The Wounded Man (L’homme blessé). Patrice Chéreau, 1983.
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Edition screened: Altered Innocence Blu-ray, released 2023. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 109 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The Wild and the Naked. Stan Roberts, 1962.
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Edition screened: Included on Something Weird DVD Satan in High Heels, released 2001. English language. Runtime approximately 61 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence to animals.
Except for the sequence in which a schizophrenic island derelict leaps down from the trees and ties our shapeless female narrator to the ground, the film consists mostly of small groups of shapeless women repeatedly ‘bathing’ in a muddy river basin.
65. Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, 2023.
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Edition screened: Sony Blu-ray, released 2023. English language. Runtime approximately 93 minutes.
Summary: Frequent use of futuristic weapons to slaughter CGIosaurs. There also is saur-on-saur violence in the film, notably about 20 minutes in, right after our heroine rescues the adorable baby CGIosaur from the adorable baby tar pit. The baby immediately is ripped apart by those dang velociraptors. Of course this scene aims to honor gun-humpers’ dull-witted rhetorical misdirection that Hey, animals kill other animals! So in this film we learn that flawed analogies originated in prehistoric times.
71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (71 Fragmente einer Chronologie des Zufalls). Michael Haneke, 1994.
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Included in Criterion Blu-ray set #1163 Michael Haneke: Trilogy, released 2023. German language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 99 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Abduction of an American Playgirl/Winter Heat. Walter Hart and Jerome S. Kaufmann (as Claude Goddard), 1975-1976.
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Edition screened: Vinegar Syndrome DVD #027 Peekarama: Abduction of an American Playgirl/Winter Heat, released 2014. English language. Cumulative runtime approximately 141 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Abduction of an American Playgirl. Walter Hart, 1975, 71 minutes. 3/5❤
Winter Heat. Jerome S. Kaufmann (as Claude Goddard), 1976, 70 minutes. 3.5/5❤
Benny’s Video. Michael Haneke, 1992.
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Edition screened: Included in Criterion Blu-ray set #1163 Michael Haneke: Trilogy, released 2023. German language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 110 minutes.
Summary: Repeated video of a pig being killed.
Details:
1) The film opens with a video of a pig being led outdoors and killed with a captive bolt pistol. We then see this repeated in slow motion, both takes completed at 2:13.
2) The same video sequence of initial killing followed by slow motion killing and death, 23:00-23:54.
The point of this website is to identify scenes of animal abuse, see above. We also talk about film in general, especially how people don’t get it. And manohboy do people not get Benny’s Video. Almost any ‘review’ boils it down to Haneke warning us that young people will commit violent acts due to what they’ve learned from watching violent movies. What a noble and unique observation, except for the tiny details that the film is made by Michael “Wow this guy is smart and wow his films are violent” Haneke, and that this is not Haneke’s point.
Let’s review the plot: Teenager Benny is devoted to renting videos and learning to make his own videos. We see him rent and watch a variety of garbage popular films, the longest sequence being some ridiculous movie where a zombie has highjacked a car and is terrorizing the driver with zombie antics.
Benny’s well-to-do urban professional parents have a hobby farm la-di-da, and the young man has made a video of his father supervising the murder of the poor pig.
The teen has stolen the bolt pistol and videotapes himself killing a friend in the way the pig was killed. Then a surprise ending, The End.
So: Is Benny imitating a car-jacking zombie? Is he imitating some terrorist attack, or Charles Bronson blowtorching whatever? Or even reckless or drunk driving? No. He is imitating his parents. His parents demonstrate unprovoked murder of the innocent on video, and the young man is imitating the exact source that society says he should emulate: his successful, educated parents.
Coal Miner’s Daughter. Michael Apted, 1980.
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Edition screened: Universal Blu-ray, released 2014. English language. Runtime approximately 125 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The Cranes Are Flying (Letyat zhuravli ). Mikhail Kalatozov, 1957.
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Edition screened: Criterion #146, released 2020. Russian language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 96 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The Criterion BD of this perfect film includes several interview segments and Patrick Cazals’ 74-minute documentary Hurricane Kalatozov.
David Lynch: The Art Life. Jon Nguyen, Rick Barnes, & Olivia Neergaard-Holm, 2016.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #895, released 2017. English language. Runtime approximately 88 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff. Marvin J. Chomsky, 1978.
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Edition screened: Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray # 013, released 2013. English language. Runtime approximately 106 minutes.
Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.
The front half of an unidentified pinball cabinet is seen from the side in the bus station, 44:03.
Hurricane Kalatozov (L’ouragan Kalatozov). Patrick Cazals, 2009.
