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 Thomas Crown Affair

The Thomas Crown Affair. Norman Jewison, 1968.
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Edition screened: MGM DVD, released 2005. English language. Runtime approximately 102 minutes.


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

Three Installations. Lindsay Anderson, 1952.
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Edition screened: Included in the BFI 4-DVD set Shadows of Progress: Documentary Film in Post-War Britain 1951-1977, released 2013. English language. Runtime approximately 22 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.


A corporate film showing the ingenious designs of conveyor belt systems.
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Three Songs About Motherland

Three Songs About Motherland (Tri pesni o Rodine). Marina Goldovskaya, 2008.
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Edition screened: Included on Icarus DVD One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich, released 2011. Russian language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 39 minutes.


Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
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Three Wicked Melodramas from Gainsborough Pictures

Three Wicked Melodramas from Gainsborough Pictures. Leslie Arliss and Arthur Crabtree, 1943-1945.
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Edition screened: Criterion Eclipse Series #36 DVD set, released 2012. English language. Collective runtime approximately 330 minutes.

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

This 36th volume in Criterion’s Eclipse Series includes the following films. Click individual titles for details as they are posted.

The Man in Grey (1943)
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Thunderbolt and Lightfoot

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. Michael Cimino, 1974.
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Edition screened: Twilight Time Blu-ray, released 2014. English language. Runtime approximately 114 minutes.

Summary: Deranged shooting at domestic rabbits.

Details: A redneck  opens the trunk of his Plymouth Fury at 35:35 to reveal that it is filled with white domestic rabbits. He pushes some of them out with the butt of a shotgun, then begins shooting at them and/or into the dirt around them through 35:57. Clint Eastwood decks him, then Clint and Jeff Bridges unload the rest of the rabbits and abandon them in the desert, 36:16-36:21. There is no depiction of rabbits actually being shot.


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Thursday’s Children

Thursday’s Children. Lindsay Anderson and Guy Brenton, 1954.
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Edition screened: Included on Criterion Blu-ray #391 If . . . , released 2011. English language. Runtime approximately 21 minutes.


Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

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THX 1138

THX 1138. George Lucas, 1970.
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Edition screened: Warner ‘Director’s Cut’ DVD, released 2004. English language. Runtime approximately 88 minutes.


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

Tideland. Terry Gilliam, 2005.
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Edition screened: ThinkFilm 2-DVD Collector’s Edition, released 2007. English language. Runtime approximately 122 minutes.

Summary: Much taxidermy and similar.


Details: The only real depiction of violence probably is the quick ant-smashing scene, 32:33-32:37. The many scenes set in the home of the old witch and her mentally handicapped brother, however, showcase an endless array of pickled, stuffed, embalmed, or otherwise preserved animals that decorate their Creepy Little House on the Prairie. It would be ridiculous to enumerate these scenes or the depictions therein. The first few passages of Tideland clearly communicate that the viewer must be prepared for just about anything, and continued viewing is acceptance of the director’s terms.

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Time Bandits

Time Bandits. Terry Gilliam, 1981.
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Edition screened: Arrow Blu-ray, released 2013. English language. Runtime approximately 116 minutes.

Summary: Brief comedic killings.

Details:
1) Vermin, the robber who eats anything, grabs an obviously rubber rat and pretends to eat it with his back to the camera, 1:22:20-1:22-30.
2) Benson, a minion of Evil, is first turned into a dog, then that dog is exploded along with other servants, 1:35:53.
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Time of Terror

Time of Terror. Eric Marquis, 1975.
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Edition screened: Included in the BFI 4-DVD set Shadows of Progress: Documentary Film in Post-War Britain 1951-1977, released 2013. English language. Runtime approximately 19 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

A somewhat shocking - and therefore effective - film advocating alertness, preparedness, and safe intervention against car bombs, letter bombs, and similar acts of terrorism.
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Time Out of Mind

Time Out of Mind. Eric Marquis, 1968.
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Edition screened: Included in the BFI 4-DVD set Shadows of Progress: Documentary Film in Post-War Britain 1951-1977, released 2013. English language. Runtime approximately 33 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.


A public service film teaching that depression and anxiety can be professionally treated.
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A Time to Heal

A Time to Heal. Derrick Knight, 1963.
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Edition screened: Included in the BFI 4-DVD set Shadows of Progress: Documentary Film in Post-War Britain 1951-1977, released 2013. English language. Runtime approximately 36 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

A public service documentary about hospital care and rehabilitation provided to injured coalminers.
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The Tin Drum

The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel). Volker Schlöndorff, 1979.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #234, released 2013. German language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 163 minutes.

Summary: Killing of animals.

Details:
1) Immediately after Oskar’s excellent speech about Goethe at the conclusion of the Rasputin fantasy (35:57), the film cuts abruptly to an exterior scene with a man in the background skinning a rabbit nailed to a barn. In the middleground a group of children plays and sings around a cooking pot over a small fire. A boy enters with two frogs and announces that he caught them at the pond. The live frogs are dropped into the hot water and kept from escaping while another child urinates in the pot, 36:10-36:27.
2) A horse head is dragged from the ocean at 1:05:58, revealed as a method to catch eels. Many eels slither out of, or are pulled from, the horses mouth, ears, neck, etc., and placed in a sack. At 1:07:28 the scene cuts abruptly to the Matzerath kitchen where Alfred decapitates and cleans the eels for cooking, including images of severed heads convulsing. Over at 1:08.

