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.

The Naked Eye: Sex and the Mondo Film

The Naked Eye: Sex and the Mondo Film. Elizabeth Purchell, 2023.

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Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle, released 2023. English language. Runtime approximately 43 minutes.


Summary: Brief clips of animal slaughter from Mondo films.


Details:

1) Brief clip from a Mondo film that appears to be the abdomen of a huge reptile slit open, 28:18-28:21. Looks very phony.

2) A short montage of an injured bull and butchering a whale, 35:52-36:13.


I enjoyed this short documentary. Three cinéastes (director Elizabeth Purchell, Vinegar Syndrome co-founder Joe Rubin, and commentator Mark Goodall) discuss the origins, history, and shifting focus of Mondo-style films in Europe and America through the 1980s. They focus on the marketing of sexuality, eroticism, and gender issues. They barely and contemptuously acknowledge the cheap animal abuse and Faces of Death-styling down in the seemingly bottomless Mondo barrel. 

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The Lemon Grove Kids

The Lemon Grove Kids. Ray Dennis Steckler et al., 1968.

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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 78 minutes.


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


This presentation of The Lemon Grove Kids compiles all three episodes of the Steckler comedies. Segment one, apparently just titled “The Lemon Grove Kids” runs about 30 minutes and focuses on a turf war between the Lemon Grove Kids and the equally moronic West Lemon Grove Kids, to be resolved by a point-to-point race organized by a beat cop. Segment two, “The Lemon Grove Kids Go Hollywood”, about 20 minutes, focuses on Muppet Baby-sized LGKs who take on housecleaning chores for celebrities. One celebrity. Segment three is pretty much what the title suggests, “The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Green Grasshopper and the Vampire Lady from Outer Space”, also about 2o minutes. Other compilations of these shorts are ordered differently and incorrectly suggest that they all are monster-themed.


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Io Island

Io Island (Ieoh Island, Ieodo). Kim Ki-young, 1977.

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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. Korean language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 110 minutes.


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


The Io Island disk in the set also includes The Present (Joe Hsieh, 2013) and Kindil El Bahr (Damien Ounouri, 2016).


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Goof on the Loose

Goof on the Loose. Ray Dennis Steckler et al., 1968.

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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 8 minutes.


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


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Carnal Knowledge

Carnal Knowledge. Mike Nichols, 1971.

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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #1270, released 2025. English language. Runtime approximately 98 minutes.


Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.


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Towers of Silence

Towers of Silence. Jamil Dehlavi, 1975.

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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. Urdu language. Runtime approximately 54 minutes.


Summary: Shooting of a dog.


Details:

1) We watch a sea turtle crawl to the beach and lay her eggs. A boy digs up her eggs and crushes one in his hand at 29:30.

2) The boy has various containers of small insects including a large fly in a cage with cork top and bottom. He puts the cage in a sink of water at 29:30; the cage floats as the fly scrambles. No resolution.

3) A small white dog (allegedly rabid) is shot. We see the dog roll and squeal 32:00-32:15, and return for a close up of its panting face while dying, 32:35-32:41.

4) The boy carries the dead dog to an area filled with animal carcasses and vultures, 34:27-36:23.

5) Quick shot of a large black dog dead on the beach, 39:04.



Towers of Silence accompanies Dehlavi’s Born of Fire in the Sevrin set.


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Scream VI

Scream VI. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, 2023.

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Edition screened: Paramount Blu-ray, released 2023. English language. Runtime approximately 124 minutes.


Summary: No animals in the film.


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Scanners

Scanners. David Cronenberg, 1981.

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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #712, released 2014. English language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 103 minutes.


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


The Criterion release also includes Cronenberg’s first full-length film, Stereo (1969). 


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Qâf

Qâf: The Sacred Mountain. Jamil Dehlavi, 1985.

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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. Scored. Runtime approximately 27 minutes.


Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.


Made during the shooting of Born of Fire, Qâf is twenty-seven beautiful minutes of lava flowing from an erupting volcano, set to music by Tangerine Dream.


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Nosferatu (Eggers)

Nosferatu. Robert Eggers, 2024.

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Edition screened: Universal Blu-ray, released 2025. English language. Runtime approximately 136 minutes.


Summary: When it looks like encrazied Knock is going to bite the head off a pigeon, he does. It’s fairly bloody and over in about six seconds.


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Nalujuk Night

Nalujuk Night. Jennie Williams, 2021.

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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 language. Runtime approximately 13 minutes.


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


The short horror film Nalujuk Night expands on the culture and myths of the Haida people featured in Edge of the Knife.


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Kelly’s Heroes

Kelly’s Heroes (Kelly’s AWOL Looters Who Do Nothing Remotely Heroic). Brian G. Hutton, 1970.

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Edition screened: Warner Bros. DVD, released 2000. English language. Runtime approximately 144 minutes.


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



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Haida Carver

Haida Carver. Richard Gilbert, 1964.

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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 language. Runtime approximately 13 minutes.


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


Haida Carver accompanies the feature film Edge of the Knife and explains the contemporary Haida custom of carving in soft slate.


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Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (Gon-ji-am). Jung Bum-shik, 2018.

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Edition screened: Well Go USA Blu-ray, released 2018. Korean language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 95 minutes.


Summary: A quick instance of a dead bird on the filthy floor and a modified rubber chicken, but no particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.


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Encounters of the Spooky Kind

Encounters of the Spooky Kind (Gui da gui). Sammo Kam-Bo Hung, 1980.

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Edition screened: Eureka Blu-ray, released 2021. Cantonese with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 103 minutes.


Summary: A chicken’s head is cut off, 42:32-42:44.

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The Thrill Killers

The Thrill Killers. Ray Dennis Steckler, 1965.

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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 70 minutes.


Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.


The Severin release also includes the re-release cut of The Thrill Killers called The Maniacs Are Loose!  Skip it. It’s the complete original film prefaced with a staggeringly boring six-minute introduction by real hypnotist Ormond McGill. McGill encourages the audience to submit to voluntary hypnosis which will allow them to see real maniacs rampaging in the theatre when cued by a swirling disc graphic cut into the film. He slowly explains this process about four times. Indeed, the swirling disc is inserted into the film for a few seconds during crescendos of violence. This re-release tour of re-titled The Thrill Killers featured actors running in the theatre isles with prop weapons during Swirly Disc Time, a stunt Steckler employed for other films that had worn out their welcomes.

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Sleep (Venus)

Sleep (Schlaf). Michael Venus, 2020.

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Edition screened: Arrow Blu-ray, released 2021. German language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 102 minutes.


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


Details: When Mona first comes to the village of Stainbach she encounters Lore in a shed cutting a piece of meat from a suspended carcass. This two-second act is not bloody, alarming or the focus of the scene. 


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Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals

Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals. Joe D’Amato, 1977.

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Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle, released 2023. English language with original Italian as an option. Runtime approximately 93 minutes.


Summary: A constrictor drops from a branch and wraps around Laura Gemser, followed at 34:22 by a one-second close-up of the snake being shot.  2/5❤


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