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.

The Blot

The Blot. Lois Weber, 1921.

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Edition screened: Milestone DVD, released 2003. English intertitles, no dialogue track. Runtime approximately 91 minutes.


Summary: Early in the film a college student produces a small lizard with a string tied to it and places the animal on a classmate’s shoe during a lecture. There is no rough handling of the lizard or indication that it was harmed in fact or in the context of the film.


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Blood-A-Rama Triple Frightmare

Blood-A-Rama Triple Frightmare. Various directors, 1970-1974.

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Edition screened: AGFA Blu-ray, released 2021. English language. Combined runtime approximately 251 minutes.


Summary: Help Me . . . I’m Possessed includes an unemotional statement about a mutilated cat with no visual content. The Night of the Strangler includes the murder of a snake. Carnival of Blood has no cruelty to or comments about animals.


The AGFA set includes a fun 20-minute compilation of vintage drive-in snipes and three feature films:


Help Me . . . I’m Possessed (Charles Nizet, 1974)

The Night of the Strangler (Joy N. Houck, Jr. 1972)

Carnival of Blood (Leonard Kirtman, 1970)


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Carnival of Blood

Carnival of Blood. Leonard Kirtman, 1970.

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Edition screened: Included on AGFA Blu-ray Blood-A-Rama Triple Frightmare, released 2021. English language. Runtime approximately 87 minutes.


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


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Emanuelle Around the World

Emanuelle Around the World (Emanuelle - Perché violenza alle donne?). Joe D’Amato, 1977.

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Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle, released 2023. English language with original Italian as an option. Runtime approximately 102 minutes.


Summary: Sexual use of animals. 2.5/5❤


Details:

1) A snake crawls on the groin of a nude bound woman, 1:07:50-1:08:50

2) Depiction of a German Shepherd sexually assaulting the same woman, 1:09:26-1:10:25.


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L’enfance nue

L’enfance nue (Naked Childhood). Maurice Pialat, 1968.

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Edition screened: Criterion DVD #534, released 2010. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 83 minutes.


Summary: Depicted murder of a nice house cat.


Details:

1) We meet a gentle black cat early in the film as he sits on a little girl’s lap watching her and her adopted brother play a game. From 5:36-5:50 the cat tries to cling to the banister for his life as the brother drops him down the deep stairwell of an apartment building. We see a cat, possibly injured, hobbling away 6:07-6:10.

2) The psychopathic brother said he would care for the injured cat but just puts him in a box outside. He removes the dead cat from the box at 12:52 and tosses him over a bank with trash at 13:14.


The balance of the film is an enjoyable social drama about the difficulties faced by well-intentioned foster families. L’enfance nue is Pialat’s first film and the director has fallen for junior high school drivel that animal cruelty is a writer’s tool to develop character. As always, bullshit, no excuse, and shame on him. The entire film is about showing the child’s malignant character through other diverse anecdotes that are interesting, persuasive, and sometimes humorous or thought-provoking. Pialat should not have led with the most over-used and ignominious method.


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Help Me . . . I’m Possessed

Help Me . . . I’m Possessed. Charles Nizet, 1974.

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Edition screened: Included on AGFA Blu-ray Blood-A-Rama Triple Frightmare, released 2021. English language. Runtime approximately 76 minutes.


Summary: Early in the film we see a black cat and a white mouse abiding peacefully together in a small wire cage, the result of the psychiatrist’s experiments to expel violence from the mind. Much later we hear a report that the cat was found shredded to pieces, presumably the victim of the violent mouse. No visual content or details.


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The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? Ray Dennis Steckler, 1963.

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Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set The Incredibly Strange Films of Ray Dennis Steckler, released 2002. English language. Runtime approximately 82 minutes.


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


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Manderlay

Manderlay. Lars von Trier, 2005.

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Edition screened: IFC DVD, released 2006. English language. Runtime approximately 139 minutes.


Summary: A brief dream-like vignette of a horse running in the distance while on fire, 1:48:32-1:48:37.

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The Nightside of the Sky

The Nightside of the Sky. Rhayne Vermette, 2023.

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Edition screened: Included with The White Reindeer (disc 3) in Severin Blu-ray box set All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror Volume 2, released 2024. No spoken audio track. Runtime approximately 5 minutes.


Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.


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The Reluctant Icon: A Tribute to Laura Gemser

The Reluctant Icon: A Tribute to Laura Gemser. Kier-La Janisse, 2023.

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Edition screened: Included with Black Emanuelle (disc 1) in Severin Blu-ray box set The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle, released 2023. English language. Runtime approximately 19 minutes.


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


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Swimmer

Swimmer. Carter Lord, 1973.

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Edition screened: Included with The Enchanted (disc 2) in Severin Blu-ray box set All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror Volume 2, released 2024. English language. Runtime approximately 24 minutes.


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


A documentary about artist Don Seiler’s creation of a concrete sculpture for the International Swimming Hall of Fame, Fort Lauderdale.


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A Tribute to Karin Schubert: The 'Nackedei' Actress

A Tribute to Karin Schubert: The 'Nackedei' Actress. Kier-La Janisse, 2023.

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Edition screened: Included with Emanuelle Around the World in Severin Blu-ray box set The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle, released 2023. English language. Runtime approximately 19 minutes.


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


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Victims of Sin

Victims of Sin (Víctimas del pecado). Emilio Fernández, 1951.

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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #1222, released 2024. Spanish language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 84 minutes.


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


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Who Fears the Devil (The Legend of Hillbilly John)

Who Fears the Devil (The Legend of Hillbilly John). John Newland, 1973.

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Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror Volume 2, released 2024. English language. Runtime approximately 98 minutes.


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


Who Fears the Devil is a distillation of three stories by American author Manly Wade Wellman. Folk singer Hedge Capers portrays the unifying character, Hillbilly John, who uses a guitar with pure silver strings to battle various incarnations of evil in the Appalachian mountains.


The Severin release includes several commentaries to the film and an especially good discussion with occult historian Mitch Horowitz who contextualizes Wellman’s stories within the hoodoo belief system and introduces the abundance of books and novelty items available in the 19th and early 20th centuries for practitioners of hoodoo.


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A Witch Drum

A Witch Drum (Noitarumpu). Kari Kekkonen, 1982.

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Edition screened: Included with The White Reindeer (disc 3) in Severin Blu-ray box set All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror Volume 2, released 2024. Finnish language. Runtime approximately 10 minutes.


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



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