Return of the Sister Street Fighter

Return of the Sister Street Fighter (Kaette kita onna hissatsu ken). Kazuhiko Yamaguchi, 1975.

😿

Edition screened: Included on Arrow Blu-ray set Sister Street Fighter Collection, released 2019. Japanese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 77 minutes.

Summary: Impaled moth.

Details: A moth is killed with a dart as a demonstration of skill, 24:12.

Sacha Guitry: Four Films 1936-1938

Sacha Guitry: Four Films 1936-1938.

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Edition screened: Arrow Blu-ray box set, released 2018. French language with English subtitles. Cumulative runtime of feature films approximately 381 minutes.

Summary: Let’s Go Up the Champs-Élysées includes one second of chicken killing.

The Arrow set includes a nice booklet of essays and four comedies by Guitry:

The New Testament (1936)

My Father Was Right (1936)

Let’s Make a Dream (1936)

Let’s Go Up the Champs-Élysées (1938)

Sanders of the River

Sanders of the River. Zoltán Korda, 1935.

😸

Edition screened: Included on DVD #372 Paul Robeson: Pioneer, in Criterion 4-DVD set #369 Paul Robeson: Portraits of the Artist, released 2007. English language. Runtime approximately 87 minutes.

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

Satan’s Slave

Satan’s Slave. Norman J. Warren, 1976.

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Edition screened: Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray #275, released 2019. English language. Runtime approximately 90 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

A boring, tedious movie, this VS release presents the worst of their holdings by British horror/terror director Norman J. Warren. Satan’s Slave includes quite a lot of kissin’, lovin’, and nekkids, all perpetrated by a monster-faced unsexy cast.

The VS release also includes Warren’s 1966 short film Fragment which, like the stale Cheetos I ate while watching, was much better than Satan’s Slave.

Savage Beach

Savage Beach. Andy Sidaris, 1989.

😿 😿

Edition screened: Included on Mill Creek 3-DVD set Girls, Guns and G-Strings: The Andy Sidaris Collection, released 2011. English language. Runtime approximately 92 minutes.

Summary: A rooster’s dismembered body is mocked.

Details: The girls target a would-be killer in the brush, blast away, and investigate to find that they’ve blown a rooster to bits. One girl picks up a leg and the other picks up the head suspended by the comb, and they both make ewww-gross faces and stupid jokes, 55:35-55:50. The image of the bimbo dangling the large chicken head between pinchy fingers is both infuriating and horrifying.

Sawdust and Tinsel

Sawdust and Tinsel (Gycklarnas afton). Ingmar Bergman, 1953.

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Edition screened: Included in Artificial Eye Blu-ray box set Classic Bergman, released 2012; also included in Criterion Blu-ray set Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema, released 2018. Swedish language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 92 minutes.

Summary: There are brief comments among the circus members that the bear should be shot. Later we see the owner approach a cage with a pistol and see him fire. There is no visual or audio depiction of a dying or dead bear.

Sawdust and Tinsel and The Rite share disc #18 of 30 in Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema (part of ‘Centerpiece 2’), along with a short 2003 introduction to Sawdust and Tinsel by Bergman with Marie Nyreröd.

Scared Stiff (Friedman)

Scared Stiff. Richard Friedman, 1987.

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Edition screened: Arrow Blu-ray, released 2019. English language. Runtime approximately 84 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

Scenes from a Marriage: Theatrical version

Scenes from a Marriage: Theatrical version (Scener ur ett äktenskap). Ingmar Bergman, 1974.

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Edition screened: Included in Criterion Blu-ray set Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema, released 2018; also released as Criterion DVD set #229. Swedish language with English subtitles. Approximately 169 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence toward animals.

The ‘Theatrical version’ (the shorter version) of Scenes from a Marriage is on disc #8 of 30 in Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema (part of ‘Centerpiece 1’), and is accompanied by a 1986 interview with Bergman (15 minutes), a 2003 interview with actors Erland Josephson and Liv Ullman (25 minutes), and a 2003 discussion by Peter Cowie comparing the two versions of the film (15 minutes). 

