Violence to Animals in Film: July 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.

Race with the Devil

Race with the Devil. Jack Starrett, 1975.

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Edition screened: Included on Shout! Factory Double Feature Dirty Mary Crazy Larry/Race with the Devil Blu-ray, released 2013. English language. Runtime approximately 88 minutes.

Summary: Violent killing of animals

Details:

1) A dog has been killed and hanged from a tree, 34:33-34:38. We see bloody fur looking generally like a German Shepherd.

2) Another dog is found, hanging dead from the door of an RV at 56:33. The dog’s body is carried inside and mourned through 57:12.

3) A pair of huge rattlesnakes are discovered in the RV at 58:17. The snake confrontation that follows is extremely tense and violent, including clear images of the snakes being beaten to death through 1:00:50.

Pairing Dirty Mary Crazy Larry with Race with the Devil enhances the perceived quality of the latter somewhat, but it remains a moronic movie. Specifically notable is the dull-witted presentation of ‘witchcraft’ that runs through the film. A midnight Satanic ritual complete with bonfire incantations and a black-masked horned priest is understood as a bunch of nekked jumpin’ around, until it is later explained – several times, with a picture book on the subject – as an Aztecan ritual. Then a piece of paper is found with a threatening note written above some runes. It is explained – several times – that the message written in English is called a ‘rune’ and the strange symbols are a witch’s spell. Sigh.

I realize that films like this were created for drive-in titillation, but really now. Race with the Devil was made eight years after Sybil Leek’s Diary of a Witch gave everyone a working knowledge of Tarot cards and paganism, and during a time when rock stars had grown tired of pretending to be satanists. Yet our hipster costars Peter Fonda and Warren Oates jes’ don’t know what to make of all this-here Tom Foolery.

Race with the Devil begs comparison with a drastically superior film that also prominently features the hanging of two dogs, Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights (2011). If nothing else, the comparison makes clear why one should not beg.

1973 Bally Sky Kings in the bar.

@ BL

Repulsion

Repulsion. Roman Polanski, 1965.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #483, released 2009. English language. Runtime approximately 105 minutes.

Summary: Repeated images of a skinned rabbit.

Details: Early in the film we are told that rabbit will be served for dinner. Scattered throughout the film we see repeated images of a skinned rabbit on a china platter, which is beloved kitchen gore in some homes, but still ‘repulsion’ material.

The accompanying documentary A British Horror Film (David Gregory, 2003) is better than most, and is animal cruelty-free.

@ BL

Repo Man

Repo Man. Alex Cox, 1984.

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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #654, released 2013. English language. Runtime approximately 93 minutes.

Summary: No particular depictions of violence toward animals.