Backwoods. Ryan Mackfall, 2018.
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Edition screened: Included with Eyes of Fire (Disc 2) in the Severin Blu-ray box set All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror, released 2021. English language. Runtime approximately 14 minutes.
Summary: A dead sheep, 13:41-13:44.
A beautifully made but somewhat impenetrable telling of Lovecraft’s The Picture in the House (1920).
The Big Lebowski. Joel and Ethan Coen, 1998.
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Edition screened: Universal UHD, released 2018. English language. Runtime approximately 118 minutes.
Summary: Ferret dropped into a bathtub.
Details: A ferret is dropped into the tub while Jeff Bridges is bathing. The animal is depicted as thrashing around violently for quite a while, 55:35- 55:53. Bridges calls it a marmot, but it is a ferret.
Crying Blue Sky. Avery Crounse, 1983.
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Edition screened: Included with Eyes of Fire (Disc 2) in the Severin Blu-ray box set All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror, released 2021. English language. Runtime approximately 108 minutes.
Summary: Bloody cow head.
Details:
1) A man jumps menacingly from tall grass wearing a partial cow carcass, 1:16:19, then runs off. The gory head of a recently killed cow is found, 1:16:35-1:16:38, then viewed again 1:17:17-1:17:19.
2) Travelers pass a small rabbit impaled on a tree branch, 1:26:33-1:26:37. Filmed from an odd angle, not explicit, and somewhat uncertain. It looks like a little girl’s fur muff caught in a shrub.
Crying Blue Sky, the original version of Eyes of Fire, was cut by about 22 minutes for release; a pity as the longer version elevates a very good film to excellent. The shorter Eyes of Fire is missing not only numerous short scenes that make the film more easily understood, but also missing some scenes with the best acting and dialogue and an attractive psychedelic passage around the 65-minute mark.
Death Has Blue Eyes (To koritsi vomva/The Para Psychics). Nico Mastorakis, 1976.
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Edition screened: Arrow Blu-ray, released 2021. English dub. Runtime approximately 80 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter (Wu Lang ba gua gun). Lau Kar-Leung, 1984.
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Edition screened: Arrow Blu-ray, released 2022. Cantonese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 98 minutes.
Summary: A hunter tosses a bundle of small game on a table, but there are no detail shots or gruesome images.
Eyes of Fire. Avery Crounse, 1983.
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Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror, released 2021. English language. Runtime approximately 86 minutes.
Summary: Bloody cow head.
Details:
1) A man jumps menacingly from tall grass wearing a partial cow carcass, 1:02:05, then runs off. The gory head of a recently killed cow is found, 1:02:17-1:02:21.
2) Travelers pass a small rabbit impaled on a tree branch, 1:06:55-1:07:00. This is filmed from an odd angle, not explicit, and somewhat uncertain. It looks like a little girl’s fur muff caught in a shrub.
The Eyes of Fire BD in the Severin box set also includes the 108-minute version of Crounse’s film titled Crying Blue Sky (recommended!), as well as:
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1972 Sam Weiss)
Transformations (1972 Barbara Hirschfeld)
Backwoods (2018 Ryan Mackfall)
The Female (Seventy Times Seven / Setenta veces siete). Leopoldo Torre Nilsson, 1962.
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Edition Screened: Included on Something Weird “Sizzling Latin Double Feature” DVD Fuego/The Female, released 2002. English overdub. Runtime approximately 92 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The Female seems considered a dismissible throw-away, bundled with the more crowd-pleasing Fuego. Fuego is campy fun but has no substantial merit beyond its visual content. The Female, conversely, holds its own as a well-written tale of a woman’s impulsive and imperiling decisions. We see her shifting allegiance with impoverished, desperate folks in the Tex-Mex desert, intercut with vignettes of her later life in a rough Mexican brothel. The people she knew in the desert were depicted as potentially violent or even lethal, but never harmed or threatened her. Only after she betrayed them all does she find an abusive environment in the disreputable brothel.
Fuego. Armando Bó, 1969.
