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.

Tammy and the T-Rex

Tammy and the T-Rex. Stewart Raffill, 1993.
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Edition screened: Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray #300, released 2019. English language. Runtime approximately 90 minutes.

Summary: Implication of shooting animals.

Details:
1) A lion is mauling a man, and a game warden intervenes by shooting the lion, 21:49-21:52.  We do NOT see the lion shot. We see the game warden lift and rifle, then hear gun fire during a cut to the next scene.
2) While searching for the dinosaur in a small barn (hmmm), the evil scientist is startled by a chicken and shoots his tranquilizer gun at the bird, 1:22:02. This is a very confusing scene visually because in the space of half a second we see the flying chicken and what appears to be a splatter of blood against the wall; but the bright red plume actually is the feathered stabilizer of the tranquilizer dart, which did NOT hit the bird.
3) Soon after this the T-Rex is “killed” in a hail of police gun fire. Dialogue immediately afterward comedically explains that this makes no sense, as the dinosaur is mechanical and would not, could not, slowly be brought down and collapse on the floor . . . 

The potential depictions of violence to animals in this film all resolve to be non-issues. But sticking to the objective of this project, could an unexpecting viewer be upset or taken by surprise by the apparently-shot chicken? Yes.

This Vinegar Syndrome release is the first time Tammy and the T-Rex has been available uncut with its substantial violent gory deaths intact. VS also includes the heavily-edited “family” version that was a video store staple in the 1990s.

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