Violence to Animals in Film: June 2015

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 Sun’s Gonna Shine

The Sun’s Gonna Shine. Les Blank and Skip Gerson, 1968.

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Edition screened: Included in Criterion Blu-ray set #737 Les Blank: Always for Pleasure, released 2014. English language. Original music by Lightnin’ Hopkins. Runtime approximately 10 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

The Sun’s Gonna Shine is a superb short film made during the production of The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins, showing rural scenes and small-town Texas in 1968 with Lightnin’s nostalgic narration and beautiful guitar as the soundtrack.

Spend It All

Spend It All. Les Blank, 1971.

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Edition screened: Included in Criterion Blu-ray set #737 Les Blank: Always for Pleasure, released 2014. English language. Music by the Balfa Brothers and others. Runtime approximately 43 minutes.

Summary: Graphic slaughtering and butchering of a young pig; persistent fishing violence.

Details:

1) The first six minutes of the film is generously intercut with fishing gore such as a large live fish scalded with hot water and crawfish cleaning.

2) Scenes of gathering, cleaning, and transporting shrimp, oysters, and crabs, 17:35-19:55.

3) A young pig is killed sort-of-barely off-screen, followed by rather graphic butchering and idiotic buffoonery with entrails and the head, 34:35-35:53.

It seems that Les Blank set out to make a documentary about drinking Schlitz from the can, then decided to promote the film as an exposé on Cajun culture instead. And here’s another one of those pig-butchering-party scenes that concludes with fat ugly guys clowning around with the entrails. As always, it comes across as an embarrassing display of misogyny and sexual anger disguised as just relaxin’ and bein’ yo’self. This time, one of these jackasses takes the skinned pig head and chases a child around with it while the womenfolk glance up from their cans of Schlitz to hoot and laugh. This is not the same jackass who extracts one of his own teeth with a pair of pliers a few minutes earlier as part of the picnic entertainment. Man, those Cajuns. They sho’ do know them some fun I’ll tell you.

La Revue des revues

La Revue des revues. Joe Francis, 1927.

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Edition screened: Kino DVD, released 2005. English intertitles and subtitles, no dialogue track. Runtime approximately 103 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

@ BL

Prozac Nation

Prozac Nation. Erik Skjoldbjærg, 2001.

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Edition screened: Miramax DVD, released 2005. English language. Runtime approximately 95 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

@ BL

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman. Albert Lewin, 1951.

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Edition screened: Kino Blu-ray, released 2010. English language. Runtime approximately 123 minutes.

Summary: Off-screen murder of a dog.

Details: A pet terrier barks in an adjacent room as his owner is murdered. The intruder then goes into the dog’s room and we hear a squeal followed by silence as the dog is killed, 1:33:15-1:33:20.

A tiresome movie about the privileged dawdling of monster-faced windbags, made worse by the predictable requirement that an innocent animal be pointlessly murdered.

The Kino Blu-ray includes El Torero de Cordoba, a short 1947 biography of bullfighter Manuel Rodriguez Manolete, inspiration for a character in Pandora and the Flying Dutchman.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. John Ford, 1962.

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Edition screened: Paramount DVD, released 2001. English language. Runtime approximately 123 minutes.

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

Local Hero

Local Hero. Bill Forsyth, 1983.

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Edition screened: Warner DVD, released 1999. English language. Runtime approximately 111 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

Bonus Points! …

Two men in a car think they may have hit an animal in the fog, go back and rescue a bunny who appears to be lightly stunned from the middle of the road. Minutes later they tap the horn gently to encourage a dog to move out of the street.

Even disregarding the kindness to animals, Local Hero is an excellent film. A pleasant, nicely-paced fiction that is gently entertaining and socially constructive.

Lagniappe

Lagniappe. Les Blank, 2006.

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Edition screened: Included in Criterion Blu-ray set #737 Les Blank: Always for Pleasure, released 2014. English language. Runtime approximately 25 minutes.

