Jean-Claude Drouot Returns to Fontenay-aux-Roses

Jean-Claude Drouot Returns to Fontenay-aux-Roses. Agnès Varda, 2006.

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Edition screened: Included in Criterion Blu-ray box set The Complete Films of Agnès Varda (disc 5) released 2020. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 10 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

The renowned actor returns to the quaint filming location 40 years after the making of Le bonheur to reunite with locals at a neighborhood establishment. Drouot’s experience is exactly like reuniting with relatives whom you have not seen in decades. The residents say they are anxious to see Drouot again, but then are rude, self-absorbed, behave inappropriately, and offer him tiny portions of garbage food. Rather than “Hello, old friend! Thank you for visiting us!” he is greeted with multiple observations that he has put on some weight.

Lions Love (... and Lies)

Lions Love (... and Lies). Agnès Varda, 1969.

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Edition screened: Included in Criterion Blu-ray box set The Complete Films of Agnès Varda (disc 6) released 2020. English languages. Runtime approximately 112 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

Major Barbara

Major Barbara. Gabriel Pascal, 1941.

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Edition screened: Included in Criterion Eclipse Series 20 George Bernard Shaw on Film 3-DVD set, released 2010. English language. Runtime approximately 121 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

Never Let Go

Never Let Go. John Guillermin, 1960.

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Edition screened: Not viewed, submitted by a friend. English language. Runtime approximately 90 minutes.

Summary: Depicted murder of a turtle.

Details: Peter Sellers, playing the villain, intentionally knocks over a glass aquarium belonging to newspaper vendor Melvyn Johns. The aquarium falls and breaks, and we see a few fish and a turtle on the floor. While the newspaper vendor reaches out for his pet turtle, Sellers grinds the turtle with the heel of his shoe, 35:26 - 35:41.

The Oral Generation

The Oral Generation. Richard Franklin, 1970.

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Edition screened: Vinegar Syndrome DVD #018, released 2013. English language. Cumulative runtime approximately 119 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

This early Vinegar Syndrome release is designed to suggest a show in a 1970 theatre. The DVD is divided into two tracks. The first track begins immediately without going to a menu and includes six short offerings that run without interruption for 54 minutes. Upon conclusion the second track, which is Franklin’s 65-minute feature film, launches immediately. First track:

• Oral Generation trailer (Richard Franklin, about 2 ½ minutes) 3.5/5❤
  An unusually enticing trailer for an adult film.
  
• Clinical Sex (Probably Richard Franklin as “Extraordinary Films”, about 10 ½ minutes) 3.5/5❤
  A common sex therapy story but with uncharacteristically attractive female patients.
  
• Any Way You Like It (Probably Richard Franklin as “Extraordinary Films”, about 11 minutes) 1.5/5❤
  A boring and terrible sex therapy story.
  
• Naked Sexes (Probably Richard Franklin as “Extraordinary Films”, about 8 ½ minutes) 0.5/5❤
  One of the goofiest things I’ve ever seen. The film begins with a woman starting a tape deck to play a short loop of silly laughing. She then joins three other average-looking 35-year-old nekked women in uncontrollable giggling, solo or rolling around on a bed nonsexually. This is intercut with short scenes of three sissy-looking body builders who smile, laugh a little, and flex for the camera.
  
• The Different Sexes (Probably Richard Franklin as “Extraordinary Films”, about 12 minutes) 0.5/5❤
  A young woman who is repeatedly described by the narrator as irresistibly sexy despite her appearance, participates in research for her college Sex Ed class. This is a difficult to watch.
  
• Oral Generation Outtake (Richard Franklin, about 9 minutes) 2/5❤
  An enthusiastic girl deserves a lot of credit for doing her best with a scrawny guy, a badly chosen sofa, and a small pile of inadequate pillows.
  
• The Oral Generation begins immediately thereafter (Richard Franklin, about 65 minutes) 3.5/5❤

The first 3 ½ minutes of The Oral Generation provide a generous drive through Manhattan’s film district, showing the vibrant marquees at their peek of prosperity along with neighboring pizza shops and other compatible small businesses. These clips are intercut with documentary footage of the squalid storefronts of adult bookstores a few streets over, complete with homeless people huddling on the sidewalks. We then get a few minutes of pseudoclinical chat while surveying the covers of pulp adult magazines,  leading to the several long and sedately filmed scenes that substantiate the film’s title. As with Clinical Sex and as promised in the trailer, the actresses are unusually attractive although the men seem uniformly disinterested.

Peppermint Candy (Lee Chang-dong)

Peppermint Candy (Bakha satang). Lee Chang-dong, 2000.

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Edition screened: Not viewed; submitted by a kind reader. Korean language. Runtime approximately 129 minutes.

Summary: Around 52:10 the main character kicks a dog until his wife stops him.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl

Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl. Gore Verbinski, 2003.

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Edition screened: Included in the Walt Disney Blu-ray box set Pirates of the Caribbean: 5 Movie Collection, released 2017. English language. Runtime approximately 143 minutes.

