Incoherence (Ji-ri-myeol-lyeol). Bong Joon-ho, 1994.
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Edition screened: Included on Criterion Blu-ray #1073 Memories of Murder, released 2021. Korean language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 31 minutes.
Summary: No animals in the film.
Of the Bong films I have seen, I enjoyed this student film the most by far and not because it is the shortest. Smacks of Haneke.
India Song. Marguerite Duras, 1975.
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Edition screened: Included on Criterion Blu-ray #1172 Two Films by Marguerite Duras, released 2021. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 120 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The Criterion BD also includes Duras’ Baxter, Vera Baxter (1977).
Inglorious Basterds. Quentin Tarantino, 2009.
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Edition screened: Universal DVD, released 20098. English language. Runtime approximately 148 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Shane Black, 2005.
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Edition screened: Warner DVD, released 2006. English language. Runtime approximately 103 minutes.
Summary: Implication of a killed spider.
Details: A gag involves an innocuous house spider crawling into a sleeping woman’s bra, 37:00 through 37:40. The spider is not seen again but one leg is found on the woman’s chest.
Lady Morgan’s Vengeance (La vendetta di Lady Morgan). Massimo Pupillo, 1965.
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Edition screened: Included in Arrow Blu-ray set Gothic Fantastico: Four Italian Tales of Terror, released 2022. Italian language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 86 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Maid in Sweden. Dan Wolman (as Flock Johnson), 1971.
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Edition screened: Kino Lorber Blu-ray, released 2022. English language. Runtime approximately 81 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals. 3.5/5❤
While the overall visual experience is enjoyable due to generous scenes of pre-ruined Stockholm, lovely women, and a curious Beatles poster, the date rape scene and the general behavior of both male characters should be unacceptable to anyone. The film’s mainstream status removes vintage pornography’s comforting filter of absurd play-acting.
Criticism of poor quality of the English overdub is off-base. These are ESL Swedes doing their best speaking English. Perhaps some ADR here and there as with almost any film, but there are no distracting sync issues.
Pusher. Nicolas Winding Refn, 1996.
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Edition screened: Included in Magnolia 3-DVD Pusher Trilogy set, 2006. Danish language with spotty English subtitles. Runtime approximately 110 minutes.
Summary: Scene of Zlatko Buric in his kitchen decapitating and otherwise ‘dressing’ already-dead game birds, 41:38-41:50. Often I don’t mention household meat prep of this sort, and this scene is comparatively ho-hum for a decapitation. But the nonchalant violence lets us know how this drug kingpin will handle people who cross him. Kim Bodnia, for example.
The Pusher Trilogy set also includes Refn’s Pusher II (2004) and Pusher III (2005).
Blurry image of an illuminated backglass in a club scene around 1:01, possibly a 1964 LAI Cosmic Princess.
Pusher II: With Blood on My Hands. Nicolas Winding Refn, 2004.
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Edition screened: Included in Magnolia 3-DVD Pusher Trilogy set, 2006. Danish language with spotty English subtitles. Runtime approximately 100 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The Pusher Trilogy set also includes Refn’s Pusher (1996) and Pusher III (2005).
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Edition screened: Included in Magnolia 3-DVD Pusher Trilogy set, 2006. Danish language with spotty English subtitles. Runtime approximately 108 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The Pusher Trilogy set also includes Refn’s Pusher (1996) and Pusher II (2004).
A Question of Silence (De stilte rond Christine M.). Marleen Gorris, 1982.
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Edition screened: Cult Epics Blu-ray, released 2023. Dutch language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 92 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Triangle of Sadness. Ruben Östlund, 2022.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #1178, released 2023. English language. Runtime approximately 147 minutes.
Summary: Killing of a donkey.
Details:
1) A donkey is clubbed to death with a large rock, 2:04:14-2:05:00, mostly off-screen. We see the donkey’s head pop up from behind bushes once, during the first blow, then we hear him braying in agony as the amateur killer tries to complete the act. The brief view of the donkey’s head looks more like a quaint theater prop rather than a trained live animal.
2) The skinned carcass of the donkey is visible 2:07:21-2:07:31.
The Criterion BD also includes a 15-minute behind-the-scenes short Erik, the Extra (directed by Ludwig Källén) about the filming of the scene in which a passenger is hit with a wave of sewage.
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.
