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.

Pick-up

Pick-up (Pazuzu). Bernard Hirschenson, 1975.
😿😿😿
Edition screened: Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray #195, released 2017. English language. Runtime approximately 79 minutes.

Summary: Pointless murder of a boar.

Details: A pig is shot with an arrow and we see him fall over and die, 55:00-55:16.

After being “stranded” for about four hours on a dirt road in the Florida swampland, a trio of young people decide they must “kill a wild boar” to keep from starving. A pig, minding his own business in a clearing, is so tame that he allows the man to walk right up and shoot him. Inexcusable.

I can understand why people are disproportionately intrigued by this not-very-good movie. The on-again/off-again underpinning in magickal spiritualism constitutes the best parts of the film, heavily indebted to Barbet Schroeder’s More (1969) and The Valley (1972), with nods to Jorodowsky. [The idiotic murder of “the wild boar” unfortunately is traceable to The Valley, although Schroeder was documenting the lives of a genuine New Guinea tribe rather than the bored afternoon of some over-privileged young adults.]

The magickal segments alternate with common ’70s Red Necks Gone Wild buffoonery, with plenty of hootin’ and hollerin’ and wimenz hatin’ and general makin’ amerika great again. Unfortunately, that idiotic mentality gets the last word in the film. Just like in real life.

The Vinegar Syndrome release also includes a 1963 film called The Orgy at Lil’s Place, which is not the naughty film it postures to be. Containing only a tiny bit of modest nudity, The Orgy at Lil’s Place actually is one of the best compilations of early ’60s New York City location filming I’ve ever seen, unified by the blasé story of a small town girl who moves to the big city. Loved it!

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