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.

Blood Bath

Blood Bath. Jack Hill and Stephanie Rothman, 1966.
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Edition screened: Arrow 4-film Blu-ray box set, released 2016. English language. Runtime approximately 62 minutes.

Summary: Blood Bath contains no depictions of violence or harm to animals, but the first two films included in the set depict the murder of a German Shepherd.

Blood Bath was realized through multiple reinterpretations of the Yugoslavian art-theft thriller Operation Titian, tinkered with until it became a vampire horror film. Production details can be found numerous places on the internet (here for example). The Arrow box set includes all four surviving stages of this transformation. Click on individual titles for more details:

Operation Titian (1964) is much better than expected and stands on its own as a good mid-60s European crime thriller with decent acting and creepy old museums.

Portrait in Terror (1964) is identical to Operation Titian much of the time. It is simplified slightly for an American audience and adds a long scene in which a killer carries a woman’s body from the hillside church where she was murdered way down to the bay. The original just lets us assume that she was tossed over the side. Watch Operation Titian instead.

Blood Bath (1966) is very different from the first two films, recycling a few atmospheric shots but having a completely different plot and only one returning actor/character. The vampire serial killer story is convoluted but completely enjoyable. Jack Hill’s comedy scenes are fun to watch, the female characters are cute and sexy, and the underwater vampire attack is quite a novelty.

Track of the Vampire (1966) is nearly identical to Blood Bath except for three boring and unnecessary scenes that were added to lengthen BB’s short run time: First comes a tedious sequence in which a new character is chased through the woods and across a beach, followed immediately by a stylistically fumbled beach ballet sequence, and finally a doubling-down on the underwater vampire attack. While the original aquatic blood sucking in Blood Bath was a fun surprise, this additional one goes on about four times longer than it should, and diminishes the fun of the original which comes later in the film. Track o/t Vampire also reaches clear back to Operation Titian to add a few more Old World architectural shots containing characters no longer in the last two films. Watch Blood Bath instead.

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