Schlock

Schlock. John Landis, 1973.

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Edition screened: Arrow Blu-ray, released 2018. English language. Runtime approximately 79 minutes.

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

I am no fan of broad self-conscious comedy, and Schlock does suffer from some predictable genre-specific problems such as the long early scene involving four high school students who descend into a cavern and are unsure if they are reciting lines in ironic monotone cadence or in genuine ineptitude. But in general, a delightful bathmat of witty humor is tossed over the film, especially in the physical acting of the Missing Link title character, portrayed I think by the director. His recurring apathetic participation in peripheral action is hilarious.

Secta Siniestra

Secta Siniestra (Bloody Sect). Ignacio F. Iquino (as Steve McCoy), 1982.

😿😿😿

Edition screened: Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray #294, released 2019. Spanish language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 86 minutes.

Summary: Horrible murder of a toad.

Details:

1) A caged bird is found dead, the body removed and held through dialogue, 40:46-41:22.

2) A large live toad sitting in a small box is repeatedly stabbed with a knife until dead, 50:24-50:42.  Just horrible, with no cutaways until the poor creature stops moving.

The brutal and sadistic murder of the poor toad is inexcusable. If the director had not lowered himself to this action, Secta Siniestra would be a somewhat enjoyable and outrageous Fulci-style re-telling of Rosemary’s Baby. 

Seijun Suzuki: The Early Years Vol. 2: Border Crossings: The Crime and Action Movies

Seijun Suzuki: The Early Years Vol. 2: Border Crossings: The Crime and Action Movies. Seijun Suzuki, 1957-1961.

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Edition screened: Arrow box set, released 2018. Japanese language with English subtitles. Runtime of feature films approximately 449 minutes.

Summary: The Man with a Shotgun includes a brief scene of pheasant hunting.

The Arrow release includes supplemental materials and the feature films:

Eight Hours of Terror (1957)

The Sleeping Beast Within (1960)

Smashing the O-Line (1960)

Tokyo Knights (1961)

The Man with a Shotgun (1961)

The Sense of an Ending

The Sense of an Ending. Ritesh Batra, 2017.

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Edition screened: Lionsgate DVD, released 2017. English language. Runtime approximately 109 minutes.

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

What a disappointment. The novel on which the film is based is a reassessment of traumatic incidents in a man’s youth, an interesting and entertaining story, endearingly sappy in its telling. The film adaptation is a total letdown, and I am not someone who defaults quickly or after feigned consideration to “it’s nothing like the book” because of course it isn’t and a novel and a screenplay are different literary works. The several most pivotal and transcendent scenes in the book are rendered in the film as one-second shots that matter not at all in the plot, and instead we get long passages of Jim Broadbent’s aging character fumbling with new-fangled cellphones and accompanying his daughter to childbirth classes. 

Sergei Parajanov: The Rebel

Sergei Parajanov: The Rebel (Sergueï Paradjanov, le rebelle). Patrick Cazals, 2003.

😸

Edition screened: Included on Criterion Blu-ray #918 The Color of Pomegranates, released 2018. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 52 minutes.

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

A excellent documentary about a director of immeasurable brilliance, his career ruined by the Armenian Donald Trump.

The Seven Minutes

The Seven Minutes. Russ Meyer, 1971.

😸

Edition screened: Included with Arrow Blu-ray Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, released 2016. English language. Runtime approximately 115 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

Sex and the City 2

Sex and the City 2. Michael Patrick King, 2010.

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Edition screened: New Line Blu-ray, released 2010. English language. Runtime approximately 146 minutes.

Summary: An extended scene that mocks anti-fur activists, but no depictions of violence or harm to animals.

Sex and the City: The Movie

Sex and the City: The Movie. Michael Patrick King, 2008.

😸

Edition screened: New Line DVD, released 2008. English language. Runtime approximately 145 minutes.

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

The Sexorcist/Deviates in Love

The Sexorcist/Deviates in Love. Ray Dennis Steckler (as Max Miller), 1973 & 1978.

