The Ballad of Crowfoot. Willie Dunn, 1968.
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Edition screened: Included in the Clearcut BD in Severin Blu-ray box set All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror, released 2021. English language. Runtime approximately 11 minutes.
Summary: Buffalo hunting.
Details:
1) Historical clip of white people hunting buffalo and the field of bleached bones they leave behind, 3:04-3:23.
2) Quick historical clip of a buffalo falling after being shot (less than half a second), 9:33.
The Boxer’s Omen (Mo). Kuei Chih-hung, 1983.
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Edition screened: Included in the Arrow Blu-ray box set Shawscope: Volume Two, released 2022. Mandarin language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 105 minutes.
Summary: Ritualistic killing and torture of two chickens.
Details: Two psychic battles between a boxer-turned-monk and practitioners of Black Magic consume over half of this film’s runtime. In the first battle, the evil sorcerer performs outrageous rituals in his (lab?, game room?) decorated like the waiting area for the scary show at an amusement park. The monk sits calmly in a temple and counters his attacks. The second battle is rooted in arcane Thai magic, alluringly psychedelic rather than spooky in the traditional Chinese or Japanese taste. Both sequences hinge on the mystical power of stop-action claymation.
Although the evil magicians’ spells hinge primarily on the persecution of rubber animals, two live chickens also are cruelly victimized. The killing of these chickens compromise what otherwise would be a uniquely entertaining film.
1) From 16:32 through 18:25, a silly rubber bat is repeatedly killed and resurrected. The final minute of that sequence includes a real black rat which the sorcerer repeatedly pretends to bite into and spits simulated rodent blood on various Halloween decorations from aisle #2 in Home Depot.
2) This scene of ritual conjuring continues to include real vipers having their venom ‘milked’ (ick) into a glass container, through 24:22. The snakes do not appear to be particularly annoyed or even interested in the fact that rubber spiders are then supercharged with their venom.
3) A live rooster is decapitated and his blood thrown around to generate more evil rubber bats, 43:17-44:10.
4) A real crocodile is provoked with a weapon, then a rubber prop is used for the ensuing scene in which the fake crocodile is eviscerated and used as a resurrection coffin for a female demon, 58:10-59:27.
5) A live chicken’s protruding anus is sliced off and eaten family-style as part of the demon resurrection ritual, 1:03:41-1:04:15.
A Child Is Waiting. John Cassavetes, 1963.
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Edition screened: Watched in a theatre. English language. Runtime approximately 92 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Clearcut. Ryszard Bugajski, 1991.
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Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror, released 2021. English language. Runtime approximately 98 minutes.
Summary: Ritual and hunting violence.
Details:
1) A Native American calmly bites the head off of a small living snake and spits it out, 30:04-30:11.
2) A fish in a stream is speared with a pointed branch and pulled from the water, 48:28-48:43.
3) Lunk-head hunters can’t find the poor moose they’ve shot through the neck, but we see the animal lying in agony, 54:04-54:12.
4) A small spider is eaten alive, 54:45-54:50.
The Clearcut BD in the Severin box set also includes:
The Ballad of Crowfoot (1968 Willie Dunn)
You Are On Indian Land (1969 Michael Mitchell)
Consume (2017 Brunello Baino)
A Different Man. Aaron Schimberg, 2024.
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Edition screened: Watched in a theatre. English language. Runtime approximately 112 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. Tom McLoughlin, 1986.
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Edition screened: Included in Paramount Friday the 13th: 8-Movie Collection DVD set, released 2017. English language. Runtime approximately 86 minutes.
Summary: A desk cop smashes an insect for no reason, 59:16.
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood. John Carl Buechler, 1988.
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Edition screened: Included in Paramount Friday the 13th: 8-Movie Collection DVD set, released 2017. English language. Runtime approximately 88 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Game Over. Bernard Villiot, 1984.
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Edition screened: Included on Arron Blu-ray The Grand Duel, released 2019. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 8 minutes.
Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.
A 1981 Gottlieb Black Hole, figures prominently in the beginning of this short film.
Hellboy. Guillermo del Toro, 2004.
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Edition screened: Columbia Tristar Blu-ray, released 2004. English language. Runtime approximately 122 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals. Innumerable snarling 3-eyed beasts intent on destroying the world are killed.
Hellboy II: The Golden Army. Guillermo del Toro, 2008.
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Edition screened: Universal Blu-ray, released 2008. English language. Runtime approximately 120 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The Kingdom (Riget). Lars von Trier, 1994.
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Edition screened: Included in Mubi The Kingdom Trilogy Blu-ray box set, released 2023. Danish language with English subtitle. Cumulative runtime of all four episodes approximately 291 minutes.
Summary: Killing of a dog and lab rats.
Details:
1) Episode 4: A dog is clubbed to death while attacking to protect his owner, 11:12-12:21.
2) Episode 4: A dead bloody lab rat is found in a hospital hallway, 57:18.
3) Episode 4: More lab rats are shot in the hallway, 57:45-57:56.
The Kingdom II (Riget II, Episodes 5-8). Lars von Trier, 1997.
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Edition screened: Included in Mubi The Kingdom Trilogy Blu-ray box set, released 2023. Danish language with English subtitle. Cumulative runtime of all four episodes approximately 309 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The Kingdom Exodus (Riget Exodus, Episodes 9-13). Lars von Trier, 2022.
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Edition screened: Included in Mubi The Kingdom Trilogy Blu-ray box set, released 2023. Danish language with English subtitle. Cumulative runtime of all five episodes approximately 321 minutes.
Summary:
Episode 10: An owl tears apart a rat’s body and eats some of it, 15:10-15:13.
Episode 13: A very brief hallucinogenic image of a mouse with his tail caught in a trap.
Also included is a good interview with von Trier, filmed in the late 90s as he has finished up Season 2 of The Kingdom and is prepping for Dancer in the Dark. The interviewer himself is not skilled, but von Trier is at his best rhetorically. Super casual and obviously the successor to Buñuel, Bergman or both.
Mercenaries from Hong Kong (Lie mo zhe). Jing Wong, 1982.
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Edition screened: Included in the Arrow Blu-ray box set Shawscope: Volume Two, released 2022. Mandarin language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 106 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Rather than the usual Asian tale of two bickering warlords and the young fighters on both sides, Mercenaries from Hong Kong is American-style nostalgia about The Toughest Vet who assembles a crew of his old buddies for a rescue-and-revenge mission in an unpleasant place.
Passion Fever. Doris Wishman (as Louis Silver) and Stelios Jackson, 1969.
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Edition screened: Included in AGFA Blu-ray set The Films of Doris Wishman: The Moonlight Years. English language. Runtime approximately 70 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The same short account of how this disaster came to exist is repeated all over the internet.
