Anatomy of a Fall (Anatomie d'une chute). Justine Triet, 2023.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #1218, released 2024. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 151 minutes.
Summary: The family dog is intentionally poisoned with an aspirin overdose, then revived when he is near death, 2:01:30 - 2:04:20. The dog is fine afterwards and his performance is as exceptional as that of the human actors.
Bad Girls Do Cry. Sid Melton, 1954.
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Edition screened: Included on Something Weird DVD Teen Turmoil Triple Feature, released 2004. English language. Runtime approximately 59 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
This film has no entertainment value and is a boring chore to endure except for one interesting incident around the 4-minute mark: Average-looking Misty Ayers clumsily undresses down to her mundane white undergarments, turns to face away from the camera, and we can see the oversized stiff paper price tag bulging through the seat of her underpants along with the string that attaches it. Was the producer’s scream of And wear clean underwear tomorrow! so upsetting that Miss Ayers forgot to remove the tag from these drawers she bought at Woolworth’s on the way home? Or does the AD return everything to Woolworth’s after a low-budget shoot like this? In either case, how did Miss Ayers not feel and how did the director not notice what looks like a cereal box wedged between her buttocks?
The SW disc also includes Girl in Trouble and A Good Time with a Bad Girl.
Edge of Sanity. Gérard Kikoïne, 1989.
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Edition screened: Arrow Blu-ray, released 2022. English language. Runtime approximately 85 minutes.
Summary: Dr. Jekyll’s home laboratory includes a caged monkey who seems more of a pet than a lab animal. The monkey joins the doctor in sampling lab-created cocaine variants and occasionally goes into prolonged screaming fits. The monkey is spoken to nicely and we do not see him physically abused, but he should not be confined to a small cage and engulfed in clouds of simmering crack.
Él. Luis Buñuel, 1953.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #1289, released 2025. Spanish language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 92 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Frightmare (Horror Star). Norman Thaddeus Vane, 1981.
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Edition screened: Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray #095, released 2015. English language. Runtime approximately 86 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
A Good Time with a Bad Girl. Barry Mahon, 1967.
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Edition screened: Included on Something Weird DVD Teen Turmoil Triple Feature, released 2004. English language. Runtime approximately 59 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The last twenty minutes of this film is a master class in terrible editing but the first forty minutes is surprisingly enjoyable. An up-tight businessman and a down-loose 19-year-old girl hit Las Vegas for the first time, find each other, and share two days of fun. The settings are mostly exterior shots of 1967 Las Vegas, but along with the predictable pans across casino facades we also spend a lot of time on secondary streets filled with drug stores and 5 & 10s for normal Vegas residents. Fun!
The SW disc also includes Girl in Trouble and Bad Girls Do Cry.
Red Spirit Lake. Charles Pinion, 1993.
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Edition screened: Saturn’s Core Blu-ray, released 2022. English language. Runtime approximately 69 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals. 02.5/5❤
The Saturn’s Core BD also includes Pinion’s We Await (1996).
Women’s Prison Massacre (Blade Violent/Emanuelle in Prison). Bruno Mattei and Gilbert Roussel, 1983.
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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 98 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The Celebration (Festen: Dogme 1). Thomas Vinterberg, 1998.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #1108, released 2022. Danish language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 106 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The Criterion Blu-ray release also includes a 2002 documentary about Dogme 95, The Purified, along with two early short films by Vinterberg: The Boy Who Walked Backwards (1995, 36 minutes); and Last Round (1993, 34 minutes).
Blood Shack (The Chooper). Ray Dennis Steckler (as Wolfgang Schmidt), 1971.
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Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set The Incredibly Strange Films of Ray Dennis Steckler, released 2022. English language. Runtime approximately 55 minutes.
Summary: Both versions of the film included two scenes of calf roping and dogging. Neither is graphic nor shows evidence of the calves being injured, but the calves are in extreme distress as they struggle and nice people do not do this.
Details:
1) The two rodeo sequences in the Blood Shack version (55 minutes) include calf roping at 33:59 - 34:57 and 47:40 - 48:29, with the balance of the rodeo footage being bull riding and barrel racing.
