Deepu's Encyclopedia Of Most Controversial Films Ever Made

The Most Controversial Films of All-Time [www.filmsite.org]

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Films always have the ability to anger us, divide us, shock us, disgust us, and more. Usually, films that inspire controversy, outright boycotting, picketing, banning, censorship, or protest have graphic sex, violence, homosexuality, religious, political or race-related themes and content. They usually push the envelope regarding what can be filmed and displayed on the screen, and are considered taboo, "immoral" or "obscene" due to language, drug use, violence and sensuality/nudity or other incendiary elements. Inevitably, controversy helps to publicize these films and fuel the boxoffice receipts. Controversy-invoking films may be from almost any genre documentaries, westerns, erotic-thrillers, dramas, horror, comedy, or animated, and more. Standards for what may be considered shocking, offensive or controversial have changed drastically over many decades. The voluntary ratings system of the Motion Picture Association of America can influence a film's public showing in a theatre -- an NC-17 rating or an unrated film may often close down a film's screening and lead to commercial failure. The following illustrated list in the next few web pages, in unranked alphabetical order, presents a solid collection of the most controversial films in cinematic history. Entertainment Weekly's June 16, 2006 issue contained a listing of their top 25 "Most Controversial Movies of All-Time" - included here and indicated with the # numbers after the film title, in this more comprehensive list. Note: The films that are marked with a yellow star are the films that "The Greatest Films" site has selected as the "100 Greatest Films". For the many other milestone films with sexual scenes that were especially notorious, infamous, controversial, or scandalous, see this site's special writeups on Sex in Cinema and the genre of Sexual/Erotic Films.

The Most Controversial Films of All-Time

FiLM TiTLe, DiRecToR & eXPLaNaTioN

Aladdin (1992) # 25 Ron Clements and John Musker This Walt Disney feature film animation engendered considerable controversy for its pro-Western portrayal of Aladdin and Jasmine (always unveiled), the fact that turbaned characters were bald, and all the villainous characters were Arab caricatures. Another conflict arose, following protests from the American-Arab AntiDiscrimination Committee (ADC), regarding the lyrics in one of the verses of the opening song "Arabian Nights." The original lyric about the film's Arabian setting ("Where they cut off your ears if they don't like your face/It's barbaric, but, hey, it's home") was censored/dubbed out and changed to "Where it's flat and immense and the heat is intense/It's barbaric, but, hey, it's home" for subsequent video releases in 1993 and for the re-released soundtrack.

Baby Doll (1956) # 10 Elia Kazan Elia Kazan's film (based on Tennessee Williams' play) told about a thumb-sucking, white-trash, 19 year-old virginal 'baby doll' child bride (Carroll Baker) who was married (but unconsummated) to Mississippi cotton gin operator Archie Lee Meighan (Karl Malden), and seduced by a competing vengeful Sicilian cotton-gin owner Silva Vacarro (Eli Wallach in his film debut). In the opening scenes, Baby Doll was crib-bound in nursery furniture, spied upon through a wall by her 'peeping tom' husband, and given no privacy while taking a bath. The defiant film was a pot-boiling, condemned, and censored drama (by the Catholic Legion of Decency) - it was viciously condemned for, among other things, a notorious, highly-sexual seduction scene on a swing, of the young 'baby doll' nymphet by Vacarro to get her to sign a letter about Archie's guilt, their game of hide-and-seek in the upstairs (and attic), and later their kissing scene under a turned-off bare bulb in an adjoining room while Baby Doll's sexually-frustrated

PiX & PosTeRs

husband Archie was speaking on the phone nearby. The Oscar-nominated film (with four nominations, but no wins, including Best Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay) was called notorious, salacious, revolting, dirty, steamy, lewd, suggestive, morally repellent and provocative. Time Magazine was noted as stating: "Just possibly the dirtiest American-made motion picture that has ever been legally exhibited..." New York's Cardinal Spellman declared the film "evil in concept... certain to exert an immoral and corrupting influence on those who see it." The stark, controversial, black and white film was so viciously denounced by the Legion of Decency upon its release with a "C" (or condemned) rating that many theaters were forced to cancel their showings, but it still did moderately well at the box office despite the uproar.

Baise Moi (2000, Fr.) (translated "Screw or F--k Me") Virginie Despentes This daring and scandalous, unrated art-house import about heartless and irrational female sexual rage by two hardened and randy females was the first collaboration between French film-maker Virginie Despentes and former porn actress Coralie Trinh Thi. The two main characters were lower class French 'bad girls' named Manu (Raffaela Anderson) and prostitute Nadine (Karine Bach/Karen Lancaume), who were portrayed by French adult film stars. After being pushed around by losers and low-lifes in their seedy, marginal neighborhood, they decided to engage in a shooting spree and sexual romp across France. The French film was a very violent, sensationalist, bold, graphic and hard-core sexfilled version of Natural Born Killers and Thelma & Louise - a nihilistic and selfdestructive road picture that ran into extreme protest and controversy. It was banned in France, its native country of release, for its porno-style, animalistic sexuality (fellatio included), explicit and brutal rape scene (of Manu) in a parking lot, and randomly vengeful violence spree on both men and women.

Bandit Queen (1994, India) Shekhar Kapur This biodrama (in Hindi with subtitles) told the true-life legendary story of indomitable female folk outlaw-heroine Phoolan Devi (portrayed by Seema Biswas). It was based upon Devi's "dictated prison diaries," made after she was arrested, in real life, in 1983, and imprisoned for eleven years. [She ran for Parliament in 1996 and was assassinated in 2001 when she was just 37, reportedly to avenge the Behmai Massacre.] It portrayed many scenes of her continued rape and sexual humiliation in her society. As a lower-caste Indian girl, she was married off at age 11 (Sunita Bhatt), and repeatedly 'raped' and ill-treated by her husband. After she left her husband (and was now regarded as a loose woman and fair game), she became defiant against forced female subservience, which led to her banishment as a social outcast from her patriarchal-based village. After being arrested (framed for a robbery), raped, and beaten in prison, she was kidnapped by a local gang of bandits and again, raped, but won the respect and love of the gang's temporary leader Vikram Mallah (Nirmal Pandey), who became her lover and eventually made her co-leader (with resemblances to Bonnie and Clyde and Robin Hood tales). When jealous upper-caste Thakurs returned to rule the bandits in the village, they killed Mallah, gang-raped Devi (for three-days), and forced her to walk naked through the village's main streets to fetch water from the well. Her retaliatory vengeance took the form of a brutal massacre that killed 20 upper caste men in Behmai (in Uttar Pradesh) where she was assaulted. Her last defiant words in the film were: "I am Phoolan Devi, you sisterf--kers." Due to its controversial nature, consciousness-raising and powerful indictment of Indian society (for its sexism, ritual misogyny, and the inequalities of the caste system), it was banned in India by censors due to its nudity, sex and violence. Devi herself issued her own lawsuit in an effort to prevent its release. Bandit Queen was financed by Britain's Channel Four, and received critical acclaim at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival, and at the 1995 New Directors New Films Festival in New York. Basic Instinct (1992) # 19 Paul Verhoeven Screenwriter Joe Eszterhas created this exploitative, soft-porn, excessive, controversial film known for its negative portrayal of lesbianism, offensive

violence, initial X-rating, and voyeuristic, sensational, gratuitous sex. Sharon Stone starred as bisexual authoress Catherine Trammel who became a murder suspect (known for using an ice pick). The opening scene of a naked couple engaged in rough sex in a mirrored boudoir ended with an ice-pick stabbing. Frank and raw dialogue, such as this much-quoted line ("How about we f--k like minks, raise rug rats, and live happily ever after"), was woven throughout. The film was also criticized for its rough near-rape sex scene between detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) and his police psychologist 'girlfriend' Jeanne Tripplehorn when he ripped off her clothes and took her from behind. The R-rated film (initially rated NC-17) also gained notoriety for the film's interrogation scene in which Sharon Stone brazenly talked about sex, smoked (in a no-smoking area), and uncrossed and re-crossed her legs while wearing a short white mini-dress (without panties). Douglas also flashed his bare backside after being watched having rough-house, bondage-style sex with Stone, to her leather-clad lesbian consort Roxy (Leilani Sarelle). Womens' groups called the film misogynistic, and gay-rights groups in San Francisco (including The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD)) called it stereotypically-homophobic and gay-bashing. They charged that the main murderess suspect in the film was a denegrating portrayal since she was a mentallyunstable, psychotic lesbian and bi-sexual that was potentially homicidal. Activists groups such as Queer Nation and ACT-UP protested at multiple San Francisco shooting locations, chanting "Hollywood, you stink" and they attempted to disrupt filming.

The Birth Of A Nation (1915) # 7 D. W. Griffith This groundbreaking, landmark American film masterpiece about two families during the Civil War and Reconstruction periods was also extremely controversial and explicitly racist. It was based on former North Carolina Baptist minister Rev. Thomas Dixon Jr.'s anti-black, 1905 bigoted play, The Clansman, the second volume in a trilogy. Its release set up a major censorship battle over its extremist depiction of African Americans, although Griffith naively claimed that he wasn't racist at the time. Unbelievably, the film is still used today as a recruitment piece for Klan membership - and in fact, the organization experienced a revival and membership peak in the decade immediately following its initial release. And the film stirred new controversy when it was voted into the National Film Registry in 1993, and

when it was voted one of the "Top 100 American Films" (at # 44) by the American Film Institute in 1998. The subject matter of the film caused immediate criticism by the newly-created National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for its racist and "vicious" portrayal of blacks, its proclamation of miscegenation, its proKlan stance, and its endorsement of enslavement. As a result, two scenes were cut (a love scene between Reconstructionist Senator and his mulatto mistress, and a fight scene). In the scenes that remained, one recreated the first historic session of the legislature during Reconstruction, in which freed negro legislators were luridly and angrily portrayed as mocking the ideals of the Old South and shown as power-crazy, shiftless, lazy, idiotic, sitting shoeless (sprawled with bare feet upon their desks) and drinking in their legislature seats. In another, mulatto leader Silas Lynch (George Siegmann), lusting for power and miscegenation, attempted to force marriage upon Elsie Stoneman (Lillian Gish) - by force if necessary. During the most famous sequence in the film, excitement was heightened by shots of the Klan alternating with shots of the endangered Elsie - the film exhibited masterful parallel editing. Along a country road, the Klansman rode to their appointed mission - to first rescue Elsie, and then to rescue the entire Cameron family along with one of the Stoneman boys. In a diagonally-angled shot, a long line of KKK riders came into view from the distance. The film was thoroughly renounced as "the meanest vilification of the Negro race" and for its depiction of blacks as childlike, conniving, and sexually animalistic. Riots broke out in major cities (Boston, Philadelphia, among others), and it was denied release in many other places (Chicago, Ohio, Denver, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Minneapolis, eight states in total). Subsequent lawsuits and picketing tailed the film for years when it was re-released (in 1924, 1931, and 1938). Ironically, although the film was advertised as authentic and accurate, the film's major black roles in the film -- including the Senator's mulatto mistress, the mulatto politican brought to power in the South, and faithful freed slaves -- were stereotypically played and filled by white actors - in blackface. [The real blacks in the film only played in minor roles.]

Bloodsucking Freaks (1976) (aka The Incredible Torture Show and Sardu: Master of the Screaming Virgins) Joel Reed This unredeeming, misogynistic and depraved grindhouse horror exploitation film

from Troma Entertainment was originally unrated, due to its controversial and violent nature, but later reduced to an R-rating when cuts were administered. Voted one of the worst films ever, it was also targeted by the feminist group Women Against Pornography for its depictions of violence against women. It was reminiscent of Herschell Gordon Lewis's earlier film The Wizard of Gore (1970). This low-budget nauseating film told about a macabre Grand Guignol-type theatre in New York run by sadomasochistic Master Sardu (Seamus O'Brien) and his obnoxious, deranged midget assistant Ralphus (Luis De Jesus), that held performances mostly of humiliation, gruesome torture and murder - using real victims. The performers in the staged productions were discovered to be white slavery female kidnap victims, who were held in cages below stage in the basement. Scenes of horror included human dart boards (a woman's backend was painted with a bullseye), flagellation, dismemberment, cannibalism, and the drilling of a hole in a woman's shaved skull to suck out her brains with a straw by a depraved doctor (Ernie Pysher).

Blue Velvet (1986) David Lynch Lynch's polarizing film was an original look at sex, violence, crime and power under the peaceful exterior of small-town Americana in the mid-80s. Beneath the familiar, peaceful, 'American-dream' cleanliness of the daytime scenes lurked sleaziness, prostitution, unrestrained violence, and perversity - powerful and potentially-dangerous sexual forces that might be unleashed if not contained. It was considered controversial, shocking, and lurid when released. The compelling film was often criticized for its depiction of aberrant sexual behavior, as well as highly ridiculed and disdained as an extreme, dark, vulgar and disgusting film, especially for its cinematic treatment of Isabella Rossellini - director Lynch's wife at the time. Its most repulsive scene was the one in which clean-cut, all-American boy/trekker Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) first voyeuristically watched the fragile nightclub singer named Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini) from her closet -- when she discovered him, she forced him to strip at knifepoint and fondled him -- but they were interrupted by the entry of a monstrous, loathsome, nitrous-oxide sniffing kidnapper - the evil, vile and depraved drug-pusher psycho Frank (Dennis Hopper). Beaumont witnessed the sexually-depraved, blackmailing relationship between the abused/brutalized, sado-machochistic mother and Frank - who used an oxygen

inhaler while terrorizing and raping Dorothy as he play-acted being both her Daddy and Baby ("Baby wants to f--k"). After Frank left the scene of victimization, Dorothy pleaded with a consoling Beaumont to further abuse her: "Feel me. Hit me." Later in the film in a scene considered gratuitous and personally degrading, a vulnerable Dorothy appeared naked and battered on the Beaumont's front lawn.

