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.

Sugar Cookies

Sugar Cookies. Theodore Gershuny, 1973.

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Edition screened: Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray #043, released 2014. English language. Runtime approximately 100 minutes.


Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.


The first ten minutes of Sugar Cookies are stilted and odd. Turns out, there’s a reason for that and yes it does look like a wig. I recommend smiling and nodding through this short sequence and allowing an entertaining film which is not a Vertigo remake to unwind.


Mary Woronov’s performance and stage presence shoved me over the hump of not understanding why she is loved even in the not-sarcastic world.


Some interior sets in Sugar Cookies are a treat, specifically those filmed in a gorgeous beaux arts house sparsely furnished with biomorphic Eero Aarnio and Raymond Loewy furniture. Oh, how we envy the homes of sophisticated people in movies. Typically, the more suave the occupants, the less furniture on the floors and stuff on the walls, but how well-chosen each of those things is. Oh. My. God. That is how I am going to redecorate. But when you do move into an empty house, Job Number One is to haul out all the inherited crap you and your parents have been dragging around for 50 or 100 years, and spread it around the house like mulch or blown foam insulation.

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