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Edition screened: Vinegar Syndrome DVD #247 The Sexorcist’s Devil/ Deviates in Love, released 2018. English language. Cumulative runtime approximately 119 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

• The Sexorcist (The Sexorcist’s Devil, Undressed to Kill). Ray Dennis Steckler (as Max Miller), 1973, approximately 60 minutes.  0.5/5❤

• Deviates in Love (Fade to Red). Ray Dennis Steckler (as Max Miller), 1978, approximately 59 minutes.  1/5❤

Sharp Objects

Sharp Objects. Jean-Marc Vallée, 2018.

😿

Edition screened: HBO Blu-ray set, released 2018. English language. Runtime approximately 422 minutes.

Summary: Mutilation of a pig’s head.

Details: The setting of this miniseries is a small town dominated by a hog farming operation, the only large employer in the area. There are many references to the animals and we see them running around in their pens occasionally, but the only act of violence happens in Episode Two (of eight) in which the detective experiments on a pig’s head to assess how difficult it is to remove its teeth with pliers. This is seen coming and easily skipped or fast-forwarded if you so choose. 

She-Devils on Wheels

She-Devils on Wheels. Herschell Gordon Lewis, 1968.

😸

Edition screened: Included in the Arrow box set The Herschell Gordon Lewis Feast, released 2016. English language. Runtime approximately 86 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

This BD also includes Lewis’s Just for the Hell of It.

Showdown

Showdown. Henri Pachard, 1985.

😸

Edition screened: Vinegar Syndrome DVD #239, released 2018. English language. Runtime approximately 80 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals. 0.5/5❤

Dudranch.

Sister Street Fighter

Sister Street Fighter (Onna hissatsu ken). Kazuhiko Yamaguchi, 1974.

😿

Edition screened: Included on Arrow Blu-ray set Sister Street Fighter Collection, released 2019. Japanese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 86 minutes.

Summary: Depicted killing of insects and a bird.

Details:

1) We see two flies that have been impaled on toothpicks, 5:25-5:36.

2) Depiction of a caged bird shot with a blowgun at 28:00; quick, indistinct, and almost certainly another one of the taxidermy specimens that appears throughout the film.

Sister Street Fighter Collection

Sister Street Fighter Collection. Kazuhiko Yamaguchi and Shigehiro Ozawa, 1974-1976.

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Edition screened: Arrow Blu-ray box set, released 2019. Japanese language with English subtitles. Cumulative runtime of four feature films approximately 325 minutes.

Summary: Each film has some brief but unnecessary animal abuse scene, most being the impaling of some tiny thing from across the room with an even tinier projectile.

The Arrow set includes the four films of this popular series. Click individual titles for details.

Sister Street Fighter (1974, Kazuhiko Yamaguchi)

Sister Street Fighter: Hanging by a Thread (1974, Kazuhiko Yamaguchi)

Return of the Sister Street Fighter (1975, Kazuhiko Yamaguchi)

Sister Street Fighter: Fifth Level Fist (1976, Shigehiro Ozawa)

Sister Street Fighter: Fifth Level Fist

Sister Street Fighter: Fifth Level Fist (Onna hissatsu godan ken). Shigehiro Ozawa, 1976.

😿

Edition screened: Included on Arrow Blu-ray set Sister Street Fighter Collection, released 2019. Japanese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 77 minutes.

Summary: Mild fish cleaning.

Details: Several fish are slit open to get the packets of drugs hidden within, 6:50-7:19.

Sister Street Fighter: Hanging by a Thread

Sister Street Fighter: Hanging by a Thread (Onna hissatsu ken: Kiki ippatsu). Kazuhiko Yamaguchi, 1974.

😿

Edition screened: Included on Arrow Blu-ray set Sister Street Fighter Collection, released 2019. Japanese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 85 minutes.

Summary: Gory encounter with a bull’s head.

Details: During an indoor battle scene, we see a bull’s head sitting decoratively on a table, looking like a taxidermy specimen or possibly a realistic sculpture. A swordsman in the thick of battle takes time to cut the horns off one at a time, then to strike the top of the head which emits a geyser spray of blood. This inscrutable weirdness is 35:17-35:31.