Bonnie And Clyde (1967) # 21 Arthur Penn This innovative, revisionist Hollywood film redefined and romanticized the crime/gangster genre and the depiction of screen violence forever. The landmark film was ultimately a popular and commercial success, but it was first widely denounced and condemned by film reviewers for glamorizing the two Depressionera killers (Faye Dunaway as Bonnie Parker and Warren Beatty as Clyde Barrow), and only had mediocre box-office results. In the autumn of 1967, it opened and closed quite quickly - enough time for it to be indignantly criticized for its shocking violence, graphic bullet-ridden finale (with its slow-motion ballet of death) and for its blending of humorous farce with brutal killings. Then, after a period of reassessment, there were glowing reviews, critical acclaim, a Newsweek cover story, and the film's re-release - and it was nominated for ten Academy Awards. The film was also remarkable and controversial for its honest depiction of the unique relationship between an impotent Clyde and the sexually-aggressive Bonnie.

Boxing Helena (1993) Jennifer Chambers Lynch 25 year-old writer/director Jennifer Chambers Lynch's (David Lynch's daughter) directorial debut film was an erotic, R-rated (originally NC-17), provocative and disturbing psychosexual work that was decried by feminists; this controversial, misogynistic film was originally contracted with Madonna and then Kim Basinger as the star, and settled by a multi-million dollar lawsuit in favor of the producer Carl Mazzocone when Basinger backed out. A Superior Court jury in Los Angeles ordered Basinger to pay $8.92 million for failing to appear in the movie, and the

actress also faced additional punitive damages for walking out of the movie on the eve of its production. Basinger finally settled with the producers out of court for $3.8 million, which bankrupted her. Some accounts reported that this ruling was overturned on appeal in 1994. Its tale was decried by critics, comparing it to Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) remade by Zalman (''Wild Orchid'') King. It followed the obsession of brilliant Atlanta surgeon Dr. Nick Cavanaugh (Julian Sands) who had a promiscuous and uncaring blonde-haired mother named Marion (Meg Register) who simultaneous teased, ignored and tormented him as a young boy. He developed problems with premature ejaculation before he became entranced by his vivacious, unattainable, bitchy and libertine neighbor Helena (Sherilyn Fenn). Cavanaugh was able to experience a brief one-night affair with her in the past, but couldn't fathom being without his lustful desires for her after peeping at her through her window during a sensual evening tryst with her sleazy macho boyfriend Ray O'Malley (Bill Paxton). He took advantage of her when there was a terrible hit-run vehicular accident outside his palatial house following a party (in which she sensuously twirled around in slow-motion in his outdoor fountain while stripped down to her lingerie) - he performed surgery and made her a 'Venus de Milo' amputee (metaphorically and physically) by first removing her damaged legs (and then her arms to imprison her). To cover up his atrocious entrapment, he quit his hospital job, cut off all contact with the outside world, and attended to his imprisoned possession; although still captive and dependent, she would continue to scorn and emasculate him with denouncements of his manhood, but eventually taught him (with limbs in a dream sequence) how a woman should be loved. However, the entire sequence of his imprisonment of his captive, dismembered quadruple amputee female companion was revealed to be a dream that was imagined during the six hours of Helena's surgery -- Nick suddenly awoke in the hospital's waiting room; in flashback, Nick was shown rushing Helena to the hospital with a medical response team and waiting for her recovery by her bedside; his final voice-over was: "I am still haunted by my love, by my dreams." To illustrate the conflicting views on the film, it won the Razzie Award for Worst Director, and also was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize (for Dramatic Film) by the Sundance Film Festival.

Brokeback Mountain (2005) Ang Lee Almost a quarter of a century after the similarly-themed Making Love (1982), this

Best Picture-nominated melodrama appeared with its story about two young cowboys who had an unexpected tryst while shepherding in 1963. It told how their ill-fated love affected their married lives in the following three decades. This was the first mainstream gay/bi-sexual romance film, heavily-promoted by the media, to receive multiple awards and critical/public acclaim, with eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture (and ultimately three Oscars) from major A-list film-maker and Best Director-winning Ang Lee. The much talked-about film quickly became the most honored movie in cinematic history - it had more Best Picture and Director wins from various film organizations than previous Oscar winners Schindler's List (1993) and Titanic (1997) combined. It was also the critical darling of the media and the expected favorite to win, although Crash surprisingly took the top honor. However, some conservative Catholic organizations cited the film as "morally offensive" for its open portrayal of a homosexual relationship, and others criticized the film as sexually propagandistic. Conservative Christian fundamentalist groups heavily cited the film as glorifying homosexuality and for pushing a sexual agenda. However, those who were critical of the film were labeled "homophobic". Although widely hailed as a "breakthrough" film for gay cinema, neither of the film's two lead actors, nor its director, nor its screenwriters were gay, and the film was originally advertised in trailers without specifically referring to the film's 'gay' themes or scenes. The Brown Bunny (2003) Vincent Gallo This independent arthouse film from narcissistic and vain producer/director/actor/writer Vincent Gallo was essentially a cross-country road-trip movie, about unshaven, long-haired motorcyclist racer Bud Clay (Vincent Gallo) - a tortured, empty-hearted loner who often idealized and thought about his former and estranged girlfriend Daisy (Chloe Sevigny, Gallo's real-life ex-girlfriend). In a naturalistic style of story-telling, the flawed film followed Clay's westward trip in his black van to Los Angeles, California after he had lost an East Coast (New Hampshire) race. During his trip, he met fleetingly with three women and connected only briefly with each of them before leaving all were named after flowers: teenage New Hampshire gas-station cashier Violet (Anna Vareschi), middle-aged Lilly (Cheryl Tiegs) at a truck stop, and young Las Vegas street hooker Rose (Elizabeth Blake). Reportedly at one time, Winona Ryder and Kirsten Dunst were to be in the film, but presumably dropped due to the film's final scene. When the self-absorbed film was first screened for the press at the Cannes Film

Festival in 2003, critic Roger Ebert called it "the worst film ever shown at Cannes," prompting a prolonged feud of words between Gallo and Ebert. Other critics and audiences derided and scorned the film and its filmmaker. The feud with Ebert ended when the film was re-cut (approximately 26 minutes of the two hour film were excised) and re-released, and Ebert gave the film his 'thumbs-up' endorsement. Further controversy arose over large billboards conspicuously placed in Los Angeles, heralding the infamous fellatio scene. This film further broke down the division between pornography and erotica. In the film's most notorious, explicit and controversial scene of unsimulated fellatio at the finale, Bud and Daisy were in a starkly-white hotel room (soon-to-berevealed as a fantasy masturbatory sequence) - both lonely and needy individuals who were attempting to connect and speak to each other. Twice, she went to the bathroom to smoke crack cocaine. Soon, the couple began kissing as he took her head/face forcefully with his two hands on her cheeks and hungrily kissed her. She sat on the bed as he stood before her, unzipped his pants fly, and then took his male member into her mouth to begin the infamous 'blow-job' scene - as he held himself. As she pleasured him in her mouth, they still engaged in a conversation about their love for each other. When he was finished (although it was unclear whether he ejaculated or not?), he stuffed himself back into his pants. They then talked about the last encounter of their tragic relationship, when Bud reacted jealously to Daisy's past indiscretion at a party, where she smoked dope and acted provocatively. The thought-provoking film ended with a shocking, melodramatic plot twist to explain Bud's complex personality and downer mood throughout the film regarding Daisy as his lost love - the only woman he ever loved. The film's ending gave greater meaning to everything that came before, including the sex scene. It was revealed that Daisy was raped at the party when she passed out after getting high (which Bud witnessed passively) - and she in fact died as a result of the incident (choking to death on her own vomit). Bud's intense guilt about abandoning her and his continuing crisis of masculine insecurity were informed by the appearance of the deceased Daisy - as Bud masturbated alone to his memory of her. Caligula (1980) # 24 Tinto Brass This lavish Roman-Empire epic was written by Gore Vidal and co-financed by adult-oriented Penthouse magazine's producer Bob Guccione, though the script underwent several re-writes after the director and cast found Gore Vidal's interpretation unsatisfactory (Vidal later disowned it). It advertised itself as "the most controversial film of the 20th century" - and was the most expensive

pornographic film ever made. This was Hollywood's first big-budget ($15 million that later ballooned to $22 million), bizarre blockbuster sexploitation epic of 'classy' hardcore sex and gory violence - and it became both a critical and commercial disaster after a very limited theatrical release (due to fear of prosecution for obscenity). The objectionable film was originally intended to be high-art, with major stars (Malcolm McDowell as the infamous Roman emperor, John Gielgud, Helen Mirren, Peter O'Toole), but was described as a "moral holocaust" by Variety and reviewers considered it worthless fantasy trash. The fim was notorious for its graphic and steamy sex scenes (including a largescale orgy, masturbation, explicit sex acts, sexual depravity and decadence including a lesbian one between two Penthouse Pets Lori Wagner and Marjorie Thoreson as Anneka Di Lorenzo that was filmed later and inserted for prurient interest). Originally self-rated as X and shown as unrated in a 156-minute version, it was then severely edited for an R-rating down to about 105 minutes.

Cannibal Holocaust (1985) # 20 Ruggero Deodato This extremely graphic, hotly-debated cult classic Italian film - the uncredited inspirational precursor of the faux-documentary The Blair Witch Project - was filled with violent, grisly, and disturbing images. The exploitation film was purportedly the story of a film crew, led by Alan Yates (Gabriel York), that disappeared while making a documentary (a feature entitled "The Green Inferno" about the last surviving tribes that still practiced cannibalism) in the wilds of South America's Amazon area. Masterful cinematic tricks and special effects created an unnerving view of the fate of the team - found in undeveloped film cans by a search and rescue team. Grisly, realistic-looking scenes included a castration/dismemberment, some beatings with large hammers, guts-eating, a forced abortion, numerous animal slaughterings (including a horrible turtle murder), gang-rape and impalement of a woman on a pole. For his work on the film, the director was arrested by Italian authorities on suspicion of murder charges and faced life in prison, following its 1980 Milan premiere. He endured a trial when Italian authorities were unconvinced that the footage was indeed staged. Deodato lost the original trial, and all prints were to be destroyed, but he managed to have the ruling overturned in the early '80s when

the actors finally appeared on TV to prove otherwise. Some five years passed before the film saw release in Deodato’s home country. This movie was banned for twenty years in certain countries, including the UK.

Carnal Knowledge (1971) Mike Nichols The prurient title of this raw, taboo-breaking Mike Nichols film (with a script by satirist and cartoonist Jules Feiffer), meaning 'sexual intercourse', brought millions of patrons into the theatres for its character-based tale of the exploits of two Amherst college roommates: shy and naive Sandy (singer Art Garfunkel) and narcissistic womanizer Jonathan (Jack Nicholson), and their dysfunctional, misogynistic sexual attitudes and 'machismo' relationships (and breakups) with women over a 20-year period (from the late-1940s to the late 60s). Their female counterparts included Candice Bergen (as Sandy's respectable college sweetheart and wife Susan), Ann-Margret (as Jonathan's voluptuous mistress and suicidal wife Bobbie), Carol Kane (as Sandy's 17 year-old hippie chick girlfriend Jennifer in the late 60s), and Rita Moreno (as Louise - appearing in the final scene as a prostitute kneeling between impotent Jonathan's legs while pleasuring him and encouraging him to rise up and be manly). A film print was seized by Albany, Georgia officials in 1972, claiming that it violated obscenity laws, and the manager of the film theatre was arrested (and convicted, but it was later overturned). More than two years later, it was brought before the US Supreme Court which found that the film was not obscene and "did not depict sexual conduct in a patently offensive way." Nowadays, the film would be considered tame, with its minor amount of nudity or explicit sexual activity, although its dialogue was ripe, candidly frank and open for its time (e.g., Jonathan contemptuously termed women 'female ballbusters').

Citizen Kane (1941) Orson Welles This widely-acclaimed film from debut film director/actor Orson Welles (24 years old) is usually regarded as the greatest film ever made. The film, budgeted at $800,000, received unanimous critical praise even at the time of its release, although it was not a commercial success (partly due to its limited distribution and delayed release by RKO due to pressure exerted by famous publisher W.R. Hearst).

The film engendered controversy (and efforts at suppression in early 1941 through intimidation, blackmail, newspaper smears, discrediting and FBI investigations) before it premiered in New York City on May 1, 1941, because it appeared to fictionalize and caricaturize certain events and individuals in the life of William Randolph Hearst - a powerful newspaper magnate and publisher. The film was accused of drawing remarkable, unflattering, and uncomplimentary parallels (especially in regards to the Susan Alexander Kane character) to real-life. The notorious battle was detailed in Thomas Lennon's and Michael Epstein's Oscar-nominated documentary The Battle Over Citizen Kane (1996), and it was retold in HBO's cable-TV film RKO 281 (1999) (the film's title referred to the project numbering for the film by the studio, before the film was formally titled). The gossip columnist Louella Parsons persuaded her newspaper boss Hearst that he was being slandered by RKO and Orson Welles' film when it was first previewed, so the Hearst-owned newspapers (and other media outlets) pressured theatres to boycott the film and also threatened libel lawsuits. Hearst also ordered his publications to completely ignore the film, and not accept advertising for other RKO projects.

