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.

The FLESH Triple Feature

The FLESH Triple Feature. Michael Findlay (as Julian Marsh) 1967-1968.

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Edition screened: Something Weird, released 2003. English language. Cumulative runtime of three features approximately 222 minutes.


Summary: Two of the three films have weird animal-related moments.


The Something Weird compilation includes three slightly fascinating Michael & Roberta Findlay films devoted to lingering close-ups of soft female torsos.


• The Touch of Her Flesh (1967, 75 minutes): A revenge thriller including a particularly admiring sequence of a young Black go-go dancer, and a good unscripted walk-on by somebody’s house cat in the murderer’s apartment. 2.5/5❤


• The Curse of Her Flesh (1968, 78 minutes): The previous story continues, with a minor animal incident at 20:06 when our killer dips the cat’s paw into water that he was shown lacing with something, presumably poison or a sedative. Later, embarrassing bed talk leads the killer to scruff the cat in a vague way while explaining that “all pussies must die,” 23:27-23:30. The girl kicks him out of the apartment and everyone is fine. There is no harm to the cat. The killer just scrunches its fur weirdly, and so his mysterious lacing ingredient must have been something like mouthwash or Fresca. I have no disagreement if you are thinking that this doesn’t make a lot of sense. 2.5/5❤


• The Kiss of Her Flesh (1968, 69 minutes): The saga concludes, but not before a few more languid murders. About six minutes into the film our killer sits down to a meal of lobster - just a whole boiled lobster plopped on a white cafeteria plate garnished only by a bottle of Lancers. His chair is situated so he can stare at an unconscious squishy girl tied to a spindly reproduction neoclassical sideboard. No thing leads to any other, and he is compelled to break the claw off the lobster and use it to pinch her thigh until she comes to, at which point he switches to a pair of awkward salad tongs and tweaks her further. He’s an odd one, our killer. 2.5/5❤


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