Skin Flicks

Skin Flicks. Gerard Damiano, 1978.

😸

Edition screened: Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray #274, released 2019. English language. Runtime approximately 85 minutes.

Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film. 4/5❤

Smashing the 0-Line

Smashing the 0-Line (Mikkô zero rain). Seijun Suzuki, 1960.

😸

Edition screened: Included in Arrow Blu-ray box set Seijun Suzuki: The Early Years Vol. 2: Border Crossings: The Crime and Action Movies, released 2018. Japanese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 83 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

Smashing Time

Smashing Time. Desmond Davis, 1967.

😸

Edition screened: Kino Lorber Blu-ray, released 2018. English language. Runtime approximately 96 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

Bally Bazaar pinball in the little restaurant around the 8:00 mark. 

Smiles of a Summer Night

Smiles of a Summer Night (Sommarnattens leende). Ingmar Bergman, 1955.

😸

Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #101, included in Criterion Blu-ray set Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema, released 2018. Swedish language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 109 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

Smiles of a Summer Night is on disc #1 of 30 in Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema (part of ‘Opening Night’), and is accompanied by a 2003 introduction by Bergman with Marie Nyreröd, a trailer, and a very good conversation about the film between Peter Cowie and Jörn Donner (2003, 17 minutes). 

Something Weird

Something Weird. Herschell Gordon Lewis, 1968.

😸

Edition screened: Included with Color Me Blood Red in the Arrow box set The Herschell Gordon Lewis Feast, released 2016. English language. Runtime approximately 80 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

This is one of the most watchable HGL films. 

The Spiral

The Spiral (Rasen). Jôji Iida, 1998.

😸

Edition screened: Included in Arrow Blu-ray set Ringu Collection, released 2019. Japanese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 97 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

Yet another director’s stab at a follow-up to Ringu.

Splatter University

Splatter University. Richard W. Haines, 1984.

😸

Edition screened: Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray #261, released 2019. English language. Runtime approximately 78 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

Spookies

Spookies. Thomas Doran, et al., 1985

😸

Edition screened: Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray #301, released 2019. English language. Runtime approximately 85 minutes.

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

A lot of information about this boring film is available on line, and there are legitimate reasons that this boring film gets a lot of attention. Its production history and release history both are interesting, and the frequent gore/monster/zombie special effects are far, far superior to most films of similar age and budget.

But those special effects are the Spookies’ only redeeming attribute. It is “comedy-horror” at its worst, a last-place contestant in an almost last-place sub-genre second only to “comedy-porn” in unpleasantness. The film is 85 minutes of pushy juvenile comments disguised as comedy recited by the worst actors on earth portraying the most unappealing characters on earth. 

The Sting

The Sting. George Roy Hill, 1973.

😸

Edition screened: Universal Blu-ray, released 2012. English language. Runtime approximately 130 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

Stranger Than Paradise

Stranger Than Paradise. Jim Jarmusch, 1984.

😸

Edition screened: Criterion DVD #400, released 2007. English language. Runtime approximately 89 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

The Criterion release also includes Jarmusch’s earlier related film Permanent Vacation (1980).

Strip Nude for Your Killer

Strip Nude for Your Killer (Nude per l'assassino). Andrea Bianchi, 1975.

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Edition screened: Arrow Blu-ray, released 2019. Original Italian or English dub. Runtime approximately 98 minutes.

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

The director clearly intends that this film be remembered for its beautiful women and substantial nudity. Check. But even more memorable are the interminable ‘wacky driving’ scene through the streets of Milan and a tiresome discussion about milk in coffee.  The guts, if you will, of this giallo thriller are very good but the filler material is excruciating at times. 

A Study in Choreography for Camera

A Study in Choreography for Camera. Maya Deren and Talley Beatty, 1934.

😸

Edition screened: Included on Mystic Fire DVD Maya Deren: Experimental Films, released 2002. No audio track. Runtime approximately 4 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

The Suckling

The Suckling. Francis Teri, 1989.

😸

Edition screened: Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray #269, released 2019. English language. Runtime approximately 89 minutes.

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