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 Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. Tobe Hooper, 1986.
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Edition screened: Arrow Limited Edition Blu-ray box set, released 2013. English language. Runtime approximately 101 minutes.

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

Many phrases lose meaning as their usage broadens from a core of people who were keenly interested in a topic to a mass of people who are keenly interested in repeating phrases they have heard. One such phrase is black humor. I think this phrase originally meant humorous material about death, misfortune, and other content not usually associated with comedy, ranging from the suicidal dry wit of Woody Allen to the gory hijinks of Graham Chapman. 

As usage has expanded, the phrase black humor has changed meaning and now refers to something that a 7th-grade boy would say or describe on the school bus. Variations such as pitch black humor, jet black humor, and dark-as-night humor are meant to convey levels of awesome awesomeness.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 has about eight minutes of content expanded to a grueling hour-and-forty-minutes of tiresome sight gags and childish one-liners. Admittedly, I am unsure if a character repeating the same line over and over (Incoming Mail!) counts as a one-liner. It’s sort of a no-liner x 5.

I had not seen Hooper’s original Texas Chainsaw Massacre prior to this viewing of TCM 2, and was almost deterred from even giving the original a chance. I am pleased to report that the earlier film is not nearly as terrible as the sequel. The original is a completely different sort of movie, pretty much what we’ve all come to assume, but far more watchable than the incessant juvenile comedy and Just Go To The Principal's Office hyperactivity of TCM 2. 

The Arrow box set includes two other films by Hooper, The Heisters (1965) and Eggshells (1969).

A 1965 Gottlieb Buckaroo is in the hideout, 1:07:08.

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