2) The two rodeo sequences in the The Chooper version (70 minutes) include the same calf ropings at 45:19 - 45:50 and 1:02:01 - 1:02:54, and add a few additional minutes of pony riding and a parade.
There is much internet discussion about how Steckler was required to extend the length of this film and complied by inserting an irrelevant visit to the rodeo. Padding is abundant but the reported evidence is jumbled. The 55-minute Blood Shack was not padded with rodeo footage to create the 70-minute version called The Chooper. Both versions are padded with irrelevancies such as scenes of Steckler’s children at play and both have two rodeo sequences connected by a voice-over “we had such a good time that we went back again the next day.” The Chooper tacks on maybe two more minutes of rodeo scenes, but the bulk of that film’s additional 15 minutes comes from added scenes including one in “the screenwriting office” decorated with lobby cards from other Steckler films and head shots of the new owner who, it is explained, was the former leading lady in those films whew.
The longer version, The Chooper, is a more entertaining viewing experience because it adds: 1) a good Steckler-style title sequence with fun horror comic graphics; 2) at least two pieces of original music with character-specific lyrics; 3) additional moody exterior shots with voice-overs, in classic 70’s horror fashion and possibly the best aspect of the films; 4) additional short scenes and blocks of dialogue seemingly added to explain questions raised by Blood Shack such as Why is there suddenly a puppy? and Why does the ranch house have a prominent framed photo of the city slicker relative who just inherited the property?
Girl in Trouble. Brandon Chase (as Lee Beale), 1963.
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Edition screened: Included on Something Weird DVD Teen Turmoil Triple Feature, released 2004. English language. Runtime approximately 82 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Another of these interchangeably generic and abysmally boring small-town-girl-goes-to-the-big-city films that kids these days insist on calling sexploitation despite the fact that there is no sex nor anything sexy in the film, and the only thing that is exploited is the poor suitcase that the girl flings onto a bed or shoves into the backseat of a car fifteen times.
The SW disc also includes A Good Time with a Bad Girl and Bad Girls Do Cry.
Sundelbolong. Sisworo Gautama Putra, 1981.
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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. Indonesian language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 106 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
I found Sundelbolong taxing to watch due to the gang rape and murder that occur early in the film, an assault that dooms the violated woman to the life of a vengeful ghost. The victim is not adequately revenged, a satisfaction we have come to expect in modern rape/revenge films. Instead she is ritualistically dispelled by a group of mixed assailants and former friends.
Sundelbolong exemplifies the outrageous visual conventions of Indonesian ghost horror, but other films such as Djalil’s Mystics of Bali show these techniques and stylizations in a context I find less distasteful.
The Sundelbolong disk also includes the short film White Song and Suzzanna: The Queen of Black Magic, a feature-length documentary about Indonesian Scream Queen and Sundelbolong star Suzanna Martha Frederika van Osch.
Suzzanna: The Queen of Black Magic. David Gregory, 2024.
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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 and Indonesian language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 88 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
A documentary about the life and work of Suzanna Martha Frederika van Osch, beloved star of Sundelbolong and many Indonesian horror films. If you are not interested to watch many such films, this career retrospective serves as a nice Best of Indonesian Horror and includes generous excerpts of the distinctive special effects associated with the genre.
White Song. Katrina Irawati Graham, 2006.
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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. Indonesian language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 11 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
A modern ghost story included with Sundelbolong as a thematically relevant short subject.
Walden: Diaries, Notes and Sketches (excerpt). Jonas Mekas, 1964-1969.
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Edition screened: Included on Criterion Blu-ray #1164 The Velvet Underground, released 2022. No dialogue track. Runtime of this excerpt approximately 8 minutes.
Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.
Violence in a Women’s Prison (Violenza in un carcere femminile). Bruno Mattei, 1982.
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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 98 minutes.
Summary: Depiction of killing a cockroach.
Details:
1) Around the 35 minute mark, Emmanuelle pushes at some black rats with her feet. The rats aren’t kicked or otherwise hurt.
2) Earlier in the film we see an inmate talking nicely to a cockroach that she keeps in a small cage made of toothpicks. At 1:02:50 the cage is smashed underfoot, presumably with the cockroach inside although we see no bug gore.