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 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.

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