A Clockwork Orange (1971, UK) # 2 Stanley Kubrick At the time, Stanley Kubrick's randomly ultra-violent, over-indulgent, graphically-stylized film of the near future - and most controversial film - was one of only two movies rated X on its original release (the other was Midnight Cowboy (1969)) that was nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. The film was hotly debated when it was released - both highly praised and objectionable for its bleak outlook, and for its pairing of comedy with violence. The dystopic film about fascist social conditioning and free will was heavily criticized and opposed by religious groups for its sexual and violent content. Feminists were outraged with some of the misogynistic images - such as the obscene female poses of the supine furniture in the Korova bar, the prolonged rape of a big-breasted woman, a gigantic penis sculpture being used as a murder weapon on the Cat Lady, and a view of the protagonist's snake gliding toward a woman's vagina. The most infamous was the rape scene of Mrs. Alexander (Adrienne Corri) in her opulent house, Alex's (Malcolm McDowell) gang of droogs (Pete, Georgie, and Dim) who were

wearing masks with comical noses. After cutting away her skin-tight red jumpsuit Alex delivered horribly vicious blows of his boots to Mr. Alexander's (Patrick Magee) mid-section -timed rhythmically to his singing of Gene Kelly's tune "Singin' in the Rain". In a later scene, Alex was subjected to corrective treatment -- experimental aversion therapy imposed by the state in which he was behavioristically conditioned (with his eyes clamped wide-open in order to view scenes of violence in films while drugged to induce nausea and forced to listen to his beloved Beethoven) to suppress his violent and sexual drives - and in the process gave up his own individual and personal rights. Because of the copy-cat violence (some gangs dressed as droogs sang "Singin' in the Rain" as they carried on violently) that the film was blamed for by the media and courts, Kubrick withdrew it from circulation in Britain about a year after its release. Some believed it was because it was rumored that Kubrick and his family had received death threats. It wasn't officially available there again - in theaters or on video - until 2000, a year after his death.

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989, UK) Peter Greenaway Peter Greenaway designed this cruel, over-the-top, truth-telling film as a metaphoric and allegorical criticism of wasteful and barbaric upper-class consumer society in Western civilization (specifically Thatcherism and Reaganism). The huge restaurant that was the centerpiece of the film was composed of four rooms or sections, each of which was colorcoded: the kitchen and storage area (deep jungle-green), the main dining room (hellish bloodred), the restrooms (white), and the adjacent parking lot (cold dark blue). It told about gluttonous, uncouth, and maniacal boss Thief Albert Spica (Michael Gambon) and his desperate and much-humiliated Wife Georgina (Helen Mirren), who dined at a sumptuous banquet every night (over a nine evening period) at a trendy haute cuisine London restaurant called Le Hollandais run by the kitchen's French chef Richard Borst (Richard Bohringer). He held court around a table where he talked about food, excrement and sex, and surrounded himself with various lackeys and henchmen, and a bookwormish patron diner/Lover Michael (Alan Howard). After discovering his adulterous wife's unfaithfulness and hungry trysts with the Lover (during visits to the ladies' room stall, kitchen and bakery pantry and refrigerated meat freezer in the back of a truck, filmed with unflattering lighting), the brutal Albert decided upon savage, cannibalistic revenge upon the man (ironically stating and foreshadowing: "I'll

cook him! And I'll eat him!"). Michael was killed by force-feeding him with pages from a book. To retaliate, Georgina had the Cook bake up her lover's corpse for her husband and then headed a procession bringing in the veiled body for the surprise dinner. She forced him at gunpoint to eat the warmed-up cadaver -- "Try the cock -- it's a delicacy. And you know where it's been." Stunned, Albert took a bite and vomited, as The Wife encouraged him to eat more ("Bon appetit, Albert. That's French") - and then shot him to death - condemning him as a "Cannibal". The sensational film's putrescence, debasement and excesses (sadism, cannibalism, torture, fornication, puke, and rotting fish and meat) and scatological themes (force-feeding of excrement (termed coprophagy), urination on victims) forced the Motion Picture Association of America to give the film an "X" rating, so the film (after being denied an appeal) was released unrated by the producers, and then given an NC-17 rating by the time of its video release. An alternative R-rated version cut out about 30 minutes of footage.

Crash (1996) David Cronenberg David Cronenberg's coldly-erotic, dark and disturbing drama examined the lives of a subculture of individuals who had passionate sexual fetishes about deadly car crashes. It told about TV commercial producer/director James Ballard (James Spader) and his open-marriage to icy-blonde wife Catherine (Deborah Kara Unger), who would be turned on by casual talk about each others' extra-marital adulterous affairs during love-making. In an early scene, Catherine enjoyed sex while in contact with cold-steel (she was taken from behind by her flight instructor as her naked breast pressed into a steel airplane wing). When James collided with another car on the freeway in a near-fatal accident, the deceased victim/husband passenger was thrown through the windshield onto his hood, while the driver/wife Dr. Helen Remington (Holly Hunter) inadvertently revealed partial nudity when she broke free from her seat belt in the twisted wreckage. They were turned on by having sex in a car as a way to re-establish the 'eroticism' of the crash. After the accident, the three characters were introduced to a weird cult of individuals who derived sexual pleasure and arousal from car crashes, either as survivors or impact victims with violated bodies. They would compulsively stage re-enactments of famous celebrity car accidents (James Dean or Jayne Mansfield), talk about physical deformities from crashes (including wounds, scars, dismemberment, leg braces, crutches and full-body support suits), watch car safety and test crash videos (as pornography) and photograph crash victims, engage in sex in cars (in a car wash), and crash their cars into each other as foreplay. One physicallydeformed impact victim Gabrielle (Rosanna Arquette) made love to Ballard while braced or harnessed with a full-body support suit of black plastic and stainless steel, offering him her vulva-like scar on the back of one of her thighs. In the film's startling conclusion, Ballard

deliberately rear-ended his wife's vehicle - thrown from the car onto the ground next to the wreck, he made love to her, after learning that she was all right (and promised her a more deadly crash the next time): "Maybe the next time, darling. Maybe the next time". The alternating kinky, perverse and depraved sex scenes juxtaposed with gruesome car crashes was deliberately controversial and repulsive, and thought to possibly inspire people to have fetishistic sex in high-speed vehicles. This provocative film, initially released in two versions rated NC-17 and R, was vilified in much the same way as Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960) was, and the Cannes Film Festival screening had people walking out in disgust, nausea and revulsion. Ultimately, it received a Special Jury Prize "For Originality, For Daring, and For Audacity."

The Crime of Father Amaro (2002, Mex.) Carlos Carrera This brave, melodramatic romance film was nominated as Best Foreign Language Film for the Academy Awards and Golden Globes, and became Mexico's biggest blockbuster due to the controversy it aroused (it broke Y Tu Mamá También's opening-weekend record). It was adapted to modern times (the year 2002) from the 1875 book "O Crime do Padre Amaro" by Portuguese writer Jose Maria Eça de Queirós. One of the film's criticisms, advertised with the tagline "Love...Lust..Sin", was that it wasn't faithful to the novel. Recently-ordained and celibate handsome 24 year-old priest Father Amaro (Gael García Bernal) on his first assignment was sent to a parish (steeped in illicit love, corruption and drug trafficking/money laundering by drug lords, and cynicism) in the remote Mexican town of Los Reyes. There, he became infatuated with beautiful, virginal 16 year-old devout catechism teacher Amelia (Ana Claudia Talancón), in part due to her confessional that she erotically touched herself in the bath while having thoughts about Jesus, with his offering of advice: "Sensuality is no sin." He dressed her body in the Virgin's blue satin cloak ("You are more beautiful than the blessed Virgin") originally made for the local church's statue of the virgin Mary, and engaged in an illicit union with her under the guise of training her to be a nun. He spoke memorized portions of the Old Testament's "Song of Solomon" to poetically admire her breasts. To make matters complicated, the young girl's mother Sanjuanera (Angelica Aragon) had been engaged in a long-term affair with retiring priest Father Benito (Sancho Gracia). The film also included some blasphemous images, such as one of consecrated communion wafers being fed to a sickly cat. After getting her pregnant, the young idealistic priest covered up by paying for an abortion in an illegal clinic in the jungle. Catholic groups in Mexico called for the scandalous film to be banned for its "vicious,"

defaming and unfavorable portrait of priests, and the church threatened to excommunicate its stars. The engendered controversy only aided the film's visibility and profitability.

Cruising (1980) William Friedkin William Friedkin's notorious, grisly thriller film about a police investigation told about the seedy and dangerous underworld of gay S&M in NY's heavy leather bars (including The Ramrod), and included actual leather-clad gay patrons as extras in the meat-packing district rather than actors. The controversial film about an alternative or extreme lifestyle starred Al Pacino as a sexuallyconfused undercover cop (posing and transforming himself into a gay man in order to fit the killer's victim profile) named Steve Burns investigating violent serial killer murders in the Big Apple's homosexual underworld. In one startling scene, Pacino was tied up butt-naked on a bed and threatened with a knife. By film's end, Burns continued to visit gay bars even after the serial killer was caught -- and a last-minute murder opened up the suggestion that Burns was the killer, thereby connecting violence with the homosexual lifestyle. The film opened with a disclaimer: "The film is not intended as an indictment of the homosexual world. It is set in one small segment of that world and is not meant to be a representative of the whole." However, major protests by gay groups - the first of their kind accused the film of being anti-gay and homophobic prior to the AIDS crisis for its depiction of the gritty, kinky, dangerous, sex-obsessed and depraved lifestyle of homosexuals. The protest centered around the film's ultra-provocative plot -- murders in gay nightclubs, and the film's negative and stereotypical view of gays portrayed as psychopaths, sexual deviants, and sexual predators engaged in violent fetishistic activity and various hardcore sexual acts (i.e., a scene of fisting with a nearly naked man shackled and hanging from the ceiling). One questionably campy scene, a police interrogation, involved a large black man in thong underwear and a cowboy hat inexplicably conducting the brutal questioning. The film also included an extended sequence of the climactic and ferocious stabbing scene ("You made me do that" was offered as justification). The current truncated film still lacks approximately 40 minutes of footage that were censored and edited out. Two months after the film was released, a man killed two patrons and injured almost a dozen others at The Ramrod with a sub-machine gun.

The Da Vinci Code (2006) # 13 Ron Howard Director Ron Howard's much-anticipated, big-screen religious conspiracy thriller with the tagline "Seek the Truth" was faithfully based upon Dan Brown's best-selling fictional book. It told about an investigation by symbologist and Harvard professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) and French police cryptologist Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou) after the discovery of the murder of the Louvre Museum's elderly curator Jacques Sauniere (Jean-Pierre Marielle). The man's naked body was found with symbols and an enigmatic encrypted code written in blood, a scrambled numerical sequence, and a revealing pose. [He was murdered by selfflagellating albino monk Silas (Paul Bettany) in the employ of devious Bishop Aringarosa (Alfred Molina).] This information led the wrongly-accused murder suspect Langdon and Sophie through a byzantine trail of clues -- to a millenarian secret sect called The Priory of Sion (with heretical theories about the marriage of a mortal Jesus Christ with Mary Magdalene and fathering a child - the real Holy Grail!) and crippled Grail scholar Sir Leigh Teabing (Ian McKellen). The search also led them to knowledge of the Priory's centuries-old battle with the clandestine Catholic sect Opus Dei regarding a 2,000 year old conspiracy to hush information, new findings about the Holy Grail, to Da Vinci's master work The Last Supper, London's mythical Church Temple (where a group of Templars Knights were believed to be buried), and Sir Isaac Newton's tomb at Westminster Abbey. Several Catholic and Opus Dei groups, as well as conservative Christian groups, called for a boycott, mostly during the making of the film, accusing it of blasphemy. Even albinos were offended by the film, and lobbied for changes to the way the film portrayed them. Yet the tedious film was received lukewarmly as a convoluted, flat and stultified bore.

Deep Throat (1972) # 4 Gerard Damiano Unintended for mainstream audiences, this notorious X-rated porn flick from writer/director Gerard Damiano became one of the decade's top-grossing films, and the most influential and successful (and profitable) of all films of its kind. Deep Throat was filmed in 6 days for $25,000 and was subsequently banned in 23 US states. It was an 'event' film - a hard-core stag film that was OK to see on a date or in mixed company, yet it was banned in many localities as obscene. It inaugurated a period known as "Porno Chic" - it was the first cross-over adults-only film that became a hit. After its initial period of release, it became a cultural phenomenon and it was fashionable to talk about the film (and its

educationally feminist theme of female sexual gratification) or make references to it (such as Watergate's 'Deep Throat'). This hour-long, revolutionary X-rated film (shot in about a week's time, with graphic enactments of oral, vaginal and anal sex, group sex, and masturbation in a dozen and a half sex scenes) told a simplistic plot (with some comic elements) about a sexually frustrated woman (Linda Lovelace, born Linda Susan Boreman) who wanted to "hear bells" during sex. Her doctor, Dr. Young (Harry Reems, born Herbert Streicher) discovered that her clitoris was located in her throat, and that she would have to experiment with various clients before experiencing orgasm -- this ultimately led to her sexual fulfillment accompanied by fireworks, rockets blasting and ringing bells. Years after the film was screened, Lovelace denounced the film, claiming that she was drugged, coerced and raped during filming and that "there was a gun to my head the entire time". In the mid-70s, actor Reems was prosecuted by the federal government (under the Nixon administration) on obscenity charges - a first - although later overturned, and the film was championed by Hollywood and other intellectuals for its liberated defense of First Amendment rights. An R-rated documentary film titled Inside Deep Throat (2005) examined the film's production history and impact on American culture, including interviews with both the director and male star Harry Reems.

The Deer Hunter (1978) # 12 Michael Cimino Storywriter/producer/director Michael Cimino's epic about war and friendship was a powerful, disturbing and compelling look at the Vietnam War through the lives of three bluecollar, Russian-American friends in a small Pennsylvania steel-mill town before, during, and after their service in the war. Although a Best Picture Oscar-winner, the meandering, sometimes shrill, raw film was extremely controversial on many accounts - political, historical and emotional. The flawed, extravagantly-expensive film was often pretentious, ambiguous, overwrought and excessive, and loosely edited, with under-developed character portrayals and unsophisticated, careless

film techniques. Critics argued that the film grossly distorted historical fact. The most talked about sequences were the contrived, theatrical, and fictional Russian Roulette tortures, imposed twice in the narrative - on the American POW's during wartime, and played as a game in a Vietnamese gambling den. [However, there were no documented cases or historical reports of the deadly game in actuality.] Historically inaccurate or not, the fabricated scene of a Vietcong atrocity metaphorically depicted the brutal absurdity of the war. Director Cimino was also criticized as distortedly and one-sidedly portraying all the Asian characters in the film as despicable, sadistic racists and killers. He countered by arguing that his film was not political, polemical, literally accurate, or posturing for any particular point of view.

