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.

The Coffin Joe Collection

The Coffin Joe Collection. José Mojica Marins, 1964-1978.
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Edition screened: Anchor Bay 5-DVD box set, released 2009. Portuguese language with English subtitles. Collective runtime approximately 754 minutes.

Summary: Some simulated, some real, animal murder in various titles. Details provided in the linked entry for each film.

Director José Marin’s persona of Zé do Caixão, loosely translated as ‘Coffin Joe,’ is a small-town Brazilian undertaker, womanizer, bully, occultist, and existential philosopher. The earlier films are strongly plot-based then become more exploitive, yet also increasingly chatty and moralizing, as the years go by. This set includes eight feature films:

End of Man (1970)

The first two, At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul and This Night I Will Possess Your Corpse, establish Zé do Caixão’s philosophy that belief in religion or other superstition is contemptibly weak and will prevent any personal advancement. He uses that platform to intimidate others, steal wives and commit murder, acts that understandably put him at odds with the locals. Zé’s frequent soliloquies indicate his search for a Perfect Woman, pure of intellect, aware of his superiority, and worthy of bearing his child, but he also just enjoys humiliating, bullying, and killing those who don’t admire his philosophy. These first two titles in the set are somewhat charming low-budget horror films with some admirable homemade special effects. They also have better audio and video quality than the later titles.

The Strange World of Coffin Joe and Awakening of the Beast each tell several short stories rather than a single narrative. Strange World showcases three tales of moral weakness, while Awakening focuses on drug use as the door to sexual depravity and worse in a notorious series of exploits. The varying quality of the vignettes in both films sometimes is eclipsed by Zé do Caixão’s long-winded philosophical ramblings. These redundant barrages of vaguely intellectual hypothetical musings start out slightly funny, quickly becomes trite, then settle right into unbearably long and boring.

The third pair, End of Man, and Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures give Zé do Caixão opportunity to focus primarily on the evil that comes from the love of money. He specifically targets a flawed medical structure in which emergency care is available only to the privileged, presumably a serious problem in late 60s urban Brazil. End of Man stars the director as an amoral nekked messiah wandering the city streets, while Strange Hostel casts him as a hotel keeper specializing in travelers who need to be taught a lesson. The unrelated 10-minute opening of Strange Hostel is a dance number featuring eight or so rough Brazilian ladies in harem outfits who awaken Zé from his coffin. The routine apparently was developed and rehearsed in the van on the way to filming. Strange yes, Hostel indeed, Naked only a little but still too much, Pleasures not really.

The last two films suggest that the Coffin Joe vein is running dry for director Marins. Hellish Flesh is a limp revenge drama starring the Zé do Caixão character as a cuckolded scientist. Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind is mostly clips and outtakes from previous Coffin Joe films, strung together with a premise that we are seeing phantasies of a mental patient who believes Coffin Joe is real. Hellish Flesh is horrible. Hallucinations is surprisingly entertaining and constitutes a decent Zé do Caixão’s Greatest Hits.

The Anchor Bay box set also includes the 65-minute 2001 documentary Coffin Joe: The Strange World of José Mojica Marins by André Barcinski and Ivan Finotti. It is better than some high budget director bio pieces, and made me feel some compassion and understanding for Marins as a person, such that my overall regard for the Coffin Joe films was elevated a bit.

 @ BL


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