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.

Towers of Silence

Towers of Silence. Jamil Dehlavi, 1975.

😿😿😿

Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror Volume 2, released 2024. Urdu language. Runtime approximately 54 minutes.


Summary: Shooting of a dog.


Details:

1) We watch a sea turtle crawl to the beach and lay her eggs. A boy digs up her eggs and crushes one in his hand at 29:30.

2) The boy has various containers of small insects including a large fly in a cage with cork top and bottom. He puts the cage in a sink of water at 29:30; the cage floats as the fly scrambles. No resolution.

3) A small white dog (allegedly rabid) is shot. We see the dog roll and squeal 32:00-32:15, and return for a close up of its panting face while dying, 32:35-32:41.

4) The boy carries the dead dog to an area filled with animal carcasses and vultures, 34:27-36:23.

5) Quick shot of a large black dog dead on the beach, 39:04.



Towers of Silence accompanies Dehlavi’s Born of Fire in the Sevrin set.


at
Labels: , ,

Scream VI

Scream VI. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, 2023.

😸

Edition screened: Paramount Blu-ray, released 2023. English language. Runtime approximately 124 minutes.


Summary: No animals in the film.


at
Labels: ,

Scanners

Scanners. David Cronenberg, 1981.

😸

Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #712, released 2014. English language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 103 minutes.


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


The Criterion release also includes Cronenberg’s first full-length film, Stereo (1969). 


at
Labels: , ,

Qâf

Qâf: The Sacred Mountain. Jamil Dehlavi, 1985.

😸

Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror Volume 2, released 2024. Scored. Runtime approximately 27 minutes.


Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.


Made during the shooting of Born of Fire, Qâf is twenty-seven beautiful minutes of lava flowing from an erupting volcano, set to music by Tangerine Dream.


at
Labels: , , ,

Nosferatu (Eggers)

Nosferatu. Robert Eggers, 2024.

😿😿

Edition screened: Universal Blu-ray, released 2025. English language. Runtime approximately 136 minutes.


Summary: When it looks like encrazied Knock is going to bite the head off a pigeon, he does. It’s fairly bloody and over in about six seconds.


at
Labels:

Nalujuk Night

Nalujuk Night. Jennie Williams, 2021.

😸

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 13 minutes.


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


The short horror film Nalujuk Night expands on the culture and myths of the Haida people featured in Edge of the Knife.


at
Labels: ,

Kelly’s Heroes

Kelly’s Heroes (Kelly’s AWOL Looters Who Do Nothing Remotely Heroic). Brian G. Hutton, 1970.

😸

Edition screened: Warner Bros. DVD, released 2000. English language. Runtime approximately 144 minutes.


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



at
Labels: , ,

Haida Carver

Haida Carver. Richard Gilbert, 1964.

😸

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 13 minutes.


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


Haida Carver accompanies the feature film Edge of the Knife and explains the contemporary Haida custom of carving in soft slate.


at
Labels: , ,

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (Gon-ji-am). Jung Bum-shik, 2018.

😸

Edition screened: Well Go USA Blu-ray, released 2018. Korean language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 95 minutes.


Summary: A quick instance of a dead bird on the filthy floor and a modified rubber chicken, but no particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.


at
Labels: ,

Encounters of the Spooky Kind

Encounters of the Spooky Kind (Gui da gui). Sammo Kam-Bo Hung, 1980.

😿😿😿

Edition screened: Eureka Blu-ray, released 2021. Cantonese with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 103 minutes.


Summary: A chicken’s head is cut off, 42:32-42:44.

at
Labels:

The Thrill Killers

The Thrill Killers. Ray Dennis Steckler, 1965.

😸

Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set The Incredibly Strange Films of Ray Dennis Steckler, released 2002. English language. Runtime approximately 70 minutes.


Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.