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Edition screened: Included on Something Weird “Sizzling Latin Double Feature” DVD Fuego/The Female, released 2002. English overdub. Runtime approximately 84 minutes.
Summary: A lot of fur coat, but no depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Horrors of Malformed Men (Kyôfu kikei ningen: Edogawa Rampo zenshû). Teruo Ishii, 1969.
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Edition screened: Arrow Blu-ray, released 2018. Japanese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 99 minutes.
Summary: Real killing of a snake.
Details: Two legitimately dangerous-looking poisonous snakes ogle a woman in a shower. Teruo Yoshida beats probably nothing on the floor for a while (off-screen), but then 41:12-41:15 we see one of snakes being clubbed to death with a wooden mallet.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Sam Weiss, 1972.
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Edition screened: Included with Eyes of Fire (Disc 2) in Severin Blu-ray box set All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror, released 2021. English language. Runtime approximately 13 minutes.
I enjoyed this short animation of the Washington Irving tale, especially as a comparative piece to Disney’s well-known 1949 version. I liked the animation style here but did miss that great song performed by Bing Crosby about The Headless Horseman.
Leptirica (The She-Butterfly). Đorđe Kadijević, 1973.
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Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror, released 2021. Serbian with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 65 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The Leptirica BD in the box set also includes two other films by Kadijević, Štićenik and Devičanska Svirka, both 1973.
Mother Night. Keith Gordon, 1996.
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Edition screened: New Line DVD, released 2000. English language. Runtime approximately 113 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
One Pair of Eyes: Alan Garner. Lawrence Moore, 1972.
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Edition screened: Included on BFI DVD Red Shift, released 2014. English language. Runtime approximately 40 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
An adventurous portrait of Red Shift’s author in which Garner sensibly assembles time, communication, energy, and impermanence so that these concepts make more sense collectively than they muster independently. Garner’s sensitive articulation of morality, art, and humanity can be life-changing.
Penda’s Fen. Alan Clarke, 1974.
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Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror, released 2021. English language. Runtime approximately 90 minutes.
Summary: A young bird is smashed.
Details: A nestling is huddled in front of a truck tire. We see the truck pull out, obviously killing the bird off screen. The camera returns for a graphic closeup of the smashed young bird, 34:55-35:00.
The Panda’s Fen BD in the Severin box set also includes:
The Pledge (1981 Digby Rumsey)
Robin Redbreast (1970 James MacTaggart)
The Sermon (2018 Dean Puckett)
The Pledge. Digby Rumsey, 1981.
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Edition screened: Included with Penda’s Fen (Disc 12) in Severin Blu-ray box set All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror, released 2021. English language. Runtime approximately 22 minutes.
Summary: Dead sheep.
Details: A sheep lies on the ground dead, 6:52-6:55.
Red Shift. John Mackenzie, 1978.
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Edition screened: BFI DVD, released 2014. English language. Runtime approximately 84 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
This superb adaptation of Alan Garner’s novel by the same title was made for BBC’s “Play for Today” series. The BFI release also includes an inspiring video portrait of the author One Pair of Eyes: Alan Garner, and the entertaining short film Spirit of Cheshire.
Robin Redbreast. James MacTaggart, 1970.
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Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror, released 2021. English language. Runtime approximately 76 minutes.
Summary: Displays of dead rabbits in a church.
Details: An autumnal church service includes displays of “the bounties of the land,” beginning with piles of vegetables then transitioning to dead pheasants and mostly rabbits, 39:25-39:40.
The Robin Redbreast BD in the Severin box set also includes:
Penda’s Fen (1974 Alan Clarke)
The Pledge (1981 Digby Rumsey)
The Sermon (2018 Dean Puckett)
Russian Lolita (Russkaya Lolita). Armen Oganezov, 2007.
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Edition screened: On line. Russian language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 93 minutes.
Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.
The Sermon. Dean Puckett, 2018.
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Edition screened: Included with Robin Redbreast (Disc 12) in Severin Blu-ray box set All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror, released 2021. English language. Runtime approximately 12 minutes.
Summary: No animals in the film.
