10 Violent Women. Ted V. Mikels, 1979.
😸
Edition screened: Alpha Video DVD, released 2007. English language. Runtime approximately 97 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
I wish I had the option to watch just one or two violent women, which might have been proportionately less terrible.
Angel de fuego. Dana Rotberg, 1992.
😿😿
Edition screened: Desert Mountain DVD, released 2003. Spanish language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 91 minutes.
Summary: Sacrifice of a young goat.
Details: A dead kid lies on an altar; blood has dripped down the altar cloth, 1:01:33-1:01:48. No killing or close-ups, but sad.
I appreciated Angel de fuego, superficially reminiscent of Santa sangre but telling a unique story of circus, religion, and desperation. Many scenes filmed in the impoverished fringes of Mexico City are haunting, beautiful, and laden with fading folk culture.
Blood Orgy of the She-Devils. Ted V. Mikels, 1973.
😸
Edition screened: Alpha Video DVD, released 2007. English language. Runtime approximately 73 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals. A lizard in a jar is evoked in some poorly-conceived malevolent spell-casting, but he is not harmed.
No part of this bland and boring film vaguely resembles the primary image on the cover.
Caesar and Cleopatra. Gabriel Pascal, 1945.
😸
Edition screened: Included in Criterion Eclipse Series 20 George Bernard Shaw on Film 3-DVD set, released 2010. English language. Runtime approximately 128 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The Corpse Grinders II. Ted V. Mikels, 2000.
😸
Edition screened: Alpha Video DVD, released 2007. English language. Runtime approximately 103 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Crippled Avengers (Can que). Chang Cheh, 1978.
😸
Edition screened: Included in Arrow Blu-ray box set Shawscope: Volume 1, released 2021. Mandarin language with English subtitles or English dub. Runtime approximately 104 minutes.
Summary: No animals in the film.
Dirty Ho (Lan tou He). Liu Chia-Liang, 1979.
😸
Edition screened: Included in Arrow Blu-ray box set Shawscope: Volume 1, released 2021. Cantonese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 103 minutes.
Summary: No animals in the film.
The Doll Squad. Ted V. Mikels, 1973.
😸
Edition screened: Alpha Video DVD, released 2007. English language. Runtime approximately 91 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Five Deadly Venoms (Wu du). Chang Cheh, 1978.
😸
Edition screened: Included in Arrow Blu-ray box set Shawscope: Volume 1, released 2021. Mandarin language with English subtitles or English dub. Runtime approximately 102 minutes.
Summary: No animals in the film.
George Bernard Shaw on Film. Gabriel Pascal and Chester Erskine, 1941-1952.
😸
Edition screened: Criterion Eclipse Series #20 DVD set, released 2010. English language. Collective runtime approximately 347 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals in any of the three films.
This 20th volume in Criterion’s Eclipse Series includes the following films. Click individual titles for details.
Major Barbara (1941)
Caesar and Cleopatra (1945)
Androcles and the Lion (1952)
Girl in Gold Boots. Ted V. Mikels, 1968.
😸
Edition screened: Alpha Video DVD, released 2007. English language. Runtime approximately 91 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The Gleaners & I (Les glaneurs et la glaneuse). Agnès Varda, 2000.
😸
Edition screened: Included in Criterion Blu-ray box set The Complete Films of Agnès Varda (disc 12) released 2020. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 82 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The Gleaners & I: Two Years Later (Les glaneurs et la glaneuse... deux ans après). Agnès Varda, 2002.
😸
Edition screened: Included in Criterion Blu-ray box set The Complete Films of Agnès Varda (disc 12) released 2020. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 63 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Heroes of the East (Zhong hua zhang fu). Liu Chia-Liang, 1978.
😸
Edition screened: Included in Arrow Blu-ray box set Shawscope: Volume 1, released 2021. Cantonese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 105 minutes.
Summary: No animals in the film.
Little Mother (Woman of the Year/Blood Queen). Radley Metzger, 1973.
😸
Edition screened: Image DVD, released 2006. English language. Runtime approximately 139 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Monsters Crash the Pajama Party: Spook Show Spectacular. David L. Hewitt, 1965, and other directors and production dates.
