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.

Beyond the Door

Beyond the Door (Chi sei?). Ovidio Assonitis (as O. Hellman) and Robert Barrett, 1974.

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Edition screened: Arrow Blu-ray, released 2020. Original English overdub of the most unbelievable nature, demonstrating just how unbelievable nature can be. Runtime approximately 108 minutes.


Summary: Predictable yet daring fish tank smashing.


Details:

A woman hurls a heavy glass ashtray at a large aquarium which obligingly smashes in slow motion at 23:07. We see one large fish stranded on a sturdy aquarium plant and a few others spilling out from the shattered opening, through 23:37. A brazen directorial flourish omits the traditional close-up of a gasping fish dying on a medium-pile tan acrylic carpet, cutting instead to that ashtray-throwin’ aquarium-smashin’ wife confessing to her husband . . . but then surprises us with a return to that same barely-flapping fish stranded on the plant, 24:42-24:48.


Last night I had a fever dream in which I was forced to pick the most memorable scene from Beyond the Door. I awoke in a sweaty panic and still am trying to decide:


1) A woman pregnant with Satan’s baby is nonetheless tormented and tortured by that ol’ deceiver, as The Bearer of Light is prone to do. While descending municipal stone stairs in downtown San Francisco, she looks down to see that Lucifer has resorted to the old slip on a banana peel gag. She stops, picks up the mostly brown splayed-out peel from the dirty steps, and tooth-scrapes out the little bit of banana at the terminal end. 


2) The children’s room is decorated in appropriate mid-70s movie style, with cute bedding, shelves of dolls and stuffed animals, a wicker rocking chair, and a poster of Henry Kissinger standing shirtless with his back to us and looking over his shoulder, his pants down and a red-white-and-blue bull’s eye centered on his anus.


I kid you not.

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