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.

Terminal Degeneration: The Films of Jon Moritsugu

Terminal Degeneration: The Films of Jon Moritsugu. 1987-2013.

😿😿😿😿

Edition screened: AGFA Blu-ray set, released 2023. English language. Cumulative runtime approximately 519 minutes.


Summary:  If you are looking at this site for the right reasons, these films are to be avoided. If you are looking at this site for the wrong reasons, you are to be avoided.


Huge thanks to my mate for plowing through these films! Let’s address these all in one post to deny the director the extra attention he desires.


The American Genre Film Archive set includes:


My Degeneration (1989)

  • 04:30-05:25.  Stock footage of a slaughterhouse with cattle hanging upside down. Appears to be part of an informational video as the voice-over explains the process and quality of “food” that non-vegans would be getting from the cattle. The footage has a very low grain with a black ‘old TV’-type effect that constantly waves up and down across the screen making everything barely discernible. No animal is shown to be killed. It shows them already dead and hanging upside down.
  • 11:04-11:28.  We see a pig head in the fridge with an odious voice-over making pig sounds whilst a hand off-screen manipulates the mouth so that it moves. The pig’s head is treated as a character in the film and affectionately talked to throughout in different places. It apparently later becomes the protagonist’s love interest.
  • 16:25-? Footage of animals being pulled apart. At this point I turned it off. Apparently making jokes out of dead animals is punk and cool. This is not worth watching at all. 

Hippy Porn (1991)

  • 00:31-02:12.  We see a rotting corpse of a cat on the side of a road. There are lots of zoom-ins and close-ups of the cat with flies and maggots all over it. The protagonist apologizes for running over the cat and then drives off.
  • 28:36-28:48. Two of the characters go rat hunting. We don’t see them kill a rat but we see a dead rat that’s implied to have been killed. In one moment, the rat is hung upside down by its tail. 
  • 58:25-58:36. Character is doing hopscotch and then stops to inspect a dead bird on the ground. 
  • 1:02:11-1:02:14. Close up of maggots coming out of, I believe, a bird.

Li'l Debbie Snackwhore of New York City (1987)

Cruelty-free


Terminal USA (1993)

01:41-01:52. A skinhead keeps shoving a dead rat in Jon Moritsugu’s face because their character owes him money.


Mod Fuck Explosion (1994)

1:03:18-1:04:16. Bloodied animal parts are strewn all over the floor and hang from the ceiling.


Crack (1999)

Cruelty-free


Fame Whore (1997)

Cruelty-free


Scumrock (2002)

Cruelty-free


Pig Death Machine (2013)

Did not watch as they all were so B-grade and bad, but descriptions of Pig Death Machine indicate that it has some animal cruelty in it. 


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