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 Bees

The Bees. Alfredo Zacarías, 1978.
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Edition screened: Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray #104, released 2016. English language. Runtime approximately 92 minutes.

Summary: Implicit bee smashing.

Details: As though Dick Dastardly were watching and laughing from behind a boulder, a “bee slick” on the highway causes a van carrying a counter-bee chemical to crash and burn, 1:18:30-1:18:50, implicitly but not visually smashing quite a few bees. This happens soon after we are told that the bees have mutated again, dang it, and now have developed creative, problem-solving intelligence. So really this group of bees intentionally sacrificed themselves for the good of the larger colony. Speaking of Communists . . . 

A surprise treat in this movie is generous documentary footage from the 1978 Tournament of Roses Parade with Gerald Ford as Grand Marshal. While I enjoyed seeing the vintage floats, nostalgic marching band uniforms and spectators in disco shirts, it was depressing to be reminded that Once Upon a Time such parades, festivals, concerts and other events were not smothered by corporate advertising. It was still the Tournament of Roses, not the Tourniquet of Comcast.

This is specifically interesting because the plot in The Bees is driven by American corporations interfering with nature in order to increase profits despite their knowledge that these mutant bees are dangerous wild cards.

Smug, condescending Amazon reviews of The Bees and other films from the “message movies” era of the 1970s inevitably mention “eeeeevil corporations,” parroting the way Rush Limbaugh always says eeeeevil corporations to mock people who think differently from him. I realize “think differently from him” is a pleonasm.

Evidence of the reality of corporate culture was unknowingly embedded right into this silly movie itself. The killer bees are a fabrication. Our cities were not under siege by super bees. But we DID have Geico-free, Verizon-free events to attend with our families, where we could enjoy the music, the parades, the ball game, the french fries, without every sense overwhelmed by constant advertising. And we DID have a social understanding that: 1) The air we breath and the water we drink are kind of important from a certain perspective; 2) A tiny, tiny percentage of the biggest corporate owners (NOT YOU) benefit hugely from destroying your air and water; 3) Only a moron would feel Proud, Informed, Patriotic, Logical, to smugly side with huge profits for the very few at the expense of his or her own environment.

But here we are, 2016, and poor people living in trailers with no future, no cushion, and who barely make enough money to buy the gas to drive back and forth to their no-benefits, minimum wage Wal-Mart jobs, understand that it’s the EPA and the environmental wackos who are destroying America.

I enjoyed this movie much more than I expected to. There were many quick moments intended to be funny that truly made me smile, in addition to sci-fi props charmingly rooted in the ’50s and John Carradine’s hilarious overacting.

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