I get kind of queasy about the thought of banning films. I don’t go to movies much because I don’t want to support the filth/leftist agenda that is so pervasive. I speak with my money, and just don’t view or let my children view these kinds of films.
I don’t care much about banning movies, but that reminds me of a movie trend that I dislike. Why did the amount of profanity increase, in movies, within the past 30 years? I don’t want to see a movie, if I know that it was rated “R” because of profanity.
England’s long had a film censor board.
They gave The Wild One and Animal Farm (animated) both X ratings on their original release in the 1950s.
I don’t know what age one had to be to see a British X (16+?)
I hear they were real late to permitting explicit penetration in adult entertainment (like 1990s).
And they cut famous American horror films.
They also used to have outright bans on some titles.
look up the “video nasties” controversy of the 1980s and 1990s (right as Al Gore was making political press with the PMRC).
http://www.bbfc.co.uk/news/press/19990101f.html
The BBFC has classified THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE as ‘18’ without cuts.
The notoriety of the film may owe a lot to its original rejection by the BBFC in 1975. It was passed for viewing in Europe, the USA, Australia and other countries. It received a GLC licence in the 1970s and was most recently shown in central London in 1998 under a licence from Camden Council. There is, so far as the Board is aware, no evidence that harm has ever arisen as a consequence of viewing the film. For modern young adults, accustomed to the macabre shocks of horror films through the 1980s and 1990s, THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE is unlikely to be particularly challenging. Unlike more recent examples of the genre, violence in THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE is throughout implied rather then explicit. By today’s standards, its visual effects may seem relatively unconvincing.
Possibly the most notorious feature is the relentless pursuit of the ‘Final Girl’ throughout the last half hour or so of the film. The heroine in peril is a staple of the cinema since the earliest days. It is nonetheless legitimate to question the unusual emphasis THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE places on the pursuit of a defenceless and screaming female over such an extended period. The Board’s conclusion, after careful consideration, was that any possible harm that might arise in terms of the effect upon a modern audience would be more than sufficiently countered by the unrealistic, even absurd, nature of the action itself. It is worth emphasising that there is no explicit sexual element in the film, and relatively little visible violence.
Andreas Whittam Smith - President
Robin Duval - Director