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.

Hard Wood: The Adult Features of Ed Wood

Hard Wood: The Adult Features of Ed Wood. Ed Wood Jr. and Boris Petroff, 1962-1975.

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Edition screened: Severin Blu-ray set, released 2024. English language. Runtime of four feature films approximately 239 minutes.


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


The Severin set includes four feature films:


• ‘Necromania’: A Tale of Weird Love! (1971, Ed Wood Jr. as Don Miller, 53 minutes)
Watchable and unexpectedly sensual.


• The Only House in Town (1971, Ed Wood Jr. as Flint Holloway, 54 minutes)
Almost unwatchable; mostly disjointed scenes of chasing around in a semi-derelict house. Internet comments that the film is “unfinished” are generous.


• The Young Marrieds (1972, Ed Wood Jr. as Richard Trent, 68 minutes)
Also unexpectedly sensual and moderately entertaining.


• Shotgun Wedding (1962, Boris Petroff; written by Ed Wood Jr. as Larry Lee, 64 minutes)
This harmless hicksploitation film with no nudity or erotic content of any sort is the winner in the bunch. It would pass as an unusually entertaining double-length episode of The Beverley Hillbillies and features three attractive young women in Ozark-sexy getups who break into scenes with lines like “Pa! The preacher fell in the hog wallow!” 


The sophisticated musical score of Shotgun Wedding is striking. Because the script, acting, and production are indistinguishable from The Beverley Hillbillies or Petticoat Junction, one expects mindless bits of incidental music dolloped out two or three measures at a time rather than a well-executed bebop groove that runs almost continuously. But the show-stopping scene is the wedding dance. We see a barn dance trio of banjo, acoustic guitar, and dobro, but we hear an excellent Dick Dale-style lounge-surf instrumental, fully choreographed for four couples and featuring one male dancer whose exceptionally polished moves and poise prove him as a serious professional dancer.


Opposite to Shotgun Wedding in every way are a series of nine mid-1970s stag loops made by Ed Wood Jr., included as bonus material on The Young Marrieds. Each of these is about 8:15 long, silent with clunky subtitles that stay on the screen for a long time and establish mood more than they summarize dialogue. Many feature John Holmes opposite the same red-haired actress. With the exception of The Two Faces of Kim, which consists simply of a transexual woman standing in front of a mirror shaving and doing her makeup to transform from Kim to Kim, these films are shockingly crude and obscene. Erotic features from the 1970s and 80s currently distributed by boutique labels often mention “The Golden Age of Pornography”. I never really contemplated the significance of that phrase until these aggressively seedy loops made me turn up my collar and slink down the disreputable other side of the street.


• 15″ Commercial (1974)

• Devil Cult (1973)

• Doc’s House Call (1973)

• Girl on a Bike (1973)

• Notorious Landlady (1974)

• The Two Faces of Kim (1975)

• The Virgin Next Door (1974)

• The Virgin Next Door Part Two (1974)

• Western Lust (1973) 

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