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.

Hard Ticket to Hawaii

Hard Ticket to Hawaii. Andy Sidaris, 1987.
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Edition screened: Included on Mill Creek 3-DVD set Girls, Guns and G-Strings: The Andy Sidaris Collection, released 2011. English language. Runtime approximately 96 minutes.

Summary: A very phony snake is killed.

A “contaminated snake” gets a lot of attention and screen time in Hard Ticket, despite its arbitrary significance in the plot. Identified at one point as a boa, this large fake snake allegedly was contaminated (the script leans heavily upon this word) by proximity to cancerous rats. That apparently is something that can happen. This causes the contaminated snake to turn a mottled grey and black pattern and become gross and bloated looking, resembling a Scottish sausage with a constantly gaping mouth full of fangs. The contamination also brings a psychological change in the snake, causing it to violently lunge at the face of anyone it sees. A person thus attacked then shrivels into a hacked-up mess within a few hours. There is so much I don’t know about biology and natural history. 

1) Flushing a toilet causes the contaminated snake to explode up from the toilet bowl, and of course it pursues the alarmed woman. But she has a pistol and shoots the snake twice - in the mouth - which does not even phase the contaminated snake, 1:27:04.
2) Fortunately, someone enters with an enormous quadruple-barreled bazooka and shoots the contaminated snake’s head off, 1:27:33.
3) The contaminated snake’s headless body quivers on the floor through 1:27:41.

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