😸
Edition screened: Something Weird DVD, released 2001. English language. Cumulative runtime of assorted contents, approximately 214 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
A rather charming production from Something Weird, attempting to explain the 1950s-60s phenomenon of a “Spook Show” by providing examples of the films screened along with interpretive material and compilations of ephemera. I count an amazing thirty-three separate components, all navigable through a multi-screen menu of a graveyard and haunted house with hidden clickables and surprises. These thirty-three indexed items range from entire films to snippets of horror nonsense.
The complete films are:
A few of my favorite shorts on the disc are:
Psyched by the 4D Witch: A Tale of Demonology. Victor Luminera, 1972.
😿
Edition screened: Included on Something Weird DVD Way-Out Double Feature: Monster a Go-Go and Psyched by the 4D Witch, released 2002. English language. Runtime approximately 81 minutes.
Summary: Inappropriate handling of a snake. 1/5❤
Details: A fantasy hallucination includes two women who sequentially hold a small snake below its head and maneuver it around their torsos in an erotic way, beginning at 39:25. This concludes at 42:35 with the first woman returning and putting the snake’s head in her mouth. Narration at the beginning of the sequence informs us that the snake had been “inside” the woman for eight hours in preparation for the ritual, withdrawn through her anus, then used for the ritual which concludes with biting off the snake’s head. The only portion of that depicted in (blurry, damaged, vintage) film are scenes of the women kneeling while moving the snake across their breasts and stomaches, and then one woman putting the snake’s head in her mouth.
In addition to the two feature titles, the Something Weird DVD also includes numerous trailers, stills galleries, and three short films with no credits and unknown real titles but identified as:
Shawscope: Volume 1. Various directors, 1972-1979.
😿 😿
Edition screened: Arrow Blu-ray box set, released 2021. Mandarin and Cantonese languages with English subtitle. Cumulative runtime of feature films approximately 1,286 minutes.
Summary: Only Five Shaolin Masters and The Mighty Peking Man contain violence to animals, the latter being the main offender. See those titles for details.
The Arrow set includes several documentaries produced by Celestial Pictures around 2003, many interviews and commentaries, and twelve feature films:
King Boxer (Five Fingers of Death), 1972, Jeong Chang-hwa
The Boxer from Shantung, 1972, Chang Cheh and Pao Hsueh-Li
Five Shaolin Masters (5 Masters of Death), 1974, Chang Cheh
Shaolin Temple, 1976, Chang Cheh
The Mighty Peking Man, 1977, Ho Meng-Hua
Challenge of the Masters, 1976, Liu Chia-Liang
Executioners from Shaolin, 1977, Liu Chia-Liang
Chinatown Kid, 1977, Chang Cheh
Five Deadly Venoms, 1978, Chang Cheh
Crippled Avengers, 1978, Chang Cheh
Heroes of the East, 1978, Liu Chia-Liang
Dirty Ho, 1979, Liu Chia-Liang
Smash Cut. Lee Demarbre, 2009.
😸
Edition screened: Lionsgate DVD, released 2009. English language. Runtime approximately 86 minutes.
Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.
Spring in a Small Town (Xiao cheng zhi chun). Fei Mu, 1948.
😸
Edition screened: BFI DVD, released 2015. Mandarin language with English. Runtime approximately 94 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Therese and Isabelle. Radley Metzger, 1968.
😸
Edition screened: Image DVD, released 1999. English language. Runtime approximately 117 minutes.
Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film. 2/5❤
Tormented. Bert I. Gordon, 1960.
😸
Edition screened: Something Weird DVD Monsters Crash the Pajama Party: Spook Show Spectacular, released 2001. English language. Runtime approximately 72 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
A simplified seaside interpretation of Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, in which a bridegroom is self-haunted by a former lover.
Tourist Trap. David Schmoeller, 1979.
😸
Edition screened: Full Moon Blu-ray, released 2020. English language. Runtime approximately 90 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
I typically find horror movies to be scary to the same degree that I find comedy movies to be funny. Not very. But Tourist Trap is truly horrifying with unexpected inversions of common setups.