The Celebration (Festen: Dogme 1). Thomas Vinterberg, 1998.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #1108, released 2022. Danish language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 106 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The Criterion Blu-ray release also includes a 2002 documentary about Dogme 95, The Purified, along with two early short films by Vinterberg: The Boy Who Walked Backwards (1995, 36 minutes); and Last Round (1993, 34 minutes).
Girl in Trouble. Brandon Chase (as Lee Beale), 1963.
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Edition screened: Included on Something Weird DVD Teen Turmoil Triple Feature, released 2004. English language. Runtime approximately 82 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Another of these interchangeably generic and abysmally boring small-town-girl-goes-to-the-big-city films that kids these days insist on calling sexploitation despite the fact that there is no sex nor anything sexy in the film, and the only thing that is exploited is the poor suitcase that the girl flings onto a bed or shoves into the backseat of a car fifteen times.
The SW disc also includes A Good Time with a Bad Girl and Bad Girls Do Cry.
Sundelbolong. Sisworo Gautama Putra, 1981.
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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. Indonesian language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 106 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
I found Sundelbolong taxing to watch due to the gang rape and murder that occur early in the film, an assault that dooms the violated woman to the life of a vengeful ghost. The victim is not adequately revenged, a satisfaction we have come to expect in modern rape/revenge films. Instead she is ritualistically dispelled by a group of mixed assailants and former friends.
Sundelbolong exemplifies the outrageous visual conventions of Indonesian ghost horror, but other films such as Djalil’s Mystics of Bali show these techniques and stylizations in a context I find less distasteful.
The Sundelbolong disk also includes the short film White Song and Suzzanna: The Queen of Black Magic, a feature-length documentary about Indonesian Scream Queen and Sundelbolong star Suzanna Martha Frederika van Osch.
Suzzanna: The Queen of Black Magic. David Gregory, 2024.
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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 and Indonesian language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 88 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
A documentary about the life and work of Suzanna Martha Frederika van Osch, beloved star of Sundelbolong and many Indonesian horror films. If you are not interested to watch many such films, this career retrospective serves as a nice Best of Indonesian Horror and includes generous excerpts of the distinctive special effects associated with the genre.
White Song. Katrina Irawati Graham, 2006.
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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. Indonesian language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 11 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
A modern ghost story included with Sundelbolong as a thematically relevant short subject.
Walden: Diaries, Notes and Sketches (excerpt). Jonas Mekas, 1964-1969.
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Edition screened: Included on Criterion Blu-ray #1164 The Velvet Underground, released 2022. No dialogue track. Runtime of this excerpt approximately 8 minutes.
Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.
Venus in Furs. Piero Heliczer, 1965.
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Edition screened: Included on Criterion Blu-ray #1164 The Velvet Underground, released 2022. No dialogue track. Runtime approximately 22 minutes.
Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.
Award Presentation to Andy Warhol. Jonas Mekas, 1965.
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Edition screened: Included on Criterion Blu-ray #1164 The Velvet Underground, released 2022. No dialogue track. Runtime approximately 12 minutes.
Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.
Demon. Marcin Wrona, 2015.
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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. Polish language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 94 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Magnificent Obsession. John Stahl, 1935.
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Edition screened: Included with Criterion Blu-ray #497 Magnificent Obsession, released 2019. English language. Runtime approximately 102 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Criterion includes this early adaptation of the Lloyd C. Douglas novel as a bonus Blu-ray in their release of Douglas Sirk’s (superior) 1954 Magnificent Obsession.
Numéro deux (Number Two). Jean-Luc Godard, 1975.
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Edition screened: Olive Blu-ray, released 2012. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 88 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The Velvet Underground. Todd Haynes, 2021.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #1164, released 2022. English language. Runtime approximately 120 minutes.
Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.
The Criterion release also includes three short films made by associates of Warhol and The Velvet Underground, and relevant to the environment of the time and place:
• Award Presentation to Andy Warhol (1965 Jonas Mekas, 12 minutes)
• Venus in Furs (1965 Piero Heliczer, 22 minutes)
• Walden: Diaries, Notes, and Sketches [excerpt] (1969 Jonas Mekas, 8 minutes)
Sinthia: The Devil’s Doll. Ray Dennis Steckler (as Sven Christian), 1969.
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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 77 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
This is about as good and bad as an erotic underground performance art film possibly could be.
Sex & Fury (Furyô anego den: Inoshika Ochô). Norifumi Suzuki, 1973.
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Edition screened: Discotek Media Blu-ray, released 2004. Japanese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 188 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The Discotek release surprised me with three or four on-screen interpretive comments, nicely positioned at the top of the screen in a discreet font. They provided two-sentence explanations of cultural references such as the koi-koi card game or a notorious Japanese anarchist. Appreciated and enjoyed.
I also enjoy spinning my wheels about how much I hate comic relief in film. Who is this audience that I’m told needs relief from - cannot bear another moment of - the tension or beauty or intrigue that binds the film together? Maybe it’s about that other kind of relief, the bodily kind, and gomer-goober scenes in a film are permissive cues for that audience sitting in the frequency-and-urgency section to turn their heads toward a companion, phony horse-teeth silent laugh while placing their hands on their thighs, extend that posture adjustment to a standing position with “I’ll just be a minute,” a quick shrug and more horse teeth as though something’s funny.
Sex & Fury stars Reiko Ike and Christina Lindberg in a B-level Lady Snowblade-style film. The cultural comments are the opposite of comic relief. You can turn off your brain, enjoy the topless swordplay, and allow Discotek’s good annotations to provide a little much-needed intelligent relief.
Valentine’s Day. Garry Marshall, 2010.
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Edition screened: Watched online. English language. Runtime approximately 125 minutes.
Summary: Trivializing account of a dog killed in a house fire; no visual component.