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

Blank used 25 minutes of extra film shot in 1978 for Always for Pleasure to make this short follow-up piece to the best of his Creole portraits.

Island of Death

Island of Death (Ta paidia tou Diavolou). Nico Mastorakis, 1976.

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Edition screened: Arrow Blu-ray, released 2015. English language. Runtime approximately 108 minutes.

Summary: Abuse and murder of a young goat.

Details:

1) Two quick shots of displays of caught fish, as a means to set the mood in a quiet Greek fishing village, 2:37-2:44

2) A young goat is sexually abused (obscured by shrubbery) then murdered. We see repeated knife plunges, the goat’s head against the bloody floor, and his throat slit, 13:34-14:50.

The goat killing scene should and can easily be skipped, leaving the remainder of the movie free of animal brutality but also easily skipped if you so choose.

Involuntary

Involuntary (De Ofrivilliga). Ruben Östlund, 2008.

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Edition screened: Trinity DVD, released 2011. Swedish language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 97 minutes.

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

The box implies that Involuntary is a comedy. It’s really a very smart movie about mob mentality and taking responsibility for one’s behavior. The Trinity DVD also contains Autobiographical Scene Number 6882 (2005), and The Guitar Mongoloid (2004).

Hot Pepper

Hot Pepper. Les Blank and Maureen Gosling, 1973.

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Edition screened: Included in Criterion Blu-ray set #737 Les Blank: Always for Pleasure, released 2014. English language with some subtitled Creole French. Runtime approximately 54 minutes.

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

A enjoyable musical portrait of Zydeco King Clifton Chenier. Also #3 in Blank’s Schlitz Beer series (see also Spend It All and Dry Wood).

Hobson’s Choice

Hobson’s Choice. David Lean, 1954.

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Edition screened: Criterion DVD #461, released 2009. English language. Runtime approximately 108 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

The Happiness of the Katakuris

The Happiness of the Katakuris (Katakuri-ke no kôfuku). Takashi Miike, 2001.

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Edition screened: Arrow Blu-ray, released 2015. Japanese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 113 minutes.

Summary: Brief animated violence toward animals and similar. Nothing upsetting here.

Details:

1) A claymation crow is killed by a stuffed toy, 2:55-3:01.

2) Great-Grandpa throws a board that clocks an animated crow, 4:13.

3) A little girl respectfully buries her dead goldfish, 4:40-4:50.

4) The family dog is seen pretending to eat Grandpa’s downed crow, 5:15.

5) We see a polluted pond with dead fish and an animal carcass, 57:59-58:06.

6) Great-Grandpa throws a board to clock another animated crow, 1:36:40.

Dry Wood

Dry Wood. Les Blank and Maureen Gosling, 1973.

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Edition screened: Included in Criterion Blu-ray set #737 Les Blank: Always for Pleasure, released 2014. English language with some clarifying English subtitles. Runtime approximately 37 minutes.

Summary: Idiotic drunken brutality to animals

Details:

1) The first minute of the film is a rooster being mis-handled and chased as part of Mardi Gras hijinks.

2) We get to see a chicken killed in real time by the one-handed neck-twirl method, 2:30-2:40. Thanks for that.

3) Brutal killing of a snapping turtle, followed, of course, by gay clowning around with its broken body, 23:40-24:15.

4) An adult pig is shot (stunned) point blank between the eyes, in front of its family, then brutally killed by teenagers with the world’s dullest knife as it twitches in agony, 24:40-25:45.

5) This pig and quite a few others are hacked up with an axe and butchered at a festive pig-hackin’ soirée, through 29:50.

6) AGAIN with the cans of Schlitz beer … while a man has a child assist in cutting off the pig’s snout with a hack saw, 30:46. I kid you not.

7) Makin’ sausage. Laughter and guts galore, along with the undeniable hilarity of inflating intestines, 32:50-34:10.