The Devils (1971, UK) Ken Russell Ken Russell directed this blasphemous, shocking and excessive depiction of the repressive 17th century when sexuality was equated with Satanism - a loose adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s "The Devils Of Loudon". The film's setting was the fortified city of Loudon, 150 miles southwest of Paris, in the year 1634. The film was vilified and met with outrage in its story of a womanizing (non-celibate), vain, libertine, rebellious activist renegade-priest Father Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed) who faced questioning and persecution for his "diabolic possession" of the local, repressed Ursuline nuns. It included Vanessa Redgrave as tormented hunchbacked Sister Jeanne, who had unfulfilled, warped sexual desires for Grandier and expressed them through self-mutilation and selfflagellation. The only way the monarchy of Inquistion-obsessed France (including Cardinal Richelieu (Christopher Logue) and King Louis XIII’s (Graham Armitage) establishment) could destroy the Protestant-leaning French town of Loudon was to attack the liberal religious leader as a sorcerer and practitioner of witchcraft. When the priest impregnated nobleman's cousin Philippe (Georgina Hale), married wealthy heiress Madeleine Dubroux (Gemma Jones) in secret, and then refused to remove the city walls around his fortified town, fanatical witch-hunter and exorcist Father Barre (Michael Gothard) was quickly dispatched to question, torture (headscrews, nails into hands, etc), tie up, and execute the profligate priest. During the proceedings, possessed nuns, led by Sister Jeanne's denunciations, performed orgiastic rituals publicly in Church to bolster claims against him. In the controversial staged mock exorcism scene, dubbed the orgiastic "rape of Christ" sequence, the sexually-hysterical nuns acted as if they were possessed, due to threats of execution from one of the church's accusers; the crazed nuns displayed full-frontal nudity, and masturbated with (or raped) a large-sized crucifix or effigy of Jesus, while Father Mignon (Murray Melvin) watched from afar and committed self-abuse under his robe. As a result, Grandier was

convicted of obscenity, blasphemy, and sacrilege, and burned alive at the stake. Prior to the film's release, the "rape of Christ" sequence was excised. And the scene of Grandier's burning-at-the-stake torture as a heretic was shortened. The film contained graphic depictions of open sores and medieval medicine treatments for the plague (with hornets). It provoked protest and outrage from Christian groups and viewing audiences everywhere. It was banned outright in Italy and its stars (Redgrave and Reed) were threatened with three years' jail time if they entered the country.

Dirty Harry (1971) Don Siegel Dirty Harry took its name from the fact that its unorthodox title character, San Francisco Inspector Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood), became embroiled with the most challenging and controversial ('dirty') cases of urban crime, often using tactics of police brutality and an attitude of "take-no-prisoners" that ignored criminals' rights in order to restore victims' rights. Callahan's open contempt for normal Miranda law restrictions illustrated his belief that criminals must be stopped - by any means, since traditional law enforcement ("by the book") tactics weren't effective. Siegel's film was considered sensational because of its overt violence (reflecting the early 70s era of rising crime and calls for 'law and order') and occasional glimpses of nudity. The duelling combatants (the cop and the criminal) throughout the film - an individualistic, unconventional, neo-fascist, super-hero police detective with a .44 Magnum weapon who threw away the rule book, and his complementary opposite - a pathological, malevolent and sadistic criminal named Scorpio (similar to SF's real-life Zodiac Killer, played by Andy Robinson) who demanded an extortionist ransom of $100,000, both shared traits of brutal violence and insanity. The police thriller spawned many debates about the political stance of the film and the complex issue of the conflicting rights of victims, suspects, and society. Was it a reactionary message piece against imperfect, "liberal" judicial trends that let 'sicko' criminals get away, literally, with murder? Or was Siegel encouraging audiences to empathically identify with the indiscriminate vengeance of the violent, fascist, anarchic, unrestrained vigilante 'killer' on the side of the law who acted as an autonomous police power?

Do The Right Thing (1989) # 22 Spike Lee African-American writer/director Spike Lee's third (and breakout) feature film was this complex, angry and unapologetic social protest film about racism, racial pride, intolerance and

oppression, class struggle and violence. This controversial and incendiary independent film, receiving a Best Original Screenplay Academy Award nomination for Lee, was about racial tensions that eventually erupted into a riot on a sweltering summer day in the multi-ethnic Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. It was told with vibrantly bright colors, realistic and goofily-named characters and dialogue, a supplementary "Greek chorus" of black men on the corner commenting on the day's events, and energetic editing and quasi-documentary, cocked camera angles. During the opening credits, Public Enemy performed the film's hard-edged anthem and title song, "Fight the Power" - foreshadowing the coming emergence of rap and hip-hop music into the mainstream culture. The multi-ethnic cast of the film provided three-dimensional characters and day-in-the-life stories, and featured the early career work of Samuel L. Jackson (as DJ Mister Senor Love Daddy) and Rosie Perez (as demanding single mother and girlfriend Tina). The tension began to escalate in this slice-of-life film because of a complaint by a militant activist neighborhood patron named Buggin' Out (Giancarlo Esposito) that there were no pictures of 'brothers' on the "Wall of Fame" in a white-operated, Italian "Famous Pizzeria" restaurant owned by Sal (Oscar-nominated Danny Aiello), followed by his attempt to "boycott [Sal's] fat pasta ass". The film climaxed with the brutal choke-hold police murder of Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn), the arrest of Buggin' Out, and pizza delivery boy Mookie's (Spike Lee) incitement of a fiery riot by hurling a trashcan through Sal's storefront window, causing further racial divide and police brutality. Although it was feared by film critics that this would cause and incite similar responses from black urban-dwellers, this proved to be a misrepresentation of the facts by the film's detractors, that dubbed the film "irresponsible". Two contradictory quotations ended the film, one from Martin Luther King, Jr. advocating non-violence, and the other from Malcolm X advocating violent self-defense in response to oppression.

Dogma (1999) Kevin Smith Director Kevin Smith's fourth film was an imaginative, comic and fanciful theological work (with foul language) about a monumental struggle or race between the good and evil regarding the fate of Earth and mankind. On one side were two fallen, ousted or banished angels: Loki (Matt Damon) and Bartleby (Ben Affleck), who have been exiled to eternity at an airport in Wisconsin. After they discovered a loop-hole in Catholic doctrine (plenary indulgence) that would allow them back into heaven, they decided to make their way to a cathedral to be rededicated in New Jersey to have their sins forgiven (part of a revamped 'Catholicism Wow!' program announced by hip Catholic Cardinal Glick played by George Carlin, including the "Scary" crucifix being replaced by the "Buddy Christ”), and to have their wings cut off, become human, and reenter the kingdom of heaven. If successful, they could prove the fallibility of God

and destroy the universe by nullifying all of human and earthly existence. God (angry slack-rocker Alanis Morissette) dispatched a disdainful and bitchy seraphim - a messenger from God named Metatron (Alan Rickman), to appear in a pillar of fire in the bedroom of lapsed-and fallen Catholic Bethany Sloane (Linda Fiorentino) who worked at an abortion clinic. The infertile woman, who was experiencing a crisis of faith but was Jesus Christ's last surviving descendant, would be recruited to stop the two rogue angels from ending humanity. He instructed her about meeting two muses or prophets (Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes as slackers Silent Bob and Jay) who would assist her along the way. Other characters in the tale included Chris Rock as a ranting Rufus, the erased or forgotten 13th apostle, and Salma Hayek as disaffected heavenly muse Serendipity who 'inspired' men at a low-rent strip club. The film's premiere drew hundreds of protesters and disdain from religious leaders, and Smith himself received 300,000 pieces of hate mail. The Catholic League publically criticized Miramax and Disney, for the film's anti-Catholic, sacrilegious and blasphemous stance, and its satire of modern religion.

Ecstasy (1933, Czech.) (aka Exstase) Gustav Machaty This early, scandalous Czechoslovakian foreign erotic drama was once notorious, earthshattering, and scandalous. It was notable as being the first theatrically-released film in which the sex act (sexual intercourse) was depicted. It was unusual at its time for depicting female sexual pleasure during orgasm (simulated). It told the story of a sexually-frustrated child-bride named Eva (Vienna-born 20 year-old Hedwig Kiesler, or later known as Hedy Lamarr in her fifth film) who had married a middleaged, impotent Emil (Zvonimir Rogoz), and fled in dismay to her widowed father's estate where she was close to nature. It was censored for its two shocking scenes - in a naturalistic locale reminiscent of the Garden of Eden: a nude swim and naked forest romp in sun-lit woods to pursue her horse Loni (which had run off with her clothes), and an adulterous love-making scene (with an obvious expression of sexual awakening, fulfillment and orgasmic pleasure on her face in a close-up) in a cottage during a rainstorm with a handsome young engineer/surveyor named Adam (Aribert Mog), who had earlier retrieved her horse and clothes. The foreign import was blocked in 1935 by US Customs from entering the US for its obscenity, marking the first instance of customs laws prohibiting a film from entering the US. The U.S.

Treasury Department upheld a Commissioner of Customs decision to prohibit the import, although it was later imported in a censored version. Hitler banned the film, and Pope Pius XII denounced it.

The Evil Dead (1981) Sam Raimi This was the first installment of Raimi's Evil Dead trilogy, a low-budget, non-humorous B-grade horror film with the tagline: "the ultimate experience in grueling terror". This was the ultimate "cabin in the woods" film - with evil spirits being unleashed upon five college students in a Tennessee cabin after the reading of a forbidden book. Due to the film's graphic violence, it was banned in several European countries. The film's most controversial scene, the infamous predatory tree rape scene with quick POV tracking shots, was one in which Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss) was attacked in the woods outside the log cabin by tree branches and vines that wrapped around her neck and limbs, stripped her of her clothes, caressed her and then spread her legs - one tree branch suddenly impaled her in her crotch; soon after she was chased back to the house, she was transformed into a demon zombie. In the UK, the film was subject to obscenity trials and various censorship cuts particularly the misogynistic tree-rape scene. On-screen blood and gore would have given the film an NC-17 rating if Raimi had presented the film to the ratings board when it was first released.

The Exorcist (1973) William Friedkin Friedkin adapted William Peter Blatty's best-selling, 1971 blockbuster book about satanic demon possession (based on a true-story of a 13 year-old Maryland boy in 1949), and created one of the most disturbing, frightening, shocking, and exploitative films ever made. The horror film masterpiece, the first major horror blockbuster, was one of the most opposed and talkedabout films, especially during its pre-release time period. Viewers and the studio took note that there were accompanying ominous events, including the deaths of nine persons associated with the production (including Jack MacGowran and von Sydow's brother) - and a request was made to exorcise the set. Its controversial content, sensational, nauseating, and horrendous special effects (360 degree head-rotations, self-mutilation/masturbation with a crucifix, the projectile spewing of green puke, a mixture of split-pea soup and oatmeal, etc.), for its depictions of desecrations, vivid representations of evil, and for its intense scenes of exorcism (accompanied by blasphemies, obscenities and graphic physical shocks). One of the most controversial scenes was the long

sequence of invasive medical testing performed on the hapless patient - criticized as medical pornography. A sweet pre-teenaged girl Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) became possessed by a malevolent evil spirit - and after urinating on the carpet in public and experiencing a shaking bed, was soon transformed and disfigured into a head-rotating, levitating, green vomit-spewing, obscenityshouting creature. Her divorced, film-star mother Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) was at wit's end, until she called on a dedicated, faith-questioning Jesuit priest Father Karras (Jason Miller) to exorcise the malevolent devil from her daughter's body. An elderly priest Father Merrin (Max von Sydow), whose archaeology project released the Satanic being, also risked his life (and died of heart failure) to administer rites of exorcism with incantations and holy water. The film was enormously popular with moviegoers at Christmas-time of 1973, but some portions of the viewing audience fled from theaters due to nausea, convulsions, fainting or sheer fright/anger (Headlines proclaimed: "The Exorcist nearly killed me!"), and it was reported that one patron in San Francisco literally attacked the screen in an attempt to kill the demon. Mass hysteria led to paramedics being called to some theatres, and others were picketed in protest. The film's showings also led to a reported increase in temporary spiritual possessions or psychoses by individuals, and an increase in requests for priests to exorcise everything from loved ones and pets to houses, neighborhoods and appliances. Evangelist Reverend Billy Graham stated that he "felt the power of evil buried within the celluloid of the film itself". The film was also banned on video in the UK for fifteen years.

Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) # 3 Michael Moore Michael Moore's controversial 'documentary' film was a critical expose and scathing indictment of the George W. Bush presidency and administration for its handling of the terrorist crisis and his alleged connections to Al-Qaeda leader Bin Laden's family. It was accused of being propagandistic - especially in an election year - and that it contained half-truths and distortions of facts, and some conservative groups called for theaters to not screen it. The documentary film was included among the Cannes Film Festival's main

competition (only the second time in 48 years for a documentary) - and won the top prize called the Palme D'or - the first for a documentary in nearly 50 years. It also broke the record for highest opening-weekend earnings in the US for a documentary, and established a significant precedent for a political documentary (eventually earning $119 million) as the highest-grossing, non-concert, non-IMAX documentary film of all time. The controversial film had earlier gained further publicity and notoriety when Disney opted not to distribute the film through its Miramax subsidiary unit, and Moore accused the company of censorship. Disney's refusal to let Miramax release it, because it would risk causing a partisan battle and alienate customers, actually contributed to the film's great success. [Supposedly, Disney also feared the film might endanger tax breaks Disney received in Florida where its theme parks were located, and where the president's brother, Jeb Bush, was governor at the time.] Although the film was rated R, under protest from filmmaker Moore, some theaters defied the rating and allowed teenagers (without guardians) to attend. Memorable images include Bush's continued reading of the children's book "My Pet Goat" in a Florida elementary school after the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center (filmmaker Michael Moore narrated: "When informed of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center, where terrorists had struck just eight years prior, Mr. Bush decided to go ahead with his photo opportunity..."), the many self-incriminating Bush clips (such as when he demonstrated his golf swing - "Now watch this drive!" immediately after calling on nations to stop terrorist killers, his stumbling through speeches and delivering such damning lines as: "What an impressive crowd: the haves, and the have-mores. Some people call you the elite, I call you my base"); the documentarian's questioning of Democratic and Republican politicians about enrolling their sons for military duty; the mall scenes in which Marine recruiters targeted minority teenagers for enrollment, and Bush's inept handling of the terrorist crisis and his agenda (after 9/11) to illegitimately launch a pre-emptive war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Freaks (1932) # 17 Tod Browning This MGM horror production starred real-life circus side-show performers (a cornucopia of 'human oddities', including Siamese twins Daisy and Violet, Prince Randian - the "Living Torso", Johnny the 'half-boy', the armless girl, the bearded lady, and three 'pinheads' or microcephalics). It was an out-of-the-ordinary picture not easily forgotten, causing both revulsion and fascination. In the film's terrorizing and shocking climax, strong man Hercules (Henry Victor) and

aerialist Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova) were both pursued in parallel by the grotesque 'freaks' with knives during a stormy night, crawling through mud in vengeful pursuit of their victims. The film was released officially (five months after disastrous preview showings) and found to be exploitative, abhorrent and "loathsome" with "unwholesome shockery", although it also portrayed the 'abnormal and the unwanted' as resilient and adaptable human beings with complete compassion and understanding. Overall, it made audiences uncomfortable and engendered fright, uneasiness and animosity. After initial preview screenings, MGM ordered Browning to remove the alarming film's most "offensive" segments (approximately 26 minutes), including the original closing scene of an emasculated Hercules singing falsetto (after castration) in "Tetrallini's Freaks and Music Hall". And a final epilogue was tacked on with a 'happy ending' to lessen the shock of the film's original ending -- the sight of Cleopatra ("the peacock of the air") turned into a legless human chicken with one eye blinded. However, the changes in the film did not improve the film's box-office business and it was a major financial failure. Tod Browning's career, which was booming after directing Dracula (1931), was destroyed. MGM pulled the film from distribution a month after its release, and in 1947, exhibition rights were sold to exploitation filmmaker/distributor Dwain Esper for the next 25 years. It was toured for an adults-only roadshow with alternative titles (i.e., Forbidden Love, The Monster Show, and Nature's Mistakes), exploitative taglines, such as: "Do Siamese Twins Make Love?" and "Can a Full Grown Woman Truly Love a Midget?" The film was banned outright in England for 31 years (until the early 1960s).

Hail, Mary (1985, Fr.) (aka Je vous salue, Marie) Jean-Luc Godard Director Jean-Luc Godard's controversial and upsetting film (condemned and denounced by Pope John Paul II at one time and picketed at theatres) retold the story of the virgin birth and Mary, for modern times, with Myriem Roussel as a young teenaged basketball player named Marie who worked as an attendant in her father's garage and her petulant boyfriend Joseph (Thierry Rode), a taxi-cab driver - who have a chaste relationship; one of Joseph's fares was the angel Gabriel (Philippe Lacoste) who told Marie that she was mysteriously pregnant and would give birth to the resurrected Jesus Christ; a visit to the gynecologist confirmed that she was indeed pregnant without having had sex; outrage came over the reinterpretation of the Immaculate Conception and the fact that Roussel was often in various states of objectively-viewed, non-prurient undress throughout the film; for instance, in one scene, she resisted the human temptation to masturbate.

Heaven's Gate (1980) Michael Cimino

This notorious, big-budget epic film was a major financial disaster for its studio (United Artists, the studio of Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks) - it also was a disaster for the western film genre for the remainder of the 80s, and it ended the reign of the New Wave of 1970's 'auteurs' or independent filmmakers. Its self-indulgent, financially-irresponsible and excessive writer/director, Michael Cimino, who had been praised for his Best Picture and Best Director-winning The Deer Hunter (1978), took the brunt of much of the film's criticism, for its ballooning budget that was almost six times above-budget to produce (from $7.5 million to about $44 million), for its overlong incomprehensible plot (originally a 5-hour version that was cut down to 219 minutes ), for its miscasting and slow pacing, for its expensive onlocation shooting and fastidious over-attention to detail and historical accuracy - all for a film without major stars. Following its initial release in late 1980, the film was pulled from theatres, edited down by over an hour in length, and re-released a few months later, although it still failed miserably. UA's corporate parent, Transamerica, was forced to sell the bankrupted studio to MGM for only $350 million as a result. Heaven's Gate was one of the first films to be prejudged by a critic. The infamous review of New York Times critic Vincent Canby ("It fails so completely that you might suspect Mr. Cimino sold his soul to obtain the success of The Deer Hunter and the Devil has just come around to collect") built negative press until Cimino's film was doomed to have an un-profitable theatrical release. The film received numerous Razzie Award nominations including a Worst Director prize for Cimino, although it received generally positive reviews after release to video, and fairly good results from its international box-office. It was critically re-evaluated by the LA-based Z Channel when

it premiered on cable TV in its uncut version in 1982, but it was already too late. The documentary Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven's Gate (2004), composed of a series of interviews (and based on Steven Bach's 1985 book of the same name), provided a behind-the-scenes look at the film - one of Hollywood's most notorious disasters. The film became the biggest flop in film history at the time (US box-office was only about $1.5 million), and since then has been synonymous for any film judged to be a monumental 'turkey' that faced major financial disaster.

Henry: Portrait of A Serial Killer (1986) (released in 1990) John McNaughton John McNaughton's realistic, disturbing "fictional dramatizaton", his directorial debut film shot in 4 weeks on a budget of about $100,000, was based on the confessions of famed, pathological, 'real-life' convicted serial killer Henry Lee Lucas (played by Michael Rooker in his feature film debut), who ended up on death row in Texas. The grisly horror-slasher film's detached and amoral documentary style and tone of filming enhanced each brutal, gory and violent killing (15 in the film) by the murderer, first viewed as a series of grotesque tableaux. There were numerous sickening, brutally-violent cinema-verite off-screen and on-screen murders by psychotic murderer Henry, including the death of a young woman left disemboweled and lying in a ditch, and shots-to-the-heads of a storeowner couple (Elizabeth and Ted Kaden), a prostitute (Mary Demas) killed in a bathroom with a broken soda bottle in her face, and especially the beating, torture, sexual assault, and killing of a helpless family in their suburban home - and then afterwards, the viewing (and re-viewing) of the grainy, unfocused, and poorly-photographed account of the crime shot on videotape by murderers Henry and his prison buddy Otis (Tom Towles). It was so controversial that it was given an X-rating, and had very limited release in the US. Due to a ratings controversy with the MPAA, its release was held up for a few years. Its release was delayed until 1993 in the UK and even then, two minutes of the film's violent content was spliced out. An uncut version of the movie was eventually allowed for video release in 2003.

I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967, Swe.) # 18 Vilgot Sjöman This landmark, avante-garde, mock-documentary film (shot with mostly hand-held cameras) allegedly included 'offensive' sexual scenes that were claimed to be pornographic at the time - scenes of full frontal nudity of both sexes (at 38 minutes into the film), simulated intercourse, and the kissing of the male's flaccid penis (over a full hour into the film). By today's standards, it is considered tame, although it helped to open the floodgates toward hard-core pornography and films such as the X-rated Best Picture Midnight Cowboy (1969), the porno chic Deep Throat (1972), and Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris (1972). The radical, experimental film-within-a-film of sexual politics told the dull and pretentious story of liberated 22 year-old Lena (Lena Nyman), an aspiring sociologist who was curious about political issues in late 60s Sweden, with endless soul-searching, lengthy street interviews with common people about the class system, newsreel footage, scenes of protest regarding the Vietnam War, scribbled on-screen slogans, her cataloguing of information, etc. Sexual interludes between Lena and car salesman Börje Ahlstedt (mirrored in the film and real life by a tumultuous triangle with director Vilgot Sjöman) are shot frankly and realistically. US Customs seized the film in 1968, and the courts (and the Supreme Court) originally determined that the movie was 'obscene', although this verdict was overturned after appeal. It became a benchmark film for free-speech advocates. It soon became the highest-grossing foreign film (at $20 million) released in the US for decades (a record that stood until Il Postino broke the mark in the mid 1990's), although the film was picketed. Unused footage and alternate takes from the film were culled for a concurrent, parallel film I Am Curious (Blue) (1968, Swe.) - the choice of colors represented the two colors of the Swedish flag.

Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS (1974) Don Edmonds This cult classic was the original film in a series of infamous, violent and shocking exploitation films, all with the title of Ilsa (based upon the real-life actual Nazi named Ilse Koch known as the "Bitch of Buchenwald", and reportedly upon actual tortures and atrocities during the Holocaust). The so-called Nazi-exploitation film's subtitle advertised that Ilsa herself was: "The Most Dreaded Nazi of Them All." Although

dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust, the film was banned in Germany. There were also three low-budget sequels including Ilsa: Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976), Ilsa: The Tigress of Siberia (1977), and Ilsa: The Wicked Warden (1977) (also pictured). This sick and semi-pornographic film with abundant gratuitous nudity and gruesome incidents (such as flesh-eating maggots) was shot on the set used for the Hogan's Heroes TV show after it was cancelled in the early 70s. Nymphomaniacal Ilsa (Las Vegas showgirl Dyanne Thorne) was featured as the big-busted, blonde Nazi POW camp's (stalag) over-the-top sadistic, dominatrix commandant who personally inspected stripped female prisoners (including cult starlets Sharon Kelly and Uschi Digard) and performed 'scientific' experiments upon them, as well as forced herself upon male prisoners and then castrated them.

In the Realm of the Senses (1976, Jp.) (aka Ai No Corrida) Nagisa Oshima This erotic Japanese masterpiece about painful passion told the story of a torrid, increasingly intense and dangerous, true-to-life, almost non-stop sexual affair between gangster businessman Kichizo (Tatsuya Fuji) and one of his servants, former prostitute Sada Abe (Eiko Matsuda) in mid-1930s Japan. The film, produced in France, reflected the tradition of erotic Japanese wood-block prints, the shunga, in which the faces were stylized, but the sexual organs (especially the phallus) were shown aroused, enlarged and delineated with almost topographical detail and care. This sexually adventurous, lurid arthouse film about unadulterated desire deliberately broke the taboo in Japanese cinema against showing female pubic hair and sex organs. It had an orgy scene and contained explicit shots of fellatio (while he passively laid back and smoked a cigarette) with semen dripping from her mouth, penetration, a wide variety of sexual positions and sexual acts (some in close-up) such as a boiled egg inserted into her vagina, sexual violence and masochism (forcible use of a wooden dildo, bite-wounds, S&M, etc.), and masturbation during a bloody menstrual period. Almost penis-fixated, she innocently stated: "Isn’t it natural for a woman to love the sex of the man she loves?" Most notoriously, it depicted the infamous, violent scene of their disturbing practice of auto-erotic asphyxiation with a red scarf to aid their sexual excitement - and even worse, bloody castration-dismemberment by film's end so that she could keep his member inside of her. Afterwards, the empowered female carried around her master-lover's severed genitals in a handkerchief for four days - an

enactment of her proprietary feelings about his member - until she was arrested. The shocking film of extreme, all-consuming sexual obsession and immersion, bordering on pornography in its uncut version, was seized and banned by US Customs and postponed in its censored release. It caused a sensation - and lively discussion - at the Melbourne Film Festival in 1976 when first released.

Irreversible (2002, Fr.) Gaspar Noe Frenchman writer/director Gaspar Noe's hard-hitting, graphic, profoundly disturbing and violent film about rape revenge, was non-linear - it was told in flashback and reverse order in continuously-filmed takes, similar in structure to Christopher Nolan's Memento, with the theme: "Time destroys everything." The fatalistically-tinged film implied that the characters in the film were predestined (irreversibly) to face what would happen to them. It was also noted for its excruciatingly-long, almost-unbearable, nine-minute real-time beating and anal-rape sequence - shot with a static camera - of Alex (Monica Bellucci) in a deserted Parisian underpass tunnel lit by a reddish glow, by stranger-rapist Le Tenia/Tapeworm (Jo Prestia). It was followed by a love-making scene (earlier in the chronology) of Alex with boyfriend Marcus (Vincent Cassel) (with Marcus' prophetically-teasing line: "I want to f--k you in the ass"), and ended with a beautiful scene of Alex relaxing in a sunny park with children playing. Besides that, there was the horrific, violent and vengeful scene of Marcus and Alex's exboyfriend Pierre (Albert Dupontel) searching in retribution in a gay S&M night-club sex bar filled with leather-bondage patrons called The Rectum. It culminated with the vicious revenge beating of the suspected rapist - with the man's head beaten to a pulp with a fire extinguisher.

I Spit On Your Grave (1978) (aka Day of the Woman) Meir Zarchi This exploitative, X-rated (later released in an R-rated version) notorious gang rape/vigilante revenge splatter-horror film was banned outright in many countries (for its misogynistic theme), and vilified by critics. Its theme of violent revenge placed it in the category of filthy and debased exploitation film (masquerading as an anti-rape diatribe), and reviewers such as Ebert and Siskel (who described the unrated version as vile garbage) attempted to have the film pulled from theaters. It told how NY writer Jennifer Hill (Camille Keaton, grand-niece of comedian Buster Keaton, and married to director Zarchi at the time of filming) rented a remote and woodsy, lakeside dwelling for the summer. After skinny-dipping - she was confronted and repeatedly raped by four men (Eron Tabor, Anthony Nichols, Gunther Kleeman, and Richard Pace) in a graphic, long and violent sequence (40 minutes) that was particularly uncomfortable to watch. Afterwards, she visited a church to ask for forgiveness before the brutal and bloody counter-assault she had planned, followed by the scenes of her angry (yet seductive) revenge against each of the four attackers: a hanging, a lethal bloodletting castration seductively conducted nude in a warm bathtub with a conveniently-placed carving knife, an axing, and a disembowelment with an outboard boat motor.

