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.

Game of Death II

Game of Death II (Tower of Death / Si wang ta). Ng See-Yuen, Sammo Kam-Bo Hung, and Corey Yuen, 1981.

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Edition screened: Included in Criterion Blu-ray box set #1036 Bruce Lee: His Greatest Hits, released 2020. Original English dub. Runtime approximately 96 minutes.


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


Game of Death II was conceived and created after Bruce Lee’s untimely death. It includes some unused footage from real Bruce Lee movies, primarily Enter the Dragon, but most of the film dawdles around a skeletal plot featuring the same actor who carried most of Game of Death.


It’s a silly film. The final showdown takes place in the titular “Tower of Death”, which when first mentioned in a veil of mystery is paired visually with a gift shop pagoda held upside-down. Oh my!


Indeed, our Not Bruce Lee must descend to the top of the tower, challenged along the way by a sequence of silly enemies including an inept fighter in Versace pajamas and a nicely choreographed dance troupe in silver Star Trek leotards. Upon finally digging down to the top, he must successfully traverse a short hallway of colorful lights similar to a walkway I remember connecting two terminals in Chicago O’Hare Airport in the 1980s. That challenge vanquished, he finds the ultimate enemy in a James Bond-style underground lair complete with cryptotechnical instruments and a gigantic international map with lights that flash pointlessly. I presume the source literature explained why an aging kung-fu master held the codes to prevent unilateral atomic extermination or something to that effect.

 

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