Domestic abuse can happen to anyone.
You probably won't be able to listen to "Nutbush City Limits" for a while...Moment pages are Spoilers Off. You Have Been Warned.
- When a young Anna Mae walks home and witnesses a loud argument between her mother and grandmother as her mother abandons her. Then Anna Mae walks in and sees what a wreck the inside of her home is in, implying that a scene of domestic abuse took place.
- The conversation just before the spousal abuse starts:Tina: I mean, but don't they all sound like the same, you know?Ike: What? I ain't hear you. What you say? Hmm? I ain't hear you. I ain't hear you. What you say?Tina: I said, uh, uh, I mean, not exactly, you know? I mean, but you do have your own style.
- The long shot of Ike dragging a bloody Tina kicking and screaming down the hallway to their bedroom during their first abusive fight.
- Tina and Ike's sons having to witness their father abusing their mother. When they begin crying from having seen such a frightening ordeal, Ike just tells them to shut up and go to their bedrooms.
- The shot of Tina looking at her unrecognizable battered face in the bathroom mirror as she attempts to clean herself up (pictured above).
- The restaurant scene, with a drugged Ike force-feeding Tina and slapping Jackie across the face so hard that she bleeds. And nobody else in the restaurant except Jackie does anything to stop the abuse or confront Ike.
- Lorraine threatening Tina at gunpoint in the guest bedroom. Her makeup running from her tears and her hair ruffled. She tells Tina "You ain't even worth the bullet." Then she locks herself in the bathroom and shoots herself. Lorraine is then heard crying out in hysterical pain, having survived her self-inflected gun wound. Worse part is that we don't see what how bad Lorraine looks after turning the gun on herself. But judging from the reactions from Tina's stress vomiting and Ike and his bandmates, it's bad. She's later shown being wheeled off to a hospital all bloodied, screaming for Ike to take care of their sons.
- As Tina consoles Ike following Lorraine's suicide attempt, Ike tells her why he hates hospitals. And in such graphic detail:Ike: I can't stand hospitals, man. My Daddy got holes kicked in his stomach. Took him three long years to die. And you could smell his insides. 'Cause he was messing around with some gangster's woman. Can't stand hospitals, man.
- Ike beating and raping Tina inside of the recording booth. Her screams of pain being overshadowed by his grunting and thrusting, and when he orgasms, he lets out these very weird shrieking sounds as if he's in pain. Worse when just before the rape, he orders everyone out of their recording studio so that he could get Tina alone.
- Tina attempting to kill herself by ingesting a whole bottle of sleeping pills. Her backup singers only notice something is off when she struggles to apply her makeup and then she falls unconscious.
- Ike abusing Tina again, this time inside of a moving limo. He then takes off his boot and attempts to beat her with it. Tina then rips Ike's earring off, tearing his ear flesh in the process and kicking him in the groin before tackling him and fighting back. All while his howls of pain are heard inside the limo.
- By the time their physical altercation in the limo is over, Ike and Tina arrive at the hotel all bloodied and sporting visible wounds, causing people to stare at them. Ike just barks at the desk clerk and the frightened people around them for staring and demands their hotel room.
- Tina running away from her husband at night and narrowly avoids being hit by drivers crossing the busy highway.
- The desk clerks and staff's reactions to seeing Tina arrive at their hotel all bruised beyond recognition and begging them for a room away from her abusive husband is purely terrifying.
- Tina's son Craig coming home late after being beaten almost to death by his father Ike. Then he warns Tina in a voice filled with pain and worry, "He's going to kill you, Mom".
- Ike holding a gun to the back of Tina's head when he appears inside of her dressing room at one of her comeback concerts.
- The way Ike emotionally manipulates Tina into singing despite her sore throat. Before their concert as a married couple to "A Fool In Love", Ike gives Tina a kiss on the cheek after forcing her to sing. A sign of things to change in their marriage soon enough.
- The scenes depicting Dallas, Texas were based on Tina Turner's real-life domestic violence fight where Ike Turner and Tina were scheduled to perform at the Dallas Statler Hilton in July 1976. This was depicted in Tina's autobiography in graphic detail (including her walking to the Ramada Inn Plaza Hotel across the way) - the reference to her having 36 cents and a Mobil credit card was real.