A nice follow-up to 1971’s Spend It All, Blank here offers more rumination on the serene beauty of rural Cajun life. I’m not interested in asking what the hell is wrong with these people. That’s a very complicated and unfair question that should inquire about a larger social structure of enforced poverty, racial murder and violence, poor education, and corporate exploitation of rural challenges. But I do question what is wrong with hyper-educated white brats who imitate mud-and-cracklins culture as a weekend diversion, who clumsily emulate this gory entrails-swinging method of indulging repressed sexual tendencies, and I question Criterion and our film-buying public for celebrating these films as wonderful documents of a time gone by. Go buy. bye bye.

Criterion includes a making-of documentary ironically titled A Cultural Celebration.

Dodsworth

Dodsworth. William Wyler, 1936.

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Edition screened: MGM DVD, released 2001. English language. Runtime approximately 101 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

A very enjoyable movie.

The Decalogue

The Decalogue (Dekalog). Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1988.

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Edition screened: Included in Arrow Blu-ray box set Dekalog and Other Television Works, released 2016. Polish language with English subtitles. Runtime of the ten episodes of Dekalog approximately 560 minutes.

Summary: Thematic depictions of dead animals.

Details:

1) Episode I: A boy finds a dead German shepherd and strokes the body, 5:30-5:53.

2) Episode V: A cabdriver intentionally terrorizes two small leashed dogs by blowing his horn, causing one to escape and run off, 16:35-16:40.

3) Episode X: Dead fish floating in an abandoned aquarium, 1:22-1:35.

These three scenes are not particularly graphic, and the remaining seven episodes are free of animal violence.

Common Law Wife

Common Law Wife. Eric Sayers, 1963.
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Edition screened: Included on Alpha Video Shanty Tramp DVD, released 2008. English language. Runtime approximately 75 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

Coffy

Coffy. Jack Hill, 1973.

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Edition screened: Arrow Blu-ray, released 2015. English language. Runtime approximately 90 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

Cabaret

Cabaret. Bob Fosse, 1972.

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Edition screened: Warner DVD, released 2003. English language. Runtime approximately 124 minutes.

Summary: Murdered dog.

Yet another movie where the dog or cat is introduced into the film just so it can be found murdered at the front door later, 1:13:15-1:31:19. See also Kill List, Fincher’s remake of the The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, etc, etc.

Bucking Broadway

Bucking Broadway. John Ford, 1917.
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Edition screened: Included on Criterion Blu-ray #516 Stagecoach, released 2010. English intertitles, no dialogue track. Runtime approximately 53 minutes.

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

Birdman of Alcatraz

Birdman of Alcatraz. John Frankenheimer, 1962.

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Edition screened: MGM DVD, released 2001. English language. Runtime approximately 149 minutes.

Summary: Depictions of dead birds.

Details:

1) Burt Lancaster smashes a beetle in order to feed a newborn bird in his jail cell, 30:54-30:56. He kills more insects for the same reason 32:00-32:05.

2) Dead birds are handled compassionately, 1:03:00-1:09:05, as Lancaster struggles to improvise a cure for the Septic Fever that is killing them.

La Belle Captive

La Belle Captive. Alain Robbe-Grillet, 1983.

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Edition screened: Olive Blu-ray, released 2015. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 89 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

Autobiographical Scene Number 6882

Autobiographical Scene Number 6882 (Scen nr: 6882 ur mitt liv). Ruben Östlund, 2005.

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Edition screened: Included on Trinity DVD Involuntary, released 2011. Swedish language. Runtime approximately 9 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

This acclaimed short fueled the very good Involuntary (2008). Östlund originally intended to use this vignette as one of the plot strands in the later work.

Amadeus

Amadeus. Miloš Forman, 1984.

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Edition screened: Warner Director’s Cut Two-Disc Special Edition DVD, released 2002. English language. Runtime approximately 180 minutes.

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

Always for Pleasure (1978)

Always for Pleasure. Les Blank, 1978.

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Edition screened: Included in Criterion Blu-ray set #737 Les Blank: Always for Pleasure, released 2014. English language with some subtitled Creole French. Runtime approximately 57 minutes.