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Edition screened: Included on Criterion #146 The Cranes Are Flying, released 2020. English other languages with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 74 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
An enjoyable documentary about Kalatozov’s work and relationship with the Soviet government. Comments by Kalatozov’s grandson, also a filmmaker, anchor segments with French film historians and key crew members who worked on landmark films including Salt for Svanetia, The Cranes Are Flying, Letter Never Sent, and I Am Cuba.
In the Loop. Armando Iannucci, 2009.
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Edition screened: IFC DVD, released 20089. English language. Runtime approximately 106 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Latex She-Devils. Unknown director, circa 1970.
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Edition screened: Included on Something Weird DVD Satan in High Heels, released 2001. Library music; no original audio track. Runtime approximately 8 minutes.
Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.
This bit of silly BDSM must be an as-found clip from an uncredited softcore film. The transfer quality is terrible and the audio is a loop of library music that Something Weird favors in the absence of original audio.
LYNCH2. Jason S. (as blackANDwhite), 2007.
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Edition screened: Included on Criterion Blu-ray #1175 Inland Empire, released 2023. English language. Runtime approximately 31 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Martin. George Romero, 1977.
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Edition screened: Second Sight Blu-ray, released 2023. English language. Runtime approximately 95 minutes.
Summary: A scene near the end of the movie, 1:29:03 -1:29:24, is a chicken forced through a metal bucket with a cylindrical tube at the end so that it cannot move and its head is held in place while its throat is slit. We see it writhe in blood, dunked in boiling water, horribly defeathered, and processed for sale. Another needless scene of animal cruelty done only to add shock value and to heighten a theme of morbidity.
Michael Haneke: Trilogy. Michael Haneke, 1989-1994.
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Edition screened: Criterion 3-Blu-ray set #1163, released 2023. German language with English subtitles. Combined runtime of three feature films approximately 317 minutes.
Summary: The Seventh Continent and Benny’s Video include prolonged scenes of animals dying through human actions. 71 Fragments has no particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
It always is interesting to hear Haneke discuss his work, including this “Glaciation Trilogy.” The Criterion set includes several director interviews and similar featurettes along with the films:
The Seventh Continent (1989)
Benny’s Video (1992)
71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994)
My Cousin Vinny. Jonathan Lynn, 1992.
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Edition screened: 20th Century Fox Blu-ray, released 2009. English language. Runtime approximately 120 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Satan and the Virgin. Unknown director, 1948.
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Edition screened: Included on Something Weird DVD Satan in High Heels, released 2001. Scored and with an introductory scrolled text; no dialogue. Runtime approximately 5 minutes.
Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.
A quaintly ambitious solo dance performance that is worth watching once on YouTube.
Satan in High Heels. Jerald Intrator, 1962.
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Edition screened: Something Weird DVD, released 2001. English language. Runtime approximately 90 minutes.
Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.
This Something Weird release includes a generous loop of long trailers for films presently difficult to obtain, along with:
• The Wild and the Naked (1962, Stan Roberts)
• Satan and the Virgin (1948, unknown director)
• Latex She-Devils (c. 1970, unknown director)
Satan in High Heels’ opening scene is a montage of early-60’s carnival fun, including a 4-second shot in a pinball room at 0:42. A 1959 Gottlieb Atlas is featured prominently, with a 1955 Williams King of Swat partially visible to the right.
The Seventh Continent (Der siebente Kontinent). Michael Haneke, 1989.
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Edition screened: Included in Criterion Blu-ray set #1163 Michael Haneke: Trilogy, released 2023. German language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 108 minutes.
Summary: Prolonged scenes of domestic fish dying out of water.
Details: As part of the family’s plan to demolish everything in the house, the father smashes a very large aquarium. The water and a dozen or so beautiful exotic-looking fish spill onto the debris-covered floor.
1) Focused shots of individual fish struggling on the floor, 1:25:35-1:26:18.
2) After a short interlude of the daughter’s upset, focused shots of the fish gasping as they expire, 1:27:36-1:28:18.
The Sky Socialist: Environs and Outtakes. Ken Jacobs, 1966.
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Edition screened: Included on Keno Lorber Blu-ray Ken Jacobs Collection Vol. 1, released 2021. No audio track. Runtime approximately 47 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals. Nice cat cameos.
They Call Her One Eye. Bo Arne Vibenius, 1974.
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Edition screened: Blu-ray included with Vinegar Syndrome UHD set Thriller: A Cruel Picture, released 2022. Original English dub. Runtime approximately 90 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
They Call Her One Eye is the family-friendly version of Thriller.