The entire scene of eel harvesting and preparation is extremely gruesome, and I recommend skipping it. When the family is on the beach around 1:05 and sees a man hauling in ‘something’ … skip ahead to a few seconds after 1:08, where Alfred is serving the eel dish to Agnes. This scene is important to the remainder of the film as it establishes Agnes’s mental disorder about fish.
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Titanic

Titanic. James Cameron, 1997.
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Edition screened: Paramount DVD, released 1999. English language. Runtime approximately 194 minutes.

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


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Titicut Follies

Titicut Follies. Frederick Wiseman, 1967.
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Edition screened: Zipporah DVD, released 2007. English language. Runtime approximately 84 minutes.


Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
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To Be a Woman

To Be a Woman. Jill Craigie, 1951.
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Edition screened: Included in the BFI 4-DVD set Shadows of Progress: Documentary Film in Post-War Britain 1951-1977, released 2013. English language. Runtime approximately 18 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.


A good overview of the Women’s Movement in mid-century England.
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To Be or Not To Be

To Be or Not To Be. Ernest Lubitsch, 1942.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #670, released 2013. English language. Runtime approximately 99 minutes.


Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
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To Catch a Thief

To Catch a Thief. Alfred Hitchcock, 1955.
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Edition screened: Paramount Blu-ray, released 2012. English language. Runtime approximately 106 minutes.


Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
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To Live and Die in LA

To Live and Die in LA. William Friedkin, 1985.
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Edition screened: MGM/UA DVD, released 1985. English language. Runtime approximately 116 minutes.


Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
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To Rome with Love

To Rome with Love. Woody Allen, 2012.
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Edition screened: Sony Blu-ray, released 2013. English and Italian language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 118 minutes.


Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
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Today in Britain

Today in Britain. Peter Hopkinson, 1964.
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Edition screened: Included in the BFI 4-DVD set Shadows of Progress: Documentary Film in Post-War Britain 1951-1977, released 2013. English language. Runtime approximately 25 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.


A rather braggartly overview of Britain’s contributions and significance to the world.
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Der Todesking

Der Todesking (The Death King). Jörg Buttgereit, 1990.
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Edition screened: Included in the Cult Epic 4-Blu-ray set Sex Murder Art: The Films of Jörg Buttgereit, released 2016. German language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 76 minutes.

Summary: Death of a goldfish.

Details: The first vignette of the film ends with a man dying in his bathtub simultaneous with his goldfish sympathetically sinking dead to the bottom of the bowl, 15:45. The fish has not been abused.

The Der Todesking disc in the Cult Epic box set also includes the film Corpse Fucking Art (1992), and various featurettes.
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Tokyo Decadence

Tokyo Decadence (Topâzu). Ryû Murakami, 1993.
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Edition screened: Arrow DVD, released 2011. Japanese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 113 minutes.


Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
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Tokyo Drifter

Tokyo Drifter (Tôkyô nagaremono). Seijun Suzuki, 1966.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #39, released 2011. Japanese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 88 minutes.

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


There was such excitement over Tim Burton’s first Batman movie or Beatty’s Dick Tracy because one guy wore a bright yellow suit and another guy wore a bright green suit, and the table between them was yellow! Yellow, I tell you! Suzuki’s palette, costuming, and set design provide the marks to which yawny comic book movies occasionally aspire.

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Tokyo Mighty Guy

Tokyo Mighty Guy (Tokyo no abarembô). Buichi Saitô, 1960.
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Edition screened: Included on Arrow Blu-ray Nikkatsu Diamond Guys Volume 2, released 2016. Japanese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 79 minutes.

Summary: Spearing of starfish.


Details: A large starfish is impaled on a spear and drawn out of the water during a comedy sequence, 31:32-31:37.

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Tokyo Olympiad

Tokyo Olympiad (Tokyo Orinpikku). Kon Ichikawa, 1965.
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Edition screened: Criterion DVD #155 released 2002; also included in Criterion’s 100 Years of Olympic Films 1912-2012 Blu-ray box set #900, released 2017. Japanese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 170 minutes.

Summary: No particular depictions of violence toward animals.


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Tokyo Sonata

Tokyo Sonata (Tôkyô sonata). Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2008.
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Edition screened: Eureka! Masters of Cinema Blu-ray #3, released 2009. Japanese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 119 minutes.


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

Tokyo Story (Tôkyô monogatari). Yasujirô Ozu, 1953.
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Edition screened: BFI Blu-ray, released 2010. Japanese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 136 minutes.

Summary: No particular depictions of violence toward animals.


The BFI Blu-ray also includes Ozu’s Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family (1941)
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Tokyo Tribe

Tokyo Tribe. Sion Sono, 2014.
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Edition screened: Eureka! Blu-ray, released 2015. Japanese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 114 minutes.


Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
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Twilight of a Woman’s Soul

Twilight of a Woman’s Soul. Evgeni Bauer, 1913.
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Edition screened: Included on Milestone DVD Mad Love: The Films of Evgeni Bauer, released 2002. Russian intertitles with English subtitles, no dialogue track. Runtime approximately 48 minutes.


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

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