Summary: Mild implications of harm to animals.

Details:

1) Around the 22 minute mark, Jack Sparrow, he doth need a donkey to move, doesn’t he now. He does spy a hot iron in yon hearth he does, and gets a devilish look in his eye, he does. Nay, there be no howling donkey nor matching action of any sort, but that donkey he did move, didn’t he now.

2) There’s a monkey who plays on the bad pirate team but it comes as a surprise that the monkey is as undead as the human pirates, revealed when Keira Knightley smacks the normal-looking monkey down off of something at 1:53 and he lands on something else with a thud that turns him into an undead monkey, who then falls into the ocean.  You know how children teach each other to howl  WILL  HE  BE  ALRIGHT ?  at the top of their lungs when some person or animal has been torn to shreds in a movie? Well in this one case, Yea, he should be fine. Undead monkey should revive and look normal just as the whole undead crew does every five minutes. And he does.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. Gore Verbinski, 2006.

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Edition screened: Included in the Walt Disney Blu-ray box set Pirates of the Caribbean: 5 Movie Collection, released 2017. English language. Runtime approximately 150 minutes.

Summary: Mild undead monkey shenanigans. 

Details: The first real action of the film involves Jack Sparrow shooting his pistol upward toward a crow at close range. No indication of dead crow.

 

Several times throughout the film the Undead Monkey gag from Pirates 1 is recycled, this time with J.S. making comments like “I want to shoot something, where’s that monkey?” then shooting at the monkey who of course could not care less because Undead. No gore, no gunshot wounds, just silly jokes. I feel like One Frowny Cat is a bit harsh. 

I enjoyed this movie. The long Scooby-Doo scenes involving rolling preposterous contraptions through impossible terrain were unexpectedly funny, but by far the best parts were the generous special effects for Davey Jones’ crustaceous crew. Really good CGI.

The Seduction of Inga

The Seduction of Inga (Någon att älska). Joseph W. Sarno, 1969.

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Edition screened: Retro-Seduction DVD, released 2004. Swedish language with original English dub. Runtime approximately 81 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals. 1/5❤

The Retro-Seduction 2-DVD set also includes the “Grindhouse Cut” of The Seduction of Inga, which includes slightly longer versions of the almost-softcore scenes for a total runtime of 87 minutes. Also included on Disc 2 is another Sarno film also made in Sweden in 1969, The Indelicate Balance.

Silent Madness

Silent Madness. Simon Nuchtern, 1984.

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Edition screened: Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray #340, released 2020. English language. Runtime approximately 92 minutes.

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

Any movie with a title, cover art, and body count like Silent Madness has nine chances in ten of being unwatchable due to the relentless “comedy” of unbearable teenage characters who just do not shut up. Silent Madness drew the lucky ticket and is watchable despite its overall trite nature, thanks to conservative scripting of comparatively bland college-age characters who don’t have much to say.

The Ultimate Pleasure/I Am Always Ready

The Ultimate Pleasure/I Am Always Ready. Carlos Tobalina, 1977-1978.

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Edition screened: Vinegar Syndrome DVD #049 Peekarama: The Ultimate Pleasure/I Am Always Ready, released 2014. English language. Cumulative runtime approximately 143 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals in either feature.

• The Ultimate Pleasure. Carlos Tobalina (as Bruce Van Buren), 1977, approximately 72 minutes. 4/5❤

• I Am Always Ready. Carlos Tobalina (as Troy Benny), 1978, approximately 71 minutes. 1.5/5❤

As usual in VS’s apparent scheme to inflict upon mankind the complete works of Carlos Tobalina, one of his better films is paired with one of the more typical unwatchable assemblages of unrelated scenes paper-clipped together by some recurring cheap gag. In I Am Always Ready there is a camera man who declares just that when a paper clip is required.

Uncle Yanco

Uncle Yanco (Oncle Yanco). Agnès Varda, 1967.

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Edition screened: Included in Criterion Blu-ray box set The Complete Films of Agnès Varda (disc 6) released 2020. French, Greek, and English languages with English subtitles as appropriate. Runtime approximately 19 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

What a treat, this privileged 1967 trip to San Francisco’s famous floating village of Sausalito. Agnès visits her Greek artist uncle on his houseboat and sees the sites. Beautiful.

Wrong Turn 1-5

Wrong Turn 1-5. Various directors, 2003-2012.

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Edition screened: 20th Century Fox Blu-ray set, released 2014. English language. Cumulative runtime of five feature films approximately 453 minutes.

Summary: Comparatively very mild depictions of dead animals in films #1 & #3. Click on individual titles for details.

The bundle set includes:

Wrong Turn (2003 Rob Schmidt)

Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007 Joe Lynch)

Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead (2009 Declan O’Brien)

Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings (2011 Declan O’Brien)

Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines (2012 Declan O’Brien)

Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines

Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines. Declan O’Brien, 2012.

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Edition screened: Included in 20th Century Fox Blu-ray set Wrong Turn 1-5, released 2014. English language. Runtime approximately 91 minutes.

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