All Women Are Bad. Larry Crane, 1969.
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Edition screened: Something Weird DVD-R, released 2006. English language. Runtime approximately 67 minutes.
Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.
I know there is a competition to use the word sexploitation as much as possible, but that glib adjective doesn’t help my perception of this meditative, disconcerting film. More like Kurtzploitation.
We meet our narrator, a weary door-to-door salesman working a northern New Jersey neighborhood, needing a little rest in the middle of his day. We have spent a few minutes with him, walking up and down identical cement steps without making a sale, and share his fatigue. He wanders into a wooded area and lies down for a rest - in his suit - at the edge of what appears to be a large drainage ditch. His potential nap is interrupted by an enticing noise that sends him on a lengthy rock climbing adventure to find the source. The narration, both plodding and exuberant, lets us share his unarticulated expectation to discover something life-altering, something like Sirens. Finding the unexpected source of the sound triggers his psychological descent into another reality. He returns home to discover his wife’s infidelity, motivating the parallel physical crossing into a darker world. He complies, and determines to explore seedy sexuality in The Big Apple.
The aesthetic climax of the film is an interminable docking of the Hudson River ferry as we arrive in Manhattan. We spend about eight minutes watching the ferry creep the final fifteen feet to the dock and wiggle into place while our salesman calmly confirms that the ritual is taking forever, everyone on board is anxious, it’s a precision maneuver. It is easy to superimpose two women dressed in black sitting on the dock, knitting, waiting for disembarkation.
This string of long contemplative scenes, each hypnotizing in a taxing way, probably constitute half of All Women Are Bad’s short runtime. The subsequent sexual encounters he discovers, always as voyeur rather than participant, historically were marketed as the point and purpose of the film. They alternate between mundane and unknowingly comedic, occasionally mildly upsetting. They serve primarily to demonstrate that our man has lost his mind by showing distressing transformations that exist only in his damaged imagination. I was left unconvinced that All Women Are Bad but reasonably sure that All Men Have Been Driven Insane by the disconnection they battle between the natural world and the artificial world, a struggle amplified rather than calmed by the colonialization of sexuality.
Ballerina. David Lynch, 2007.
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Edition screened: Included on Criterion Blu-ray #1175 Inland Empire, released 2023. Scored, no dialogue track. Runtime approximately 13 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Inland Empire: A Woman in Trouble. David Lynch, 2006.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #1175, released 2023. English language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 180 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Inland Empire lovingly salves the itch caused by Mulholland Drive, a little too much fun, a little too easily accessible. In addition to some commentaries and similar, the Criterion 2-BD release also includes:
More Things That Happened (2006, Lynch)
Ballerina (2007, Lynch)
LYNCH(One) (2007, Jason S.)
LYNCH2 (2007, Jason S.)
LYNCH(One). Jason S. (as blackANDwhite), 2007.
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Edition screened: Included on Criterion Blu-ray #1175 Inland Empire, released 2023. English language. Runtime approximately 76 minutes.
Summary: Lynch tells a few tales of callous or brutal treatment to animals. No visual components.
Details:
1) Lynch comedically mentions the effort needed to load a dead cow into a pickup truck, then proceeds to an anecdote about attacking a dead cow found in a river 3:53-5:15.
2) Lynch begins telling about Franju’s Blood of the Beasts at 23:14, specifically the horse slaughter scene, 24:37-25:51.
3) Lynch begins a story around 1:11:00 about walking with guns through sagebrush filled with small birds and rabbits, but nothing comes of the tale except a description of an unbelievably large rabbit.
More Things That Happened. David Lynch, 2006.
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Edition screened: Included on Criterion Blu-ray #1175 Inland Empire, released 2023. English language; no subtitle option. Runtime approximately 75 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
More Things That Happened is composed of several long scenes shot during the filming of Inland Empire but not used in that film. “Deleted scenes” seems an inappropriate tag due in part to Lynch’s style of film composition, but also to the cohesiveness of the content and performances. More Things is a wonderful viewing experience, entirely a companion piece to Inland Empire rather than scraps and edits.
Troll. John Carl Buechler, 1986.
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Edition screened: Full Moon DVD, released 2002. English language. Runtime approximately 82 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The frequent creature special effects are surprisingly enjoyable and even charming at times. The performance of and by the bratty little girl is taxing of course, but not nearly as painful as many. If you can tolerate her first few scenes, you can relax knowing that it doesn’t get any worse. June Lockhart’s performance and presence are quite nice.
Wild at Heart. David Lynch, 1990.
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Edition screened: Shout! Factory Blu-ray, released 2018. English language. Runtime approximately 124 minutes.
