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.

Salon Kitty

Salon Kitty (Madam Kitty). Tinto Brass, 1976.
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Edition screened: Argent Blu-ray, released 2011. Italian language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 133 minutes.

Summary: Graphic slaughter and mutilation of a pig.

Details: A one-minute slaughterhouse scene begins at 8:30. The vignette goes far beyond butchering, as a living pig squeals in pain while it is slit open and then mutilated. The butchers laugh, hoot, and have pantomimed sex-play with its entrails. There are no special effects here.

This scene is queued by a medical lecture in which a Nazi professor asks who first discovered the biological superiority of the master race. A student answers “Adolf Hitler,” and the film cuts abruptly to the slaughterhouse scene with some of the butchers dressed as Nazi officers. The slaughter scene ends with a loud pig snort and abruptly cuts to an elegant Nazi banquet. The director’s intent is obvious but regrettable in its delivery. Except for this one-minute torture sequence, the remainder of Salon Kitty plays out like a sexually explicit sequel to Cabaret, with plenty of campy posturing, bawdy stage shows, and weird Nazi lingerie. While not one of the world’s great films, there is far more plot and general interest here than in much of Brass’s catalogue. For those interested in viewing, I provide this schedule of the opening scenes:

1) The opening title sequence is a cabaret routine. 
2) Immediately following is a naked male Nazi gymnastics scene, intercut with dialogue establishing the plot to follow.
3) Immediately following the embarrassing gymnastics is the silly Nazi medical lecture which cuts to the slaughter scene as described above.

With that schedule in mind, watch what you want of the opening scenes, bail out during the lecture, and skip ahead to the 9:45 mark to miss the cruel slaughter and begin with the real plot and eroticism of the film.

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