Pink Flamingos should definitely be avoided in regards to animals stuff. It's generally a scene I don't watch and I've always been deeply annoyed by John Waters' glib defence of it. And I say this as someone who really really loves John Waters. But not here. It was a scene that should have never happened. I actually usually even forget about it even being one of the controversial scenes because I always skip past it.
Yeah, I'm pretty hardline these days on not consuming media with real animal cruelty/deaths with a handful of exceptions (like I think that a film I watched recently may have had a real sequence involving a humane slaughter in a farm setting). Even if it's something I could skip, I just don't want to engage with it.
The animal stuff in Gummo is pretty brief, I think just an early scene. And it's simulated. Except for one scene where a cat seems to be carelessly handled, which makes me uncomfortable, but I think is pretty minor. Just holding a cat by the scruff of its neck and it seems more annoyed than in any kind of physical pain. That said, I think there is a lot more stuff you would find much more upsetting in the movie then anything to do with animals. You are probably wise to avoid.
Okay, I hadn't wanted to look up whether the cat deaths were simulated or not. I had figured they were simulated, but it would be icky to find out that wasn't the case.
Salo is, at least as a film, the end of humanity. But, no, I think pretty clear of animal stuff. But, if I'm being honest, far from the hardest of watches. It's more the lingering effect of the film that is more horrible than any of its shocking moments.
The more I've read about
Salo, the more I think it will be, like you say, the notions of it that are horrifying as opposed to the visceral jolts of what is on screen.
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