JFK (1991) # 5 Oliver Stone Director/co-writer Oliver Stone's' complex, provocative docu-film thriller was a controversial, speculatively revisionistic, historical epic surrounding one-time New Orleans DA Jim Garrison's (Kevin Costner) investigation of the John F. Kennedy assassination on November 22, 1963. Its intriguing interpretation was based on the wellpublicized and alleged conspiracy theories of the obsessed attorney about the mystery of the death, and on the testimony of a number of unreliable witnesses. The film masterfully assembled and merged, like a jigsaw puzzle, various sources of material (newsreels, photos, black and white, color, 8 mm, 16 mm, etc., minature

models, and re-enactments) into one film to create a semblance of truth, but not necessarily real history. However, Stone was attacked and dismissed by the American media, CBS, The New York Times, Time, Newsweek and The Washington Post, for deliberately combining factual and historical footage with hypothetical footage to make it appear to be one seamless, objective and truthful record of events. In response, Stone released the screenplay, annotated with its factual sources. The trial scene in the last half of the film featured three very memorable scenes to disprove the idea that assassin Lee Harvey Oswald (Gary Oldman) acted alone: the scornful rejection of the Magic Bullet theory (the 'official' Warren Commission version of events which Garrison declared unlikely or impossible - and "one of the grossest lies ever forced on the American people" - with a diagram of the bullet's zig-zag path presented for evidence), a detailed analysis of the famous Zapruder film, and Garrison's impassioned closing argument, finishing with him staring directly into the camera, and addressing the audience: "It's up to you."

Kids (1995) # 23 Larry Clark Director Larry Clark's much-criticized dark cinema verite independent film was a wellneeded realistic tale about drugs, amorality, sex, obscene talk, and generally decadent behavior among teenaged youth. Clark's first feature film was one of the most truthful films about promiscuous, sexually-pleasurable and fulfilling but emotionless teenage (and pre-teen) sexuality - with lethal high-risk consequences. However, others criticized it as salacious, sleazy and bordering on child pornography with lots of raunchy talk and simulated sex - disguised as a cautionary documentary. It followed a group of teenagers and preteens during 24 hours of a hot Manhattan summer, with a 17-year-old skateboarder named Telly (Leo Fitzpatrick) - a selfproclaimed "virgin surgeon" with HIV whose goal was to deflower as many girls as possible ("Virgins. I love 'em. No diseases, no loose as a goose pussy, no skank. No nothin'. Just pure pleasure"). Easily-seduced Girl # 1 (Sarah Henderson) was an easy target, as was Jenny (a young Chloe Sevigny), who became an HIV-positive-infected teen through sexual contact with Telly, as he went on a search for his next virginal victim at a skinny-dipping pool party, 13 year-old Darcy (Yakira Peguero). One of its more shocking scenes was the ending scene -- hung-over, post-partying Caspar (Justin Pierce), Telly's friend, took advantage of unconscious, stoned-out and helpless Jenny on a bed by raping her (and possibly infecting himself). When he woke up the next morning, he delivered the film’s final line: "Jesus Christ, what happened?" It was released unrated to avoid the stigma of an NC-17 rating. As a buffer against the

furor, Miramax (owned by Disney at the time) created a new entity, Shining Excalibur Films, to release the picture. It was also banned by Warner Bros from its cinemas throughout Britain upon release. Clark's next controversial films, Bully (2001) and Ken Park (2002), followed similar white teens and authentically explored their sexuality.

Kinsey (2004) Bill Condon This serious and engrossing biopic was about controversial, Midwestern human sexuality researcher Dr. Alfred Kinsey (Liam Neeson) who laid the groundwork for the coming sexual revolution, with its tagline: "Let's talk about sex". It stirred up continuing protest about the impact of his pioneering work, interviews and liberal publications on morality and behavior. Kinsey startled the world with the publication of his Kinsey Report (aka Sexual Behavior in the Human Male) in 1948 and its follow-up Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953). The non-erotic, non-exploitative, and non-prurient film was attacked by morality extremists for its candid and frank drama about the famous Indiana University doctor's obsessive life-work. It illustrated how Kinsey's own wife Clara McMillen (Oscarnominated Laura Linney) had painful sexual problems with her inexperienced husband during their honeymoon, and then later was engaged in an extra-marital affair with her husband's bi-sexual assistant Clyde Martin (Peter Sarsgaard) - who also had a homosexual encounter with Kinsey and appeared in a full-frontal scene; and that a young Kinsey was punished with a confining genital strap to prevent him from masturbating by his ultra-moralistic, bullying, and repressive minister father (John Lithgow). In the film's final heartbreaking interview scene with an older, middle-aged lesbian subject (Lynn Redgrave in a cameo), she expressed how she was freed from homosexual guilt ("You saved my life"), after experiencing lesbian feelings. Concerned Women for America (CWA) protested that the film was "an attempt to cover up sex researcher Alfred Kinsey's horrifying reality." They accused the film of misrepresenting how Kinsey actually had encouraged pedophiles to molest children (in the name of science). Other neo-Puritanical proponents thought the film was another example of how Hollywood was normalizing perversion, attacking Christian values about sexual morality, and promoting a "pro-homosexual agenda." And an advertisement for the film was initially rejected by PBS' WNET in New York because the film was deemed too commercial and provocative.

The Kiss (1896) (aka The May Irwin Kiss, The Rice-Irwin Kiss and The Widow Jones) William Heise for Thomas Edison This most popular short film (an Edison Vitascope film made in Edison's Black Maria studio) was thought to be scandalizing. It was the first filming of a couple's kiss that was recreated from the two well-known stage actors' (May Irwin and John Rice) performance in the hit Broadway play The Widow Jones. The Edison catalogue advertised it thus: "They get ready to kiss, begin to kiss, and kiss and kiss and kiss in a way that brings down the house every time." Many disapproved and considered it inappropriate to view two physically-unattractive people magnified on the screen during an extended kiss. As one contemporary critic wrote: "The spectacle of the prolonged pasturing on each other's lips was beastly enough in life size on the stage but magnified to gargantuan proportions and repeated three times over it is absolutely disgusting."

The Last House on the Left (1972) Wes Craven This low-budget, crude, taboo-breaking and often revolting 'snuff'-type horror film (Wes Craven's debut feature film and a loose remake of Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring (1960)) told about the long and upsetting ordeal of two teenaged girls: Mari Collingwood (Sandra Cassel) and Phyllis Stone (Lucy Grantham) who were searching for pot on their way to a Bloodlust rock concert when kidnapped by a group of escaped convicts led by Krug Stillo (David Hess), brutally and sadistically tortured (including chest-carving Mari with a knife), forced to have sex with each other, raped, disemboweled (with one of the gang members pulling out bloody intestines), and eventually murdered in the woods. The grainy, hand-held 16 mm footage accentuated the realism and horror - and led to intense criticism for its graphic depiction of violence and disquieting, exploitative nature (one of the girls was forced to urinate on herself), which the film tried to defuse by claiming: "It's only a movie". Craven insisted that the film's painful and protracted violence was "a reaction on my part to the violence around us, specifically to the

Vietnam War." This ugly scene was intercut with views of 'surprise party' preparations for Mari by her parents (Gaylord St. James and Cynthia Carr). Ironically, in a later scene, the escaped convicts took refuge in the home of the upscale small-town parents, the hospitable Collingwoods - where there was animalistic payback revenge/slaughter of the gang. In a grotesque sequence, the father chipped teeth out with a chisel and pursued with a chainsaw, while the mother dismembered the penis of one of the culprits with her mouth (during fellatio) and slashed another one's throat with a razor. The film faced censorship difficulties everywhere, but especially in the UK, where an uncut version of the DVD is still unavailable.

The Last Picture Show (1971) Peter Bogdanovich Bogdanovich's R-rated frank and realistic drama told about the dreams and loves of small-town Texans in the early 1950s, confronting various issues such as adultery, alcoholism, and promiscuity. The adult-themed film was considered obscene by some viewers - and noted for brief full frontal nudity in a sexy swimming scene at an indoor pool party in which the teenagers enjoyed skinny-dipping. Goaded by nude partygoers, the town's young, rich, ravishingly beautiful, self-centered town tease Jacy Farrow (Cybill Shepherd in her debut film) was reluctant to strip, but performed a neophyte strip-tease on the diving board. Another scene found the calculating, fortune-hunting Jacy in an aborted, deflowering scene with footballplaying boyfriend Duane Jackson (Jeff Bridges) in the Cactus Motel in the dying Texas town, although she told her girlfriend-classmates: "I just can't describe it in words". The film was reportedly banned in Phoenix, Arizona in 1973 after a showing at a drive-in theatre, following complaints by the city attorney that it violated a state obscenity swtatute. Arguments in federal court focused on the nudity in this party scene, and eventually the courts disagreed over whether it was obscene, and threw the case out.

Last Tango In Paris (1972, It./Fr.) # 9 Bernardo Bertolucci Bertolucci's film was a landmark, controversial erotic film with raw (yet simulated) sexual scenes and primitive force - critics and audiences alike asked - was it erotic art or pornography? In the film's story, a distraught, confused, grieving widower and middle-aged, overweight American exile Paul (Marlon Brando) plunged into a sado-masochistic, physical (yet impersonal and basically anonymous) relationship with young, big-breasted 20 year-old Parisienne ingenue Jeanne (Maria Schneider). Paul's gutter-language and set of 'no questions asked' rules was notable for the time: "We are going to forget everything we knew - everything" - and their relationship became increasingly more vile, slavish, empty, humiliating, and unromantic (i.e., "You know in 15 years, you're going to be playing soccer with your tits. What do you think of that?"). It was noted for Paul's scatological monologues, its bathtub washing scene and the disturbing and explicit 'butter' scene during anal intercourse, in which she passively acquiesced to rape and forced sodomy (with an application of butter: "Get the butter") in an empty, rented apartment, as he forced her to repeat phrases such as: "the will is broken by repression". Later, Paul reciprocated by letting Jeanne penetrate him anally with her fingers - part of his objective to "look death right in the face...go right up into the ass of death... till you find the womb of fear." By film's end, she had shot him with her father's gun, and confessed to police: "I don't know who he is" and "I don't know his name". It was noteworthy as the first "mainstream" film to carry the dreaded "X" rating. In 1974, it became the first film to be prosecuted under Britain's Obscene Publications Act - and the sodomy scene was ordered deleted. In the director's own country, the film was seized and banned, and charged for its "obscene content offensive to public decency". In the mid-70s, it was permanently banned in Italy (with all prints seized), its stars and director were condemned, and Bertolucci was given a 4-month suspended prison sentence.

The Last Temptation Of Christ (1988) # 6 Martin Scorsese This controversial, profound, and challenging adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis's 1955 bestselling novel (due to controversy) of the same name was Best Director-nominated by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. The author was almost ex-communicated from the Greek Orthodox Church as a result of writing the book, and his work was frequently found on lists of banned books. The film was denounced as pornographic (for a non-explicit scene of Jesus procreating with his wife) even before its release, although the film stated in a pre-credits

disclaimer: "This film is not based on the Gospels, but is a fictional exploration of the eternal spiritual conflict." The major controversy concerned the 'last temptation' visionary/hallucinatory sequence in which a very human and suffering Jesus (Willem Dafoe) was tempted by Satan as he hung during crucifixion on the cross (while uttering: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?") with a dream of an earthly existence with tattooed prostitute Mary Magdalene (Barbara Hershey). The vision included the blasphemous idea of a sexual relationship with her, including marriage and children, thereby implying that Jesus' choice to marry revealed him to be a flawed, frail, questioning, tormented and self-doubting man who was uncertain of the path he should follow. In the non-exploitative sequence, Jesus was naked in Mary's arms and they made tender, physical love. By film's end, however, the temptation was ultimately rejected by Jesus, and he returned to the cross with his triumphant dying words: "It is accomplished." During one early screening in a Parisian movie theatre, a protesting fundamentalist French Catholic group threw a molotov cocktail at the screen and injured a number of people. Religious fundamentalists vehemently criticized, protested, boycotted, and picketed the film, with signs reading: "Don't Crucify Christ Again," "Stop This Attack on Christianity," and "Scripture Not Scripts." City leaders in Savannah, Georgia banned the film, and sent a signed petition to Universal requesting a widespread ban. The Blockbuster Video chain refused to carry the title, and one group suggested offering to buy the $7 million film from Universal in order to destroy it. Joseph Reilly of Morality in Media described the film as "an intentional attack on Christianity," and James Dobson of Focus on the Family warned ominously: "God is not mocked."