The Severin release also includes the re-release cut of The Thrill Killers called The Maniacs Are Loose!  Skip it. It’s the complete original film prefaced with a staggeringly boring six-minute introduction by real hypnotist Ormond McGill. McGill encourages the audience to submit to voluntary hypnosis which will allow them to see real maniacs rampaging in the theatre when cued by a swirling disc graphic cut into the film. He slowly explains this process about four times. Indeed, the swirling disc is inserted into the film for a few seconds during crescendos of violence. This re-release tour of re-titled The Thrill Killers featured actors running in the theatre isles with prop weapons during Swirly Disc Time, a stunt Steckler employed for other films that had worn out their welcomes.

at
Labels: ,

Sleep (Venus)

Sleep (Schlaf). Michael Venus, 2020.

😸

Edition screened: Arrow Blu-ray, released 2021. German language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 102 minutes.


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


Details: When Mona first comes to the village of Stainbach she encounters Lore in a shed cutting a piece of meat from a suspended carcass. This two-second act is not bloody, alarming or the focus of the scene. 


at
Labels: , , ,

Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals

Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals. Joe D’Amato, 1977.

😿

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 93 minutes.


Summary: A constrictor drops from a branch and wraps around Laura Gemser, followed at 34:22 by a one-second close-up of the snake being shot.  2/5❤


at
Labels: , ,

Edge of the Knife

Edge of the Knife (SGaawaay K'uuna). Gwaai Edenshaw and Helen Haig-Brown, 2018.

😿

Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror Volume 2, released 2024. Haida language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 101 minutes.


Summary: The film includes several scenes in which ocean fish, freshly caught but dead, are cut by the skilled hands of 19th-century Pacific Canadian native people. There is no beheading, gutting or other intentionally disgusting details.


Edge of the Knife is a captivating story that weaves realistic social drama with tribal mythology. It is the first feature film in the Haida language, which survives with only a few dozen native speakers.


The culturally sympathetic films Haida Carver (1964) and Nalujuk Night (2021) are included on the disc. 


at
Labels: ,

Born of Fire

Born of Fire. Jamil Dehlavi, 1987.

😸

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 84 minutes.


Summary: No particular depictions of violence to animals.


The Born of fire BD in the box set also features Dehlavi’s 1975 Towers of Silence and 1985 Qâf.


at
Labels: ,

3 from Hell

3 from Hell. Rob Zombie, 2019.

😸

Edition screened: Included in Lionsgate Rob Zombie Trilogy Blu-ray set, released 2020. English language. Runtime approximately 115 minutes.


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


I enjoyed the previous two associated titles but was disappointed by 3 from Hell. 



The Rob Zombie Trilogy also includes House of 1,000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects, each on an individual Blu-ray. You might enjoy clicking those links.


at
Labels: ,

The Blot

The Blot. Lois Weber, 1921.

😸

Edition screened: Milestone DVD, released 2003. English intertitles, no dialogue track. Runtime approximately 91 minutes.


Summary: Early in the film a college student produces a small lizard with a string tied to it and places the animal on a classmate’s shoe during a lecture. There is no rough handling of the lizard or indication that it was harmed in fact or in the context of the film.


at
Labels: , ,

Blood-A-Rama Triple Frightmare

Blood-A-Rama Triple Frightmare. Various directors, 1970-1974.

😿😿

Edition screened: AGFA Blu-ray, released 2021. English language. Combined runtime approximately 251 minutes.


Summary: Help Me . . . I’m Possessed includes an unemotional statement about a mutilated cat with no visual content. The Night of the Strangler includes the murder of a snake. Carnival of Blood has no cruelty to or comments about animals.


The AGFA set includes a fun 20-minute compilation of vintage drive-in snipes and three feature films:


Help Me . . . I’m Possessed (Charles Nizet, 1974)

The Night of the Strangler (Joy N. Houck, Jr. 1972)

Carnival of Blood (Leonard Kirtman, 1970)


at
Labels: ,
Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)