Summary: As Harry Dean Stanton watches fuzzy 1980s hotel TV, we see several documentary nature-show clips of African animals tearing into each other. Hyenas twice tear at a carcass 46:39 - 46:48, then vultures get their turn 48:45 - 48:50.
You want to hear the dialogue between Stanton and Diane Ladd between those clips, and I recommend just watching through the short grainy bits of vintage nature documentary.
I hadn’t seen Wild at Heart in twenty years and was disappointed by the re-visit. Some set pieces and cameos by the Lynch stable of actors are wonderful, but I found the film as a whole almost ruined by the incessant and uninteresting Wizard of Oz quotations. These clumsy tie-ins seem resentfully forced into the story and are not in keeping with Lynch’s methodologies of Transcendental Meditation and Dream Language composition. Perhaps they are part of the source literature and Lynch was or felt obliged to cram them into the script.
Window. Ken Jacobs, 1964.
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Edition screened: Included on Keno Lorber Blu-ray Ken Jacobs Collection Vol. 1, released 2021. English language. Runtime approximately 12 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
964 Pinocchio (Screams of Blasphemy). Shozin Fukui, 1991.
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Edition screened: Media Blasters Blu-ray, released 2023. Japanese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 97 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Box Lunch. Gil Howard, 1966.
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Edition screened: Included on Something Weird DVD A Thousand Pleasures, released 2003. English language. Runtime approximately 18 minutes.
Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.
Let’s see what Gil has packed into our box lunch: Three - possibly four, it’s hard to tell - vignettes of girls who smile at the camera while flopping around mostly outdoors in various stages of undress. The interesting angle to this common presentation is the voice-over parody of a smooth salesman advertising various domestic products. His corny patter contains a naughty double entendre in almost every line as the camera pans across the girls. Oh, my.
A Brighter Summer Day (Guling jie shaonian sharen shijian). Edward Yang 1991.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #804, released 2016. Mandarin language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 237 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Hôtel du Nord. Marcel Carné, 1938.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #1139, released 2022. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 96 minutes.
Summary: Discussion of killing animals.
Details: A chicken shrieks as she is killed off-screen, while two people on the street provide other examples of the butcherer’s proclivity for killing animals 35:22- 36:00.
A small unidentified pinball machine is in the background of a dining scene, 18:30. We get a closer partial view of one side at 23:45.
Insiang. Lino Brocka, 1976.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #874 in box set #873 Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project No. 2, released 2017. Tagalog language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 94 minutes.
Summary: Brutal pig killing and processing.
The film opens with graphic slaughter house scenes, primarily the poor pigs screaming as they are murdered. This ends by 2:48, with no further violence to animals.
This opening is a lazy and sensationalistic way to establish tone and foreshadowing about a character we will see later in the film. You can skip the opening and begin watching at 2:50, where we see Insiang’s mother working her stall at the marketplace.
The Last of England. Derek Jarman, 1987.
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Edition screened: Kino Lorber DVD, released 2012. (Submitted by a friend; Thank you!) English language. Runtime approximately 92 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Let Us Prey. Brian O’Malley, 2014.
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Edition screened: Dark Sky Blu-ray, released 2015. English language. Runtime approximately 92 minutes.
Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.
Monkey Business. Norman Z. McLeod, 1931.
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Edition screened: Included in Universal Blu-ray box set The Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection, released 2016. English language. Runtime approximately 78 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Nude a Go Go. Barry Mahon, 1965.
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Edition screened: Included on Something Weird DVD-R A Thousand Pleasures, released 2003. Scored, no dialogue track. Runtime approximately 10 minutes.
Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.
Tammy, Gigi, Bunny, Lisa, and Be Be are five reasonably attractive girls who dance reasonably well in front of scenic backdrops. Library music from an album that I hope was called something like Twisting and Shouting for the Love of Pete plays throughout. The first music selection is a variation of “Twist and Shout”. The second music selection is the first four measure of “Twist and Shout” repeated for four minutes. The third is a different recording of the first four minutes of “Twist and Shout” repeated for four minutes, this time with a slightly different beat and in a different key.
Taipei Story (Qing mei zhu ma). Edward Yang, 1985.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #879 in box set #873 Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project No. 2, released 2017. Hokkien and Mandarin languages with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 110 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
A Woman Kills (La femme bourreau). Jean-Denis Bonan, 1968.
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Edition screened: Radiance Blu-ray, released 2023. (Submitted by a friend; Thank you!) French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 70 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Women Talking. Sarah Polley, 2022.
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Edition screened: Universal Blu-ray, released 2023. English language. Runtime approximately 104 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
