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.

Showing posts with label Amusement Park. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amusement Park. Show all posts

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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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 2022. English language. Runtime approximately 82 minutes.


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


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A Taste of Honey

A Taste of Honey. Tony Richardson, 1961.

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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #829, released 2016. English language. Runtime approximately 100 minutes.


Summary: A dead sparrow is spotted on a sidewalk near the end of the film; no gratuitous content.


The Criterion BD also includes Richardson’s 1955 nightclub short Momma Don’t Allow. 


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Keyholes Are for Peeping

Keyholes Are for Peeping. Doris Wishman, 1972.

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Edition screened: Included in AGFA Blu-ray set The Films of Doris Wishman: The Twilight Years. English language. Runtime approximately 70 minutes.


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


A curious film even on The Wishman Curve. Perhaps because of hurt feelings at a cocktail party, Boy I’ll Show Them Wishman intentionally sets out to make a comedy and casts semi-cult legend Sammy Petrillo as the lead. Petrillo’s performance is engagingly entertaining to whatever degree you look back fondly on the guy from high school who worked hard to be voted Class Clown, and a no-speak-good-English Puerto Rican janitor is played for coarse yucks in his too-large role as the titular Keyhole Peeper. But for my tastes, the funniest aspect of the film is that none of the peeped-through doors actually has a keyhole. We repeatedly see our kneeling janitor pressing his forehead against a door above the knob where a keyhole isn’t, or squinting at the key slot of a knob. [Why Oh Why is there not a Wishman film called Key Slot of a Knob?]  Rest assured, this is not a career arc-changing narrative conceit on the part of our director. It is just Oh Whatever Doris being Oh Whatever Doris, setting herself up for the next cocktail party.

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Family Nest

Family Nest (Családi tüzfészek). Béla Tarr, 1979.

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Edition screened: Included on Criterion Blu-ray # 1215 Werckmeister Harmonies, released 2024. Hungarian language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 108 minutes.


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

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9 ½ Weeks

9 ½ Weeks. Adrian Lyne, 1986.

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Edition screened: MGM Blu-ray, released 2012. English language. Runtime approximately 117 minutes.


Summary: The spoils of fishing.


Details:

1) A live fish struggles while handled by a butcher. The scene cuts away before the fish is finished off, 5:08-5:20. 

2) Alley cat with a rat in his mouth, 1:10:29.

3) An elderly man sits on a bench gently handling a dead fish he has caught, 1:25:22-1:26:39.


Unidentifiable pinball machine in silhouette, 20:42.


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Ikiru

Ikiru. Akira Kurosawa, 1952.

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Edition screened: Criterion DVD #221, released 2004. Japanese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 143 minutes.


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


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The Sacred Spirit

The Sacred Spirit (Espíritu sagrado). Chema García Ibarra, 2021.

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Edition screened: Arrow Blu-ray, released 2022. Spanish language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 97 minutes.


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


The Arrow release includes a second Blu-ray with six short films by Ibarra, all free of animal violence. The short films are generally charming and better than The Sacred Spirit in various ways. The themes and characters among all seven films complement each other and expand the scope of the feature title.


The Attack of Robots from Nebula-5 (2008, approximately 6 minutes)

Protoparticles (2013, approximately 7 minutes)

Misterio (2013, approximately 12 minutes)

Uranes (2014, approximately 59 minutes)

The Disco Shines (2016, approximately 12 minutes)

The Golden Legend (2019, approximately 11 minutes)


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The Bob’s Burgers Movie

The Bob’s Burgers Movie. Loren Bouchard and Bernard Derriman, 2022.

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Edition screened: 20th Century Studios Blu-ray, released 2022. English language. Runtime approximately 102 minutes.


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


A long scene in Mr. Fischoeder’s lair under the boardwalk recalls The Residents’ Bad Day on the Midway.

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The Girl and the Geek

The Girl and the Geek (Passion in the Sun). Dale Berry, 1964.

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Edition screened: Something Weird DVD, released 2006. English language. Runtime approximately 72 minutes.


Summary: No animals in the film.


The Something Weird DVD-R also includes most of George Gunter’s The Old Man’s Bride (1967).


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The Ultimate Degenerate

The Ultimate Degenerate. Michael Findlay (as Julian Marsh), 1969.

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Edition screened: Something Weird DVD-R, released 2003. English language. Runtime approximately 72 minutes.


Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film. 3/5❤


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Remembrance of Things to Come

Remembrance of Things to Come (Le souvenir d'un avenir). Chris Marker and Yannick Bellon, 2001.

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Edition screened: Icarus DVD, released 2008. Dubbed English naration. Runtime approximately 42 minutes.


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


The Icarus DVD of this remarkable and transcending film also includes Bellon’s Colette (1950, 26 minutes).


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Embodiment of Evil

Embodiment of Evil (Encarnação do Demônio). José Mojica Marins, 2008.

😿 😿

Edition screened: Synapse Blu-ray, released 2011. Portuguese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 94 minutes.


Summary: Desecration of a pig’s body; animals used as instruments of torture.


Details:

1) 1:03:56 through 1:04:27, we see the body of a large dead pig, clean on the exterior and stitched up the belly. The stitches are snipped, releasing a nude woman.

2) Soon thereafter are two torture scenes involving animals. The first shows a woman’s face forced into a crock full of live roaches. The second involves a large rat turned loose on a restrained woman after a honey-like substance has been poured on her body. We do not see the roaches or the rat injured.


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Monster (Jenkins)

Monster. Patty Jenkins, 2003.

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Edition screened: Included on Columbia/TriStar DVD, released 2004. English language. Runtime approximately 119 minutes.


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


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Fade to Black

Fade to Black. Vernon Zimmerman, 1980.

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Edition screened: Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray #338, released 2020. English language. Runtime approximately 102 minutes.


Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.


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Patty Hearst

Patty Hearst. Paul Schrader, 1988.

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Edition screened: Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray #317, released 2000. English language. Runtime approximately 104 minutes.


Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.


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America as Seen by a Frenchman

America as Seen by a Frenchman. François Reichenbach, 1960.

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Edition screened: Arrow Blu-ray, released 2020. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 90 minutes.


Summary: The cruel and trashy spectacle of a high-diving horse, 44:22-45:12. There is no indication of physical injury to the horse. This time.


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Good Time

Good Time. Benny and Joshua Safdie, 2017.

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Edition screened: Lionsgate Blu-ray, released 2017. English language. Runtime approximately 101 minutes.


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


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True Romance

True Romance. Tony Scott, 1993.

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Edition screened: Arrow UHD, released 2021. English language. Runtime approximately 121 minutes.


Summary: Several aquariums are smashed during the fight at Gary Oldman’s place, but there are no depictions of fish stranded or dying.


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