Spirit of Cheshire. Kevin Marshland, 1980.
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Edition screened: Included on BFI DVD Red Shift, released 2014. English language. Runtime approximately 20 minutes.
Summary: No animals in the film.
A group of historic Rolls-Royce automobiles lead an enjoyable tour around historic Cheshire.
Štićenik (The Ward). Đorđe Kadijević, 1973.
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Edition screened: Included with Leptirica (Disc 3) in Severin Blu-ray box set All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror, released 2021. Serbo-Croatian with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 45 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Sushi Girl. Kern Saxton, 2012.
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Edition screened: Magnet Blu-ray, released 2012. English language. Runtime approximately 99 minutes.
Summary: Sushi preparation.
Details: Close-up of the sushi chef decapitating a small (already dead) fish, 3:48.
Transformations. Barbara Hirschfeld, 1972.
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Edition screened: Included with Eyes of Fire (Disc 2) in Severin Blu-ray box set All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror, released 2021. Scored, no dialogues. Runtime approximately 9 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
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.
Virtual Encounters. Cybil Richards, 1996.
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Edition screened: Full Moon DVD, released 2012. English language. Runtime approximately 84 minutes.
Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film. 1.5/5❤
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Edition screened: Included on Severin Blu-ray box set All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror, released 2021. Mostly English, with other languages and English subtitles. Runtime approximately 192 minutes.
Summary: This overview of international folk horror includes innumerable short clips and commentary from films both included and excluded from the accompanying anthology. Some clips that include animal violence:
1) Brief image of a dead rabbit in a coffin, 6:53.
2) A wolf is decapitated with flying head shenanigans, 52:01-52:10.
3) Church interior with dead game displayed including dried blood around the mouths of rabbits, 1:03:25-1:03:40.
4) Quick image of one dead sheep, no blood, 1:25:13-1:25:15.
5) Pedestrians carry a dead bird and a bloated frog, 1:34:05-1:34:23.
6) Disturbing images of sacrificed animals from The Believers, 1:52:46-1:53:07.
7) A man carries a dead kangaroo, 2:01:31-2:01:37.
8) Mutilated animals found, 3:02:13-3:02:24
9) A woman eats a worm, 3:03:00-3:03:07.
Blonde Cobra. Ken Jacobs, 1963.
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Edition screened: Included on Keno Lorber Blu-ray Ken Jacobs Collection Vol. 1, released 2021. English language. Runtime approximately 33 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals. A dead chicken, like from a butcher shop, is handled oddly, briefly.
Fraternity Vacation. James Frawley, 1985.
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Edition screened: Included on Image DVD Fraternity Vacation/Reform School Girls, released 2011. English language. Runtime approximately 94 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
High Life. Claire Denis, 2018
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Edition screened: Lionsgate Blu-ray, released 2019. English language. Runtime approximately 113 minutes.
Summary: Images of dead dogs.
Details:
1) A dog lies dead in a stream, 24:10-24:20.
2) A neglected kennel with dogs lying dead or near death, 1:32:24-1:34:14.
Hot Legs/California Gigolo. Bob Chinn, 1979.
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Edition screened: Vinegar Syndrome DVD #071 Peekarama: Hot Legs/California Gigolo, released 2016. English language. Cumulative runtime approximately 150 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals in either feature.
Hot Legs, 1979, approximately 79 minutes. 1.5/5❤
California Gigolo, 1979, approximately 71 minutes. 3/5❤
I, Daniel Blake. Ken Loach, 2017.
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Edition screened: eOne Blu-ray, released 2017. English language. Runtime approximately 100 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Reform School Girls. Tom DeSimone, 1986.
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Edition screened: Included on Image DVD Fraternity Vacation/Reform School Girls, released 2011. English language. Runtime approximately 94 minutes.
Summary: Implication of a murdered kitten.
Details: Pat Ast chases a kitten across the dormitory, attempting to stomp on it. We see only floor’s-eye-view shots of her gigantic shoes descending, but she apparently is successful in smashing the kitten at 1:07:55 based on reaction shots from the girls. No blood or dead kitten depicted, but the worst kind of cheap laughs for the cheaply enlaughed.
