by Kier-La Janisse) “Love and Impermanence: Nang Nak and the Rebirth of Thai Cinema.”



Mother (Albert Brooks)

Mother. Albert Brooks, 1996.

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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #1232, released 2024. English language. Runtime approximately 104 minutes.


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


Man-Eater Mountain ‘Hitokui Yama’

Man-Eater Mountain ‘Hitokui Yama’ . Naoyuki Niiya, 2010.

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Edition screened: Included with Bakeneko: A Vengeful Spirit in Severin Blu-ray box set All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror Volume 2, released 2024. Japanese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 28 minutes.


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


An animated comedy horror.


Kindil El Bahr

Kindil El Bahr. Damien Ounouri, 2016.

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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. Arabic language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 41 minutes.


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


Despite its short run time, Kindil El Bahr tells an interesting variation on rape/revenge stories by combining the woman’s wrath with older dangers of the ocean. It accompanies the feature film Scales.

The History of Pinball

The History of Pinball. Mark Helms, 1997.

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Edition screened: Watched online. English language. Runtime approximately 61 minutes.


Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.


The emphasis here is on history rather than enumerations of favorites, top sellers, or designer. The script begins with 18th-century table-top bagatelle games then chronologically documents the emergence of pins, plunger, bumpers, flippers, electromechanics, and the other toys that make a modern pinball machine.


Emanuelle and the Porno Nights of the World

Emanuelle and the Porno Nights of the World (Emanuelle e le porno notti nel mondo n. 2). Bruno Mattei (as Jimmy Matheus), 1977.

😿 😿 😿 😿

Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle, released 2023. English dub by/of Laura Gemser. Runtime approximately 85 minutes.


Summary: As part of an alleged New Guinea wedding ceremony, numerous baby and mature domestic pigs are viciously clubbed to death followed by their evisceration and the assailants playing with internal organs, 40:12-41:52. Nightmarishly brutal evidence of why humans are the only unworthy life forms on the planet. Les Blank allegedly commented “Four stars, could have been five with some Schlitz beer cans on the set.” 


Unfortunate hostess Gemser is visibly awkward with her introduction that this film is “the best” of her world tour, as Emanuelle and the Porno Night of the World is made of leftovers from the slightly less abysmal [nothing here and the] Porno Nights of the World. The most entertaining scene in Emanuelle and the PN o/t W is the nightclub skit of Snow White and the Seven Four Horny Dwarves, filmed in Holland, we are told, an assertion Gemser supports by holding an Italian-language copy of Snow White. I also was slightly curious - not entertained because it was horrible and boring - but slightly curious about the futuristic Space Erotica show because it featured a dramatically lit IV drip stand in the center of the stage for no reason. Perhaps Euro-70s’ vision of something robotmorphic from the prop closet of the future.


Similar to [nothing here a/t] Porno Nights of the World, short transitions of Gemser’s beautiful face introducing the next tedium are the stingy smears of enticing wheat paste binding jumbles of crudely hacked construction paper. This time she is behind the wheel of a car endlessly bluescreen cruising the same two blocks of The Vegas Strip, arbitrarily identified as Atlanta, Austria, Copenhagen, whatever. 


Clouds of Sils Maria

Clouds of Sils Maria. Olivier Assayas, 2014.

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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #822, released 2016. English language. Runtime approximately 124 minutes.


No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals. 

 

The Criterion release also includes Arnold Fanck’s beautiful 1924 Cloud Phenomena of Maloja


Bakeneko: A Vengeful Spirit

Bakeneko: A Vengeful Spirit (Ghost Cat of the Cursed Pond; Kaibyô nori no numa). Yoshihiro Ishikawa, 1968.

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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. Japanese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 110 minutes.


Summary: The plot hinges on a besieged woman who serenely carries her cat into a pond, drowning them both. That scene is filmed from the back so we see only the woman’s descent into the water with no evidence of the cat.


The Bakeneko feature in the set also includes Man-Eater Mountain ‘Hitokui Yama’ (Naoyuki Niiya, 2010).


Visions of Eight

Visions of Eight. Various directors, 1973.

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Edition screened: Included in Criterion’s 100 Years of Olympic Films 1912-2012 Blu-ray box set #900, released 2017. English language. Runtime approximately 110 minutes.


Summary: No particular depictions of violence toward animals.


Executive producer David Wolper invited eight directors to create a short film focused on an aspect of the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics:


  • Yuri Ozerov, The Beginning
  • Mai Zetterling, The Strongest
  • Arthur Penn, The Highest
  • Michael Pfleghar, The Women
  • Kon Ichikawa, The Fastest
  • Miloš Forman, The Decathlon
  • Claude Lelouch, The Losers
  • John Schlesinger, The Longest


Vermiglio

Vermiglio. Maura Delpero, 2025.

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Edition screened: Janus Blu-ray, released 2025. Italian language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 119 minutes.


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


Porno Nights of the World

Porno Nights of the World (Notti porno nel mondo). Bruno Mattei and Joe D’Amato, 1977.

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Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle, released 2023. English dub by/of Laura Gemser. Runtime approximately 88 minutes.


Summary: A chicken is beheaded and the blood drizzled around as part of a macumba ritual, 1:20:26-1:21:36.


Although the chicken murder is inexcusable, the surrounding Afro-Brazilian ritual is the only vaguely interesting segment in this tiresome film. Per Mondo formula, Porno Nights is a stumbling parade of childishly staged “documents” performed by people who now fifty years later still live in fear of being recognized and publicly mocked. A desirable 8-minute edit of the film could be made by cutting every topical vignette, leaving just the dozen or so transitions of Laura Gemser talking with us in medium close-up while modeling her mid-70s Resort Season wardrobe.


Much better than the feature film is the supplemental documentary produced by Kier-La Janisse, The Naked Eye: Sex and the Mondo Film.


The Naked Eye: Sex and the Mondo Film

The Naked Eye: Sex and the Mondo Film. Elizabeth Purchell, 2023.

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Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle, released 2023. English language. Runtime approximately 43 minutes.


Summary: Brief clips of animal slaughter from Mondo films.


Details:

1) Brief clip from a Mondo film that appears to be the abdomen of a huge reptile slit open, 28:18-28:21. Looks very phony.

2) A short montage of an injured bull and butchering a whale, 35:52-36:13.


I enjoyed this short documentary. Three cinéastes (director Elizabeth Purchell, Vinegar Syndrome co-founder Joe Rubin, and commentator Mark Goodall) discuss the origins, history, and shifting focus of Mondo-style films in Europe and America through the 1980s. They focus on the marketing of sexuality, eroticism, and gender issues. They barely and contemptuously acknowledge the cheap animal abuse and Faces of Death-styling down in the seemingly bottomless Mondo barrel.