The Addams Family. Barry Sonnenfeld, 1991.
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Edition screened: Included with Addams Family Values in Paramount Blu-ray 2-pack, released 2019. English language. Runtime approximately 99 minutes.
Summary: A few one-line jokes about Granny cooking pets, not labored or particularly clear, and no visual content.
Addams Family Values. Barry Sonnenfeld, 1993.
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Edition screened: Included with The Addams Family in Paramount Blu-ray 2-pack, released 2019. English language. Runtime approximately 94 minutes.
Summary: Jokes about killing animals.
Details:
1) Similar to the original film, there are few one-line jokes about Granny hunting for stray dogs and cats.
2) More startling is the opening scene in which the children kneel by a small grave with a cat meowing inside a bag. Wednesday hits the bag with a hammer and places it in the grave. Over quickly and nothing else like it in the film, but a distasteful way to start a movie.
The Atomic Brain (Monstrosity). Joseph Mascelli and Jack Pollexfen, 1963.
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Edition screened: Included on Something Weird Triple Feature: The Atomic Brain/Love After Death/The Incredible Petrified World DVD, released 2003. English language. Runtime approximately 66 minutes.
Summary: Acceptance and discussion of animal experimentation.
Details: The basic plot is the SciFi staple of exchanging attributes between two bodies, this time financed by an elderly woman who wants to recapture the beauty of youth. A preliminary experiment to swap brain content between a woman and a cat is explained, additionally strange because the scientist intends to use his nice long-haired black house cat. Maybe not so odd, as Doc is confident that everyone will come through this ok, just with a different brain.
We see no experimenting or rough handling of cat or woman. From 57:56 through 58:01 we see a completely different, seemingly taxidermy, black cat draped within a piece of Scientific Equipment that appears to be a discarded acrylic case from the costume jewelry department at Macy’s.
We see the woman with cat brain acting like a cat; catching a mouse (no harm to mouse), up on the roof and can’t get down, etc. . . . and the cat behaving with human agility and comprehension, including some impressive knob spinning and button pushing in the lab to save a human subject.
Intriguing as that all sounds, the cat/woman stuff constitutes a comparatively small amount of Monstrosity’s short run time. The film primarily is a watchable, slightly gothic, social melodrama with a separable backstory of mad scientist - actually more of a punctilious scientist - bogged down with the medical community’s favorite dead-end research.
Devičanska Svirka (The Maiden’s Tune). Đorđe Kadijević, 1973.
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Edition screened: Included with Leptirica (Disc 3) in Severin Blu-ray box set All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror, released 2021. Serbian with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 59 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
One short scene includes the sound of overhead birds as we are told about an annual migration. We also see a man shooting into the sky, with no visible target or results.
Fade to Black. Vernon Zimmerman, 1980.
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Edition screened: Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray #338, released 2020. English language. Runtime approximately 102 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Feast of Flesh (Placer Sangriento). Emilio Vieyra, 1967.
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Edition screened: Included with Night of the Bloody Apes on Something Weird “Orgy of Terror” Double Feature DVD, released 2002. English dub. Runtime approximately 70 minutes.
Summary: No animals in the film.
The Incredible Petrified World. Jerry Warren, 1960.
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Edition screened: Included on Something Weird DVD Triple Feature: The Atomic Brain/Love After Death/The Incredible Petrified World, released 2003. English language. Runtime approximately 67 minutes.
Summary: The expository introduction includes a long scene of a shark attacking and killing a large squid.
Inferno of Torture (Tokugawa irezumi-shi: Seme jigoku). Teruo Ishii, 1969.
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Edition screened: Arrow Blu-ray, released 2020. Japanese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 90 minutes.
Summary: Animals at wet market.
Details: Two women fleeing cruel enslavement, one of them recently blinded, are pursued through a market that includes live and dead animals for sale as meat. This scene does not show animals being killed, but several times we see domestic dogs - very much alive - trussed in ropes and suspended like hands of bananas. Also a display of dead raccoons and house cats suspended by their tales, as well as typical arrays of plucked fowl, a two-second detail of unspecific flesh pierced by a knife, and several other vignettes horrible in their implications. These images are mixed in with other hawkers and aggressive prostitutes at the market.
I recommend skipping 1:01:37 through 1:04:30. Picking up at 1:04:30, the more agile (not blinded) woman has decoyed the thugs away from the blind woman, and the latter leaves the market and enters an adjacent funeral where she makes her escape.
Love After Death (Unsatisfied Love). Glauco Del Mar, 1968.
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Edition screened: Included on Something Weird DVD Triple Feature: The Atomic Brain/Love After Death/The Incredible Petrified World, released 2003. English dub. Runtime approximately 72 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Kenneth Branagh, 1994.
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Edition screened: Arrow UHD, released 2022. English language. Runtime approximately 123 minutes.
Summary: Dogs killed and lab experimentation.
Details:
1) Dogs from the ice-bound ship charge toward the unseen Creature. We see brief images of them grabbed by the throats and thrown to the ground, 5:36-5:49.
2) Lab experiment to reanimate a large frog, 38:28-39:03. The frog is just dead, not cut open.
One Hundred and One Nights (Les cent et une nuits de Simon Cinéma). Agnès Varda, 1995.
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Edition screened: Included in Criterion Blu-ray box set The Complete Films of Agnès Varda (disc 11) released 2020. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 105 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The Criterion Blu-ray include several shorts and commentaries:
• A Fun Moment with Michel Piccoli (2004, approx. 5 minutes). Brief outtakes and behind-the-scenes at One Hundred and One Nights.
• Hands and Objects: On Agnès Varda’s Shorts (2007, approx. 20 minutes).
• Unfinished Varda (1971, approx. 10 minutes combined). Surviving short scenes from the early uncompleted films La Melangite and Christmas Carole.
• Two television commercials made by Varda: a hip solicitation to become a Tupperware party hostess, and a stylish ad for panty hose made in a style similar to One Hundred and One Nights.
Patty Hearst. Paul Schrader, 1988.
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Edition screened: Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray #317, released 2000. English language. Runtime approximately 104 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The Sky Socialist. Ken Jacobs, 1964.
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Edition screened: Included on Keno Lorber Blu-ray Ken Jacobs Collection Vol. 1, released 2021. Intermittent musical score and sound effects; no dialogue track. Runtime approximately 96 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals. Nice cat cameo.
Tarzana, The Wild Woman (Tarzana, sesso selvaggio). Guido Malatesta, 1969.
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Edition screened: Something Weird DVD, released 2004. English language. Runtime approximately 83 minutes.
Summary: Pointless murder of jungle animals.
Details (timing includes a 2:30 Something Weird intro):
1) Eric Trump shoots a non-threatening lioness (16:05-16:08) just because he saw her. We first see a not-so-big cat in a bit of stock footage, then the “shooting” is a strange insert of a lioness jumping at or falling from a rope.
2) Eric and his slob mob examine the dead lioness, this time an obvious taxidermy specimen (16:17-16:25), and are flummoxed that she is wearing a braided floral collar.
3) Donald Trump Jr. shoots a gazelle (1:05:05) just because he saw her. The inserted stock footage is only about a half-second long but appears to be a small gazelle being shot.
4) Tarzana kneels in grief and anger when she finds the dead gazelle, 1:06:13-1:06:16.