Wild Things. John McNaughton, 1998.
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Edition screened: Arrow UHD, released 2022. English language. Runtime approximately 108 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals, despite scenes filmed at an alligator farm.
A 1975 Chicago Coin Olympics can be identified in the closing credits.
Witchfinder General. Michael Reeves, 1968.
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Edition screened: Tigon Blu-ray, released 2003. English language. Runtime approximately 86 minutes.
Summary: Implication of shooting a horse.
Details: At 59:39 we see Vincent Price shoot at a soldier on horseback and hear the horse whinny; cut to the man rising up from the ground uninjured but no sign of the horse.
The Tigon release also includes Reeves’ 1961 film Intrusion (10 minutes, silent, black-and-white, no animals).
10 Violent Women. Ted V. Mikels, 1979.
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Edition screened: Alpha Video DVD, released 2007. English language. Runtime approximately 97 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
I wish I had the option to watch just one or two violent women, which might have been proportionately less terrible.
Angel de fuego. Dana Rotberg, 1992.
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Edition screened: Desert Mountain DVD, released 2003. Spanish language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 91 minutes.
Summary: Sacrifice of a young goat.
Details: A dead kid lies on an altar; blood has dripped down the altar cloth, 1:01:33-1:01:48. No killing or close-ups, but sad.
I appreciated Angel de fuego, superficially reminiscent of Santa sangre but telling a unique story of circus, religion, and desperation. Many scenes filmed in the impoverished fringes of Mexico City are haunting, beautiful, and laden with fading folk culture.
Blood Orgy of the She-Devils. Ted V. Mikels, 1973.
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Edition screened: Alpha Video DVD, released 2007. English language. Runtime approximately 73 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals. A lizard in a jar is evoked in some poorly-conceived malevolent spell-casting, but he is not harmed.
No part of this bland and boring film vaguely resembles the primary image on the cover.
Caesar and Cleopatra. Gabriel Pascal, 1945.
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Edition screened: Included in Criterion Eclipse Series 20 George Bernard Shaw on Film 3-DVD set, released 2010. English language. Runtime approximately 128 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The Corpse Grinders II. Ted V. Mikels, 2000.
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Edition screened: Alpha Video DVD, released 2007. English language. Runtime approximately 103 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Crippled Avengers (Can que). Chang Cheh, 1978.
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Edition screened: Included in Arrow Blu-ray box set Shawscope: Volume One, released 2021. Mandarin language with English subtitles or English dub. Runtime approximately 104 minutes.
Summary: No animals in the film.
Dirty Ho (Lan tou He). Liu Chia-Liang, 1979.
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Edition screened: Included in Arrow Blu-ray box set Shawscope: Volume One, released 2021. Cantonese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 103 minutes.
Summary: No animals in the film.
The Doll Squad. Ted V. Mikels, 1973.
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Edition screened: Alpha Video DVD, released 2007. English language. Runtime approximately 91 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Five Deadly Venoms (Wu du). Chang Cheh, 1978.
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Edition screened: Included in Arrow Blu-ray box set Shawscope: Volume One, released 2021. Mandarin language with English subtitles or English dub. Runtime approximately 102 minutes.
Summary: No animals in the film.
George Bernard Shaw on Film. Gabriel Pascal and Chester Erskine, 1941-1952.
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Edition screened: Criterion Eclipse Series #20 DVD set, released 2010. English language. Collective runtime approximately 347 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals in any of the three films.
This 20th volume in Criterion’s Eclipse Series includes the following films. Click individual titles for details.
Major Barbara (1941)
Caesar and Cleopatra (1945)
Androcles and the Lion (1952)
Girl in Gold Boots. Ted V. Mikels, 1968.
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Edition screened: Alpha Video DVD, released 2007. English language. Runtime approximately 91 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The Gleaners & I (Les glaneurs et la glaneuse). Agnès Varda, 2000.
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Edition screened: Included in Criterion Blu-ray box set The Complete Films of Agnès Varda (disc 12) released 2020. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 82 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