Lolita (1962, UK) Stanley Kubrick and Lolita (1997) Adrian Lyne

Stanley Kubrick's sixth film - a brilliant, sly adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's celebrated yet controversially-infamous 1955 novel of a middle-aged man's unusual, doomed sexual passion/obsession for a precocious, seductive "nymphet" girl, was cause for some concern. [The scandalous book was banned in Paris in 1956-1958, and not published in its full form in the US or UK until 1958.] The question: "How did they ever make a movie of Lolita?" was actually asked on the film's posters. The X-rated UK film's Hollywood premiere disallowed young star Sue Lyon (14-15 years old at the time of filming) from attending. Although Nabokov was appointed to write the screenplay for his own lengthy novel, Kubrick

Lolita (1962)

rewrote (with co-producer James B. Harris) Nabokov's unacceptable versions of the script in a more sanitized fashion. The age of Lolita in the novel was raised from 12 years old to that of a typical high-schooler - probably 14 or 15, to avoid some predicted controversy. The threat of censorship and denial of a Seal of Approval from the film industry's production code and the Roman Catholic Legion of Decency overshadowed the film's production. The black humor and dramatic story of juvenile temptation and perverse, late-flowering lust was centered on a pubescent nymphet and a mature literature professor in an aura of incest. Rather than a film of overt sexuality and prurient subject matter, its content was deliberately mostly suggestive, with numerous double entendres, whisperings, meaningful facial expressions, and metaphoric sexual situations, with carefully-placed fades to black. Its most troublesome character who assumed various disguises, was actually Clare Quilty (Peter Sellers) - an implied pedophile and child pornographer. The film opened with an erotic pedicure scene under the credits of obsessed, middle-aged boarder and literature professor Humbert Humbert (James Mason) cradling the title character's foot and then lovingly and devotedly painting her toenails with bright enamel - hinting at pedophilia. Sue Lyon starred as the title character Dolores Haze - a tempting, precocious, iconic, underaged nymphet nicknamed Lolita - first viewed in the garden in a two-piece bathing suit and sun-hat, and eyed by the passion of Humbert. The film was noted for the scene of their overnight stay at a hotel and Lolita's early morning coquettish suggestion to play a game that she learned at camp, while seductively twirling the hair on his head with her finger --- followed by a discrete fade to black. Similarly, director Adrian Lyne's 1997 erotically-charged, sensual remake (with Jeremy Irons and 15 year-old actress Dominique Swain), produced on the heels of the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 and the murder of 6 year-old JonBenet Ramsey (publicized as being a beauty pageant contestant), failed to get a distributor for an American theatrical release, for its aberrant, still-taboo and touchy topic of underage sexuality and incestual pedophilia. However, it contained virtually no female nudity (and a body double was used in one brief dimly-lit scene), and strict precautions were taken during filming. The first view of Lolita was in the garden where a lawn sprinkler soaked her pale sundress; in one controversial love-making scene in a hotel, they slept in the same bed and she wet-kissed him on the mouth after having showed him "everything" -- during the fade-out, Humbert explained in voice-over: "Gentlewomen of the jury, I was not even her first lover"; in another scene, Lolita nuzzled next to his crotch and inched her hand up his inner thigh when she asked him for a $2 allowance; in the film's most provocative scene, Lolita rocked pleasurably on Humbert's lap while reading the newspaper comic pages. The film was finally picked up by Showtime Cable Channel, which showed it on August 2, 1998, and then was subsequently released to theatres, video stores and DVD.

Lolita (1997)

Men Behind the Sun (1988) (aka Hei tai yang 731) Tun Fei Mou This unrated (would have been NC-17 undoubtedly) provocative and sickening documentarystyle film (denounced by some as an exploitation film) displayed some of the grotesque Japanese atrocities and perverse medical experiments committed toward guinea-pig human victims in Unit 731 (a biological warfare R & D unit) during WWII. One atrocious scene showed a Chinese woman forced to thrust her deliberately frost-bitten hands into hot water, and then had her flesh ripped off her hands to expose the skeletal bones; it was also criticized for its use of actual autopsy footage depicting a drugged young boy whose organs were extracted from his body while he was alive, and for another scene in which a live cat was ripped apart by a room full of starving rats; in a decompression chamber sequence, the intense pressure caused a man's intestines to shoot out of his anus.

The Message (1976, 1977) (aka Mohammed, Messenger of God) # 11 Moustapha Akkad Taglined as "The Story of Islam," this epic-length 178 minute dramatic biopic was the debut feature film of Islamic, Syrian-born producer/director Moustapha Akkad (who later produced John Carpenter's successful horror film Halloween (1978)). It starred Mexican-born actor Anthony Quinn (Abdallah Geith in the 198 minute Arabic version) - following his success in the desert epic Lawrence of Arabia (1962) -- as Mohammed's desert-dwelling warrior uncle Hamza. It was set in 7th century Mecca and documented the beginnings of Islam and the life and teachings of the prophet. The film's script - written by Irishman H.A.L. (Harry) Craig - took two years of research and writing before its readiness for filming, due in part to the restriction that Muslim authorities had to approve the finished screenplay before filming could commence. Problems began almost immediately when it was unfoundly rumored that Peter O'Toole, and then American star Charlton Heston, would star in the lead role, causing two days of bloody riots in Karachi, Pakistan. This caused a stir because it was feared that the film would violate the strict Muslim belief (forbidden by Shari'a, Islamic holy law formed after Mohammed's death) that any representation of the Diety Allah or His Prophet Mohammed (and his immediate family including wives, daughters, and sons-in-law) could not be depicted on screen nor could his voice be heard. However, the politically-correct film represented him either off-screen, as the camera's point-of-view, or with occasional symbolic appearances (i.e., his camel-riding stick, his tent, and his holy camel). Nonetheless, endless protests, riots and death threats (by telephone) accompanied the film's production and making (totaling seven years).

In its troubled production history, the film was forced to move from Saudi Arabia to Morocco for filming, where Akkad promised that he would construct a $100 million film production studio, as well as recreate the city of Mecca (and a model of the town's sacred holy shrine, the Kaaba, at a cost of $400,000), and hire thousands of extras. [The film was originally backed for up to $60 million by Saudi monarch King Faisal, until he pulled out of the project while disallowing filming on location in Mecca and Medina. Later, Faisal denounced the infidel filmmakers in Morocco and caused the dismantlement of the whole film operation, resulting in relocation costs of more than $2 million.] Akkad was forced to move and find financial backing and sponsorship from terrorist-friendly Libyan leader Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi. Ultimately, The Message was shot in two versions with different cast members, a Western version in English and a special Arabic version (entitled Al-Ris-Alah), adding to the costs. The film faced a dilemma regarding its marketing for US audiences, for its emphasis on a nonWestern religious leader who didn't even appear in the film. Eventually, it was decided to use the tagline: "In four decades only four... "The Robe" "The Ten Commandments" "Ben-Hur" and now... For the first time...the vast, spectacular drama that changed the world!" Difficulties with the film's title forced it to be changed to The Message for its world premiere in London in late July, 1976. Various religious groups called the film 'sacrilegious' and 'an insult to Islam' and it was banned from showings in much of the Arab world. Without all the surrounding controversies whirling about, the film was still viewed as a bland, compromising film that was overlong. There was further controversy when the film was scheduled to premiere in the U.S. in Washington, DC, in March, 1977. The Hanafi Black Muslim extremist group led by Hamas Abdul Khaalis staged a heavily-armed siege against the local Jewish chapter of the B'nai B'rith (its national headquarters) under the mistaken belief (without having seen the film) that Anthony Quinn played Mohammed in the film. During the two-day crisis, they took nearly 150 people hostage, and threatened to blow up the building while demanding the film opening's cancellation. Future DC mayor Marion Barry was shot when the terrorists overran the District Building, and many others were injured. The hostage situation was eventually defused by the FBI and Muslim ambassadors, and the theater chain that had booked the film cancelled the showing. This disastrous opening unfortunately ruined US box-office for the controversial film, as various moviehouses were forced to cancel their showings due to political pressures and further fears of violence. Ironically, in late 2005, Akkad died from injuries sustained during terrorist attacks in Jordan.

Midnight Cowboy (1969) John Schlesinger John Schlesinger's film was a major milestone although controversial at its time for its gay-

related content and subject of male prostitution. Its title "midnight cowboy" referred to nocturnal cowboys in the big city - those who were hustlers. The ground-breaking film was the first (and only) X-rated (for adult-oriented, not porno) mainstream film (later reduced to R) to be voted Best Picture, with an A-list stars, at a time when the ratings system was first introduced. This Oscar-winning film, an exceptional, provocative, and gritty character portrait, was made on location in New York to portray seediness, corruption, and big-city anonymity, and was based on James Leo Herlihy's 1965 novel. It was unusual for its rating to be so high, since the unflinching film did not contain significant profanity, graphically-brutal violence, or frontal nudity, although it did portray some partial nudity and simulations of sex. It told an adult-themed story about a naive, swaggering, transplanted (and emasculated) dishwasher/stud - a displaced small-town "cowboyish" Texan named Joe Buck (Jon Voight) who struggled and aspired in the sordid 42nd Street area of NY to become a successful hustler or gigolo - while posing as a "macho midnight cowboy," although he eventually resorted to homosexual street hustling to survive. Upon his arrival in the big city, he vainly posed shirtless in front of his hotel room's mirror, and pasted up a beefcake poster of Paul Newman from Hud and a picture of a topless woman. His first 'trick' was fast-talking, brassy society girl Cass (Best Supporting Actress nominee Sylvia Miles) who out-hustled Joe for a cab-ride fee. In a comedic sex scene in which they humorously activated channels with the TV remote control beneath their bodies - the metaphoric climax came with the closeup view of the winning results of a slot machine jackpot - spewed-out coins. Joe's first homosexual client was a religiously fanatical and homosexual Jesus-freak Christian named Mr. O'Daniel (John McGiver). During the encounter, Joe flashbacked to his disturbed and abused boyhood when he was baptized in a river (recalled as terrifying), and an incident when town rednecks viciously assaulted him and his former girlfriend "Crazy" Annie (Jennifer Salt) when they were having sex in a car. He was homosexually raped and she was traumatically gang-raped. Another homosexual client in New York was a bespectacled, geeky young student (Bob Balaban) in a dark movie theatre - while experiencing oral sex, Joe had memories of making passionate love with Annie (who promised him she was being faithful by telling him: "You're the only one, Joe," but who had a reputation for being a tramp), but the client ended up penniless. The Texas stud was befriended by a limping and coughing homeless con artist named Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman) and they experienced an unspoken homosexual relationship together which included frequent bickering. They both experienced the riches of the American dream when invited to a freaky Greenwich Village party by a "couple of fruity wackos" (Gastone Rossilli and Warhol's Viva), where they found free food, drugs, and opportunities for sex. Joe took stoned socialite Shirley (Brenda Vaccaro) to bed for his first successful heterosexual score with a paying female client ($20). At first, though, he suffered sexual inadequacy until angered when she teasingly suggested that he was gay: ("Gay, fey. Is that your problem, baby?") - and then he performed vigorously. Afterwards by phone, she recommended his studly services to an

unhappily-married female friend. Joe's final trick was with another homosexual - a middle-aged Catholic man named Towny (Barnard Hughes). Back at the man's hotel room, in the last sordid act of his street-life existence, things turned violent. Joe ended up in a rage, brutally attacking the self-loathing, motherdominated, despicable man after receiving a St. Christopher's Medal and only ten dollars. He committed a horrible crime - he robbed the man of all his money and then brutalized the customer, probably killing him. He left after jamming the phone receiver into the man's bloodied, toothless mouth.

Mondo Cane (1962, It.) (aka A Dog's World) Gualtiero Jacopetti, Paolo Cavara, Franco Prosperi This Italian-made globe-trotting, amateurish "shockumentary" was luridly advertised as a travelogue - with glimpses of dark-skinned, bare 'savages' engaged in grotesque and bizarre rituals and scenes of human perversity! The film was castigated as pornographic, trashy and vulgar, although by today's standards would be considered very tame. Footage included the beheading of a horde of bulls and the mass head-bashing of some pigs in New Guinea, forcefeeding of native girls to make them more marriageable and fertile contrasted with weight-loss techniques, Singapore's "House of Death", hula dancing in Hawaii, the eating of dog in Thailand contrasted with a wealthy pet cemetery in the US, pig-suckling, and the effects of radiation and atomic testing on a small island. The film inspired a series of sequel "Mondo" films and dozens of imitators, including Rolf Olsen's Shocking Asia (1974) and Conan Le Cilaire's Faces of Death, Part 1 (1978) series of films.

Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979, UK) Terry Jones This Terry Jones-directed tasteless and daringly irreverent, pseudo-biblical satire of religious films (from Cecil B. DeMille to Ben-Hur) and religious intolerance was often considered blasphemous and sacrilegious for its depiction of hypocritical faith, modern organized religion, and its religious zealotry and conformity. Self-appointed moral guardians criticized the idea of the film's production, until Beatle George Harrison set up HandMade Films to finance it. Biblical history was rewritten in its story of reluctant Messiah Brian (Graham Chapman), a Jerusalem nobody and "naughty boy" (according to his shrewish mother (Terry Jones)), whose life uncannily and coincidentally paralleled that of Jesus. A common misunderstanding was that Brian lampooned Christ or Christianity, but that was definitely not the case. One of its ongoing gags was about the various factional, anti-Roman revolutionary groups (i.e., 'The Judean

People's Front', 'The People's Front of Judea') that were protesting against Roman rule and occupation - and more often against each other. The Sermon on the Mount was lampooned, but only as a misunderstood and inaudible speech, misinterpreted and heard as "Blessed are the cheesemakers." The film's most controversial scene was the ending sequence of a mass crucifixion, in which the incongruously upbeat, life-affirming comical song "(Always Look on the) Bright Side of Life" was performed by the chorus-line of dozens of crucified individuals, including Brian. When released in the UK, the film -- regularly regarded as one of the funniest films ever made was banned in some town and counties by several town councils and organizations, and efforts were taken to reclassify it as X-rated so that audiences would be further limited. It was also banned for eight years in the Republic of Ireland and for a year in Norway. The film was not released in Italy until 1990, eleven years after it was made. Various pressure groups in the US tried to prosecute the film or ban its showing, and Catholic groups condemned the film and suggested it was a sin to view it.

