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.

Monsters Crash the Pajama Party

Monsters Crash the Pajama Party: Spook Show Spectacular. David L. Hewitt, 1965, and other directors and production dates.

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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:

  • Monsters Crash the Pajama Party (1965 David L. Hewitt, 31 minutes).
    A sub-Banana Splits enactment of the Teenagers-in-haunted-house model.
  • Asylum of the Insane. Seven minutes of alleged mayhem in 3D, including horrors such as a man doing yoyo tricks and an old lady poking you with her cane. (The Something Weird package includes two pairs of 3D glasses.)
  • Don’t Be Afraid (1952 Hal Kopel, 11 minutes). An educational film produced by Encyclopaedia Britannica that teaches us about the psychological importance of fear and that it is ok to be afraid despite the title of the film.
  • Tormented (1960 Bert Gordon, 72 minutes). A horror classic about a musician tormented by spectral pieces of his departed girlfriend.


A few of my favorite shorts on the disc are:

  • A 16-minute compilation of four short films with fun Cramps-style background music.
  • An 8-minute compilation of three vintage musical shorts, The Boogie Woogieman featuring a dancing skeleton and three girls singing good close harmony, an African-American quintet performing Dry Bones, and a musical skit probably called There’s a House on the Hill.
  • A 48-minute compilation of teasers for Spook Shows coming to your town soon!
  • A collection of vintage comic book mail-order instructions to stage your own Spook Show.
  • A video montage simulating a ride through a 1960s House of Horror carnival ride.


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