Farthing Wood Deaths Revisited (Horrific Injuries Bonus Round): Reservoir Vixens

Remember that infamous ear-slicing scene from Reservoir Dogs and how much hand-wringing it generated back in the day?  Right from the start, Quentin Tarantino drew criticism as a film-maker who reveled in graphic depictions of onscreen violence, but he himself was always at pains to point out that the camera actually pans away during the exact moment in which the ear is severed from the body, meaning that no such incident is ever depicted onscreen, and that the viewer is essentially manipulated into thinking that they saw something which in reality they didn't.

I bring this up because it should be noted that in 1994, two years after Reservoir Dogs premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1992, The Animals of Farthing Wood ventured into territory that even Tarantino was much too restrained to tackle at the time - which is to say, they featured a scene in which an animal's ear is bitten off onscreen.  Naturally, the aftermath features considerably less blood than that of Tarantino's film, but the brutality is downright startling, and all the more so for being inflicted by a character who up until now has been noted largely for her compassion and benevolence.

The long-awaited showdown between Fox and Scarface is preceded by a briefer, more impromptu confrontation between their respective right-hand vixens.  What the battle lacks in duration, it makes up for in the sheer degree of viciousness with which the two vixens go at one another.  Each vixen gets only one hit in this battle, but they certainly know how make it count.

Vixen is patrolling Farthing Land when she happens across Lady Blue and demands to know what she is doing there.  Lady Blue is deliberately evasive in her response, and it isn't long before the two vixens lose all patience with one another and decide to settle things with their teeth.  As the two of them sidle up to one another, we hear both of them getting up to some seriously disconcerting growling.  This level of violent aggression is something that we've never seen from Vixen before and she certainly doesn't pull any punches - for her first move, she lunges straight at Lady Blue, latches onto her right ear and bites a huge chunk of it off.  Lady Blue retaliates by biting Vixen in the chest in a very painful-looking manner, which causes Vixen to retreat immediately, suggesting that she has all the spunk and killer instinct for battle but not much stamina, I guess.  In the end, Lady Blue wins this round, despite having been on the receiving end of the visually nastier injury.

All in all, this may just rate as the single most cringe-inducing sequence in the entire series.  Even today, the brutality of it leaves me speechless.