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.

Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge

Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge. Richard Friedman, 1989.

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Edition screened: Arrow Limited Edition Blu-ray set, released 2021. English language. Runtime of Integral Cut approximately 96 minutes.


Summary: The film includes several inserts of a threatening cobra, foreshadowing a snake-whoppin’ . . . But no harm or threat comes to the animal.


Many scenes in Phantom of the Mall are hallucinogenic in their simultaneous delightfulness and abject stupidity. The first scene with the cobra exhibits this duality and also the film’s pervasive indifference to any concept of time passing. At 43:40 we see Eric dump a mysterious cobra-sized wiggly something from a burlap bag into a drain clean-out beneath an enormous shopping mall because a man he intends to kill has just seated himself on a toilet in one of many bathrooms. Before that man can even begin the task at hand, the cobra has traveled god only knows how far in the sprawling five-floor mall and emerges from exactly the correct toilet bowl to bite the seated man right on the mongoose. Our view is from the stall door-cam, and what rises from the toilet actually looks like a badly burned baguette . . . Cut to insert of cobra . . . Cut to man on toilet screaming and holding his crotch. From that point forward the cobra apparently lives in the catacombs under the mall and uses his amazing Insert Powers to menace passersby.


The deluxe Arrow package contains four cuts of the film:

• The original Theatrical Cut (90 minutes)

• The TV Cut with nudity and gore replaced by some extended scenes (89 minutes)

• The Integral Cut combining those versions (96 minutes)

• The Subterranean Cut with extra gore (91 minutes, unrestored)


Three-quarters of the film is set in a gigantic California mall at the height of that shopping phenomenon. I was delighted to watch big-haired girls in pink and turquoise outfits trot past Orange Julius, Kinny Shoes, and Sam Goody. Made in the late 80s, Phantom of the Mall gets the courtly pageantry of Mall Aesthetic just right. There is a tuxedoed musician playing a white lacquered grand piano in the food court and Pauly Shore commandeers a hideous Honda Goldwing displayed like a trophy within a ring of flimsy stanchions. Teenagers are dressed like low-budget fashion models rather than wearing shapeless sweatpants and hunting jackets, and the storefronts are seductive rather than looking like yard sales. I remember all of that with sadness.



Of course the mall has an arcade. Mixed in among the video games are a 1988 Williams Cyclone, and a 1987 Gottlieb Arena. (all 31:28-31:35 in the Integral cut)



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