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.

Visions of Eight

Visions of Eight. Various directors, 1973.

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Edition screened: Included in Criterion’s 100 Years of Olympic Films 1912-2012 Blu-ray box set #900, released 2017. English language. Runtime approximately 110 minutes.


Summary: No particular depictions of violence toward animals.


Executive producer David Wolper invited eight directors to create a short film focused on an aspect of the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics:


  • Yuri Ozerov, The Beginning
  • Mai Zetterling, The Strongest
  • Arthur Penn, The Highest
  • Michael Pfleghar, The Women
  • Kon Ichikawa, The Fastest
  • MiloÅ¡ Forman, The Decathlon
  • Claude Lelouch, The Losers
  • John Schlesinger, The Longest


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Vermiglio

Vermiglio. Maura Delpero, 2025.

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Edition screened: Janus Blu-ray, released 2025. Italian language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 119 minutes.


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


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Porno Nights of the World

Porno Nights of the World (Notti porno nel mondo). Bruno Mattei and 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 dub by/of Laura Gemser. Runtime approximately 88 minutes.


Summary: A chicken is beheaded and the blood drizzled around as part of a macumba ritual, 1:20:26-1:21:36.


Although the chicken murder is inexcusable, the surrounding Afro-Brazilian ritual is the only vaguely interesting segment in this tiresome film. Per Mondo formula, Porno Nights is a stumbling parade of childishly staged “documents” performed by people who now fifty years later still live in fear of being recognized and publicly mocked. A desirable 8-minute edit of the film could be made by cutting every topical vignette, leaving just the dozen or so transitions of Laura Gemser talking with us in medium close-up while modeling her mid-70s Resort Season wardrobe.


Much better than the feature film is the supplemental documentary produced by Kier-La Janisse, The Naked Eye: Sex and the Mondo Film.


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The Naked Eye: Sex and the Mondo Film

The Naked Eye: Sex and the Mondo Film. Elizabeth Purchell, 2023.

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Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle, released 2023. English language. Runtime approximately 43 minutes.


Summary: Brief clips of animal slaughter from Mondo films.


Details:

1) Brief clip from a Mondo film that appears to be the abdomen of a huge reptile slit open, 28:18-28:21. Looks very phony.

2) A short montage of an injured bull and butchering a whale, 35:52-36:13.


I enjoyed this short documentary. Three cinéastes (director Elizabeth Purchell, Vinegar Syndrome co-founder Joe Rubin, and commentator Mark Goodall) discuss the origins, history, and shifting focus of Mondo-style films in Europe and America through the 1980s. They focus on the marketing of sexuality, eroticism, and gender issues. They barely and contemptuously acknowledge the cheap animal abuse and Faces of Death-styling down in the seemingly bottomless Mondo barrel. 

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The Lemon Grove Kids

The Lemon Grove Kids. Ray Dennis Steckler et al., 1968.

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Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set The Incredibly Strange Films of Ray Dennis Steckler, released 2022. English language. Runtime approximately 78 minutes.


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


This presentation of The Lemon Grove Kids compiles all three episodes of the Steckler comedies. Segment one, apparently just titled “The Lemon Grove Kids” runs about 30 minutes and focuses on a turf war between the Lemon Grove Kids and the equally moronic West Lemon Grove Kids, to be resolved by a point-to-point race organized by a beat cop. Segment two, “The Lemon Grove Kids Go Hollywood”, about 20 minutes, focuses on Muppet Baby-sized LGKs who take on housecleaning chores for celebrities. One celebrity. Segment three is pretty much what the title suggests, “The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Green Grasshopper and the Vampire Lady from Outer Space”, also about 2o minutes. Other compilations of these shorts are ordered differently and incorrectly suggest that they all are monster-themed.


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Io Island

Io Island (Ieoh Island, Ieodo). Kim Ki-young, 1977.

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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. Korean language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 110 minutes.


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


The Io Island disk in the set also includes The Present (Joe Hsieh, 2013) and Kindil El Bahr (Damien Ounouri, 2016).


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Goof on the Loose

Goof on the Loose. Ray Dennis Steckler et al., 1968.

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Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set The Incredibly Strange Films of Ray Dennis Steckler, released 2022. English language. Runtime approximately 8 minutes.


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


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Carnal Knowledge

Carnal Knowledge. Mike Nichols, 1971.

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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #1270, released 2025. English language. Runtime approximately 98 minutes.


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


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