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

The strongest and most popular of Creolecentric titles in this set, and coincidentally containing none of the celebratory hog mutilating found endlessly entertaining by both the filmmaker and the locals in other titles.

Performances by Blue Lu Barker, Professor Longhair, and the Neville Brothers dot the documentary, along with a superb look at the Native American tribute clubs and costumes adopted by African-American.

Criterion indexes the related short film Lagniappe after Always for Pleasure, along with a 2014 documentary Celebration of a City.

All That Heaven Allows

All That Heaven Allows. Douglas Sirk, 1955.

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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #95, released 2014. English language. Runtime approximately 89 minutes.

Summary: Mild pheasant hunting sequences.

Details:

1) After some shooting into the air, a dog shows up with a pheasant at 1:16:33, and the bird stays in the shot through most of 1:16:48.

2) Brief images of Rock Hudson carrying two pheasants, 1:20:08-1:21:11. No blood or disrespectful behavior in these scenes.

The Criterion Blu-ray includes the feature-length video exposé Rock Hudson’s Home Movies (1992), as well as some documentary interviews that are very professional and interesting.

99 Women

99 Women (Der heiße Tod). Jesús “Jess” Franco, 1969.

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Edition screened: Blue Underground DVD, released 2004. English language. Runtime approximately 190 minutes.

Summary: Graphic mutilation of a snake.

Details:

1) The first 12 seconds of the film show a rotting animal corpse on a beach.

2) Ladies running for their lives through the jungle take time to stop and attack a large exotic snake, 1:01:20-1:01:54. The snake is picked up by the head and repeatedly hacked and stabbed with a knife. We see the bloody and mangled snake barely able to crawl away. All very graphic, brutal, real, and offensive.

El torero de Cordoba

El torero de Cordoba. Possibly Cesareo Gonzalez, 1947.

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Edition screened: Included on Kino Blu-ray Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, released 2010. Spanish language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 18 minutes.

Summary: Killing of bulls.

Details:

1) Quick scene of the fatal stabbing to a bull at 2:40.

2) Montage of arena scenes includes similar quick scenes, 10:23-12:22.

This newsreel-style documentary tells the story of legendary torero Manuel Rodriguez Manolete, inspiration for the character Juan Montalvo in Pandora and the Flying Dutchman.

Stagecoach

Stagecoach. John Ford, 1939.

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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #516, released 2010. English language. Runtime approximately 96 minutes.

Summary: Many stunts include a horse falling as the rider is shot, but no depictions of harm to those or to any other animals.

The Criterion Blu-ray also includes Ford’s Bucking Broadway (1917).

Jewel of the Nile

Jewel of the Nile. Lewis Teague, 1985.

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Edition screened: Included in 20th Century Fox Blu-ray two-pack Romancing the Stone/Jewel of the Nile, released 2012. English language. Runtime approximately 106 minutes.

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

Romancing the Stone

Romancing the Stone. Robert Zemeckis, 1984.

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Edition screened: Included in 20th Century Fox Blu-ray two-pack Romancing the Stone/Jewel of the Nile, released 2012. English language. Runtime approximately 106 minutes.

Summary: Depicted butchering of a snake and endangerment of other animals.

Details:

1) Michael Douglas hacks the head off of a large tropical snake with a machete at 49:02. He toys with the body through 49:35.

2) Depicted endangerment of animals during a car-chase gunfight, 1:01:35-1:01:50. A chicken is run over but apparently uninjured, and depicted machine gun fire hits a wall over the head of a tethered calf.

3) The movie ends with Michael Douglas wearing boots made from the crocodile who saved his life.

Rock Hudson’s Home Movies

Rock Hudson’s Home Movies. Mark Rappaport, 1992.

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Edition screened: Included on Criterion Blu-ray #95 All That Heaven Allows, released 2014. English language. Runtime approximately 64 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

This biographic video essay intends to depict the reality of Rock Hudson’s private life through the evidence provided in his films and diary. It accurately portrays the tedium of spending an hour with someone who endlessly makes the same point with decreasingly interesting impact.

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