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.

Towers of Silence

Towers of Silence. Jamil Dehlavi, 1975.

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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. Urdu language. Runtime approximately 54 minutes.


Summary: Shooting of a dog.


Details:

1) We watch a sea turtle crawl to the beach and lay her eggs. A boy digs up her eggs and crushes one in his hand at 29:30.

2) The boy has various containers of small insects including a large fly in a cage with cork top and bottom. He puts the cage in a sink of water at 29:30; the cage floats as the fly scrambles. No resolution.

3) A small white dog (allegedly rabid) is shot. We see the dog roll and squeal 32:00-32:15, and return for a close up of its panting face while dying, 32:35-32:41.

4) The boy carries the dead dog to an area filled with animal carcasses and vultures, 34:27-36:23.

5) Quick shot of a large black dog dead on the beach, 39:04.



Towers of Silence accompanies Dehlavi’s Born of Fire in the Sevrin set.


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Scream VI

Scream VI. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, 2023.

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Edition screened: Paramount Blu-ray, released 2023. English language. Runtime approximately 124 minutes.


Summary: No animals in the film.


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Scanners

Scanners. David Cronenberg, 1981.

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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #712, released 2014. English language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 103 minutes.


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


The Criterion release also includes Cronenberg’s first full-length film, Stereo (1969). 


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Qâf

Qâf: The Sacred Mountain. Jamil Dehlavi, 1985.

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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. Scored. Runtime approximately 27 minutes.


Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.


Made during the shooting of Born of Fire, Qâf is twenty-seven beautiful minutes of lava flowing from an erupting volcano, set to music by Tangerine Dream.


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Nosferatu (Eggers)

Nosferatu. Robert Eggers, 2024.

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Edition screened: Universal Blu-ray, released 2025. English language. Runtime approximately 136 minutes.


Summary: When it looks like encrazied Knock is going to bite the head off a pigeon, he does. It’s fairly bloody and over in about six seconds.


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Nalujuk Night

Nalujuk Night. Jennie Williams, 2021.

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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 13 minutes.


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


The short horror film Nalujuk Night expands on the culture and myths of the Haida people featured in Edge of the Knife.


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Kelly’s Heroes

Kelly’s Heroes (Kelly’s AWOL Looters Who Do Nothing Remotely Heroic). Brian G. Hutton, 1970.

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Edition screened: Warner Bros. DVD, released 2000. English language. Runtime approximately 144 minutes.


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



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Haida Carver

Haida Carver. Richard Gilbert, 1964.

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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 13 minutes.


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


Haida Carver accompanies the feature film Edge of the Knife and explains the contemporary Haida custom of carving in soft slate.


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Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (Gon-ji-am). Jung Bum-shik, 2018.

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Edition screened: Well Go USA Blu-ray, released 2018. Korean language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 95 minutes.


Summary: A quick instance of a dead bird on the filthy floor and a modified rubber chicken, but no particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.


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Encounters of the Spooky Kind

Encounters of the Spooky Kind (Gui da gui). Sammo Kam-Bo Hung, 1980.

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Edition screened: Eureka Blu-ray, released 2021. Cantonese with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 103 minutes.


Summary: A chicken’s head is cut off, 42:32-42:44.

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