Natural Born Killers (1994) # 8 Oliver Stone Oliver Stone's film (from a Quentin Tarantino original script), a modern update and remake similar in theme to Terrence Malick's Badlands (1973), was a visually-riveting (with an eclectic style mix, including MTV-style), controversial, anarchic and brutal film about media sensationalism and obsession, in its story of two serial killer-lovers and white-trash outlaws: abused Mallory Knox (Juliette Lewis) and psychotic Mickey (Woody Harrelson) - inspired by real-life spree killer Charles Starkweather, who went on a violent, cross-country (Route 666) Southwestern random killing joyride. TV tabloid show host/reporter Wayne Gale (Robert Downey, Jr.) made them famous celebrities for his sensationalist "American Maniacs" show. In the shocking ending, the two outlaws shot Gale - broadcast live on camera in a rural setting. The extremely violent film was lambasted as "evil" and "loathsome" for its hypocritical violence-soaked satire on screen violence. It was subjected to numerous edits and cuts (reportedly 150) by the MPAA at the time of release (now restored in Stone's longer 'Director's Cut' version, that was licensed to a third party) to achieve an R-rating from its original NC-17 rating. Its public screening in the UK was delayed, because the film had instigated or 'inspired' murderous copycat shooting sprees in the US (including the Columbine High School Massacre) by those who viewed the protagonists as glamorous and romantic folk heroes -- similar to what

happened after the release of Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971). In a failed civil suit, lawyer/novelist John Grisham accused Stone's film of being a 'faulty' or 'defective' product and that there was a 'causal link' between the film and various murders - he argued that Stone was legally accountable for inspiring real-life murders. The parents of paralyzed Patsy Byers, a 1995 victim of teen lovers (Ben Darras and Sarah Edmondson) in Louisiana, took expensive legal action against Stone and Warners, but the case was ultimately dismissed in 2001.

Nekromantik (1987, Germ.) Jorg Buttgereit Director Jorg Buttgereit's low-budget, cultish and controversial German gross-out, depraved horror film was reviled and banned in many countries for its depiction of necrophilia - sex with corpses, rabbit cruelty, cat disembowelment, and decapitation by a shovel. In one of the film's final sequences, suicidal and manic-depressive ambulance driver Robert "Rob" Schmadtke (Daktari Lorenz) simultaneously masturbated and committed hari-kiri with a knife - culminating in an orgasmic semen-blood mixed expiration. During a threesome, his girlfriend Betty (Beatrice Manowski) also found pleasure in making love to a rotting corpse with a sawed-off piece of a broom handle (outfitted with a condom) stuck in its groin as a makeshift penis.

The Outlaw (1943) Howard Hughes This infamous sex-western was millionaire director/producer Howard Hughes' B-grade pet project. It was marketed salaciously for full effect - such as with this tasteless slogan: "What are the two great reasons for Jane Russell's rise to stardom?" Hughes' picture was notorious for leering camera views of statuesque and formidable Jane Russell's ample, buxom cleavage - displayed to the fullest and greatest effect to anger Hays Code censors. She was often pictured with an oftunbuttoned, low-cut peasant blouse. The film was denied a Production Code Administration seal for the exploitative use of young star Jane Russell's prominent, bulging breasts and

cleavage. One local judge in Baltimore, Maryland was quoted as saying that Russell's breasts "hang over the picture like a summer thunderstorm spread out over a landscape". However, it appeared that the publicity pin-up shots (example to left) were much more revealing, sultry and suggestive than the film itself. The storyline -- the pursuit of Billy the Kid by Sheriff Pat Garrett (Thomas Mitchell), with Jane Russell as Doc Holliday's (Walter Huston) sexy, half-breed mistress Rio -- was considered too racy for contemporary audiences in 1941 when it was screened for the Hays Office. Its original release had to be postponed until 1943 - and then only in very limited release to theatres. After a ten-week run at that time, Hughes decided to shelve the film for three years after which it was finally placed in general release in 1946 (in a cut version) without a seal of approval.

The Passion Of The Christ (2004) # 1 Mel Gibson Co-producer, co-writer, and director Mel Gibson's R-rated, self-financed, independent smashhit film, a brutal depiction of Jesus' last 12 hours on Earth, stirred up considerable controversy. It was filmed with dialogue in three languages (Aramaic, Hebrew, and Latin) with subtitles, and although Gibson claimed that the account was authentic and 'truthful' - it would be nearly impossible to derive a strict and true historical account of the events from the Gospels. The scourging (a 10-minute sequence) and crucifixion scenes in particular were overpoweringly graphic, bloody, torturous and vicious. Even Gibson admitted that the film was deliberately "shocking" and "extreme" in order to depict Jesus' enormous sacrifice. Even before it was released and viewed, religious leaders were indignant over its Catholictinged interpretation of the Bible, its use of extra-Biblical sources, and its poetic license, and Jews protested the film as anti-Semitic - believing that the "obscene" film would blame Jews for the death of Jesus. Even Gibson had difficulty securing a distributor for his film. The film went on to be one of the most successful R-rated films ever, with $370 million US box-office receipts, mostly due to its embracing by evangelical church groups. It became the highest-grossing independent film of all time. An unrated, re-edited re-release of the film (still R-rated), named The Passion Recut (2005), with Gibson's own edits (removal of about 5 minutes of graphic violence) was shown in theatres for a short time a year later.

Peeping Tom (1960, UK) Michael Powell Although now widely praised (like Hitchcock's psychological horror film counterpart Psycho

(1960) - and the film's thematic counterpart Rear Window (1954)), this chilling and disturbing film about voyeurism, child abuse, and serial murder by honored film-maker Michael Powell was originally widely hated, universally loathed and denounced, especially by British critics. They pronounced it amoral, perverted, necrophilic and trashy. It was called nauseating, depressing, and stench-filled -- and allegedly destroyed the career of its director. It suffered from the devastating reviews and was removed from theaters and excised by its distributor. This censored version was briefly available in trashy US theatres in 1962 and in selected arthouse venues, but then removed. Not until 1979 was a full-length version viewable -- at the New York Film Festival. Over time, it has been critically re-evaluated and vindicated, and is now universally regarded as a masterpiece. It was a twisted portrayal of shy studio cameraman (and morbid serial killer) Mark Lewis (Karlheinz Boehm) who filmed call girls and then killed them with the metal-spiked leg of his hand-held camera tripod (with a mirror attached so that victims could watch themselves dying). In the film's shocking opening, filmed from the point-of-view of the voyeuristic camera's crosshaired viewfinder, a prostitute negotiated, walked upstairs, disrobed, and then gave a look of horror as she was murdered. The infamous film with dark subject matter was criticized for its unsavory view of the perverted crimes perpetrated (and witnessed almost as "snuff films") upon unsuspecting female victims (a prostitute, an actress-dancer, and a nude model). In a subtle way, it appeared to implicate the voyeuristic viewer and force the audience to identify with the awful and perverse crimes committed by the madman. However, it masterfully told the back-story of how the monstrous killer had a very troubled childhood with a sadistic father (played by director Powell in a cameo) who filmed him for his studies on the physiology of fear in children, and contributed to his son's violent and conflicted subconscious (by observing his reactions to a lizard dropped on his bed, his mother's corpse, or his father's new young wife).

Pink Flamingos (1972) John Waters Director John Waters (known as the "Prince of Puke" or "Pope of Trash") produced a unique crop of intentionally bizarre, crude, sexually-grotesque, trashy and bad taste-laden cult films with eccentric oddball characters and harshly-vivid language. Almost his entire filmography is laced with unusual plot lines, freaky casts, larger-than-life performances and extremely grossedout scenes that could be found nowhere else. Waters faced criticism for pushing conventional boundary lines and exhibiting full-frontal nudity, and his outrageous films led to calls for censorship and outright banning. The sheer repulsiveness and infamy of Waters' films (this film was part of a "trash trilogy" composed of Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble (1974), and Desperate Living (1977)), however, made them campy midnight movie hits, and led to more mainstream

future successes such as Polyester (1981) and Hairspray (1988). Waters' unrated seminal film Pink Flamingos was one of the most outrageous and the ultimate example of 'poor-taste' - it contained incestuous oral sex, an illegal adoption ring complete with caged women in the basement during their pregnancies, making love with a live chicken during a copulation scene between Babs' son Crackers (Danny Mills) and Cookie (Cookie Mueller), public urination, the eating of real dog feces, and a close-up of a man's singing (opening and closing) anal sphincter. Animal activist groups protested the revolting film for its treatment of chickens. When this film was re-released in 1997, it was rated NC-17 by the MPAA. It told about an unusual overweight transvestite trailer park matron named Babs Johnson (played by Divine or Harris Glen Milstead) who literally ate fresh poodle-dog feces in a scatological competition to become the 'World's Filthiest Person Alive' in the film's conclusion, among other things. Other characters in her mobile-home trailer included her delinquent son Crackers, her voyeuristic traveling companion Cotton (Mary Vivian Pearce), and her halfdressed, mentally-ill, brain-damaged, corpulent, and gap-toothed mother Edie (Edith Massey) who sat in a playpen crib and ate hard-boiled eggs all day long. Shocking sequences included the over-the-top birthday party scene featuring bizarre sex acts, and the murder and cannibalistic consumption of a quartet of policemen (reminiscient of Night of the Living Dead (1968)). Babs delivered a stunning "filth politics" speech to TV reporters: "Blood does more than turn me on, Mr. Vader. It makes me come. And more than the sight of it, I love the taste of it. The taste of hot, freshly killed blood...Kill everyone now! Condone first degree murder! Advocate cannibalism! Eat s--t! Filth is my politics! Filth is my life!" before executing her non-PC competitors: blue-haired Raymond (David Lochary) and red-haired Connie Marble (Mink Stole) in front of the press.

Pretty Baby (1978) Louis Malle Louis Malle's provocative American debut film - a semi-scandalous picture upon its release due to unfounded charges of child porn, debuted at a time when there was public uproar over child abuse, child pornography, and child prostitution. Some worried that young Brooke Shields would be traumatized by her 'adult' role in the film - yet the entire film was basically free of explicit scenes or language. Malle had hired a female scriptwriter (Polly Platt) to insure that the film was dealt with in a sensitive manner. It was gorgeously photographed by Bergman-cinematographer Sven Nykvist, and set in a 1917 New Orleans bordello in the legalized red-light district of Storyville. The fictional yet historically-inspired drama (based on Al Rose's 1974 non-fictional book Storyville, New Orleans) told the story of a virginal, jaded 12 year-old Violet (former child model

Brooke Shields in her breakthrough role) - a child prostitute with her New Orleans brothel mother Hattie (Susan Sarandon). Both were often photographed nude by Ernest J. Bellocq (Keith Carradine) (one of his actual portraits displayed here of a turn-of-the-century prostitute) - who also proposed to marry the young girl, who had innocently told him: "I love you once, I love you twice, I love you more than red beans and rice!" In one scene, Violet's virginity was matter-of-factly auctioned off for the highest bidder ($400) by house madam Nell (Frances Faye). Various versions were edited (with dark shading, readjusted formats or closeups), and a Gstring shield was worn to avoid portraying the underage nudity of the budding, prepubescent Brooke Shields. Some critics recognized that the film possibly portrayed Brooke Shields as a defenseless and naive daughter used by her manipulative mother - similar to her publicity-fueled image in real-life.

A Real Young Girl (1975, Fr.) (aka Une Vraie Jeune Fille) Catherine Breillat Director Catherine Breillat's feature debut was this erotic drama with strong and shocking sexual content - it was made in 1975, but not released until 25 years later due to financial problems with her production company and controversy surrounding this sensational, raw and strange film -- Breillat would later become famous for the similarly-explicit Romance (1999) and Fat Girl (2001) which were also preoccupied with the representation of female sexuality. This film was promptly banned upon its initial release in France in 1976. This original, unapologetic and bold film showed various closeups of genitalia, a fascination with bodily fluids and smells (including vomit, urination and writing on a mirror with vaginal secretions), and sexual fantasies while it charted the budding sexuality, self-exploration and awakening of sexually-curious and self-analytic teenaged Alice Bonnard (Charlotte Alexandra) during a summer holiday. Crude and realistic, she lustfully fantasized about sex with a worker in her father's sawmill, would often drop her panties to her ankles, compulsively masturbated, and in one surreal scene had a live chopped-up worm rubbed into her crotch.

Requiem for a Dream (2000) Darren Aronofsky Aronofsky's effective and disturbing film told about the consequences of drug use for four individuals: lonely, TV-addicted, diet-pill-popping Brighton Beach widow Sara Goldfarb (Oscar-nominated Ellen Burstyn), her heroin-addicted son Harry (Jared Leto), his drug-dealing best friend Tyrone C. Love (Marlon Wayans) and his girlfriend Marion Silver (Jennifer Connelly). Pre-release discussions claimed the film bordered on pornography and glamorized

drug use. In the film, Sara's addiction to weight-loss and obsession with being on a television show led to hallucinations, near insanity, and shock-treatment, while the harrowing price of heroin addiction caused Harry's arm to become severely infected and require amputation, while despairing and pained Marion, earlier seen in full-frontal before a mirror, prostituted herself to pay for her addiction. The controversial sequence, argued as a necessary component and message that the cautionary film had to deliver about the consequences of drug use, was a nasty, extremely-graphic lesbian orgy scene with a shared anal dildo that shocked the MPAA which rated it NC-17 - Aronofsky appealed the ruling (which was denied), so the film was released unrated. An R-rated edited version of the film was released on video with a shortened sex scene.

Romance (1999, Fr.) (aka Romance X) Catherine Breillat This sexually-graphic drama import from daring French filmmaker Catherine Breillat faced international censorship problems for its explicit depictions of fellatio and intercourse; the film's poster displayed a red X over a self-pleasuring female's private parts; it told about the lack of connection between love and sex. The main character was a sexually-frustrated Parisian elementary school teacher named Marie (Caroline Ducey) who was paired with an unresponsive male partner named Paul (Sagamore Stevenin) - he rarely agreed to intercourse and responded disinterestedly to fellatio. Therefore, she sought sexual gratification through various 'no-strings-attached', explicit sexual encounters (including rear-entry sex) with studly Italian stranger Paolo (the controversial casting of Italian porn star actor Rocco Sefredi); she also was sexually involved and developed a relationship with her older boss named Robert (Francois Berleand) who enjoyed bondage and stimulated her potential for masochism. The film's scenes included a rape in a stairway, a controversial fantasy dream sequence (in which she imagined herself sexually defenseless with other women - their waists were available and positioned next to a hole in a wall as unseen strangers on the other side of the wall could engage in explicit sex with them through the opening), bondage scenes, a gynecological exam, and closeup footage of a childbirth (edited and replaced by Blockbuster Video). It was also the first mainstream movie to feature an erect penis; it was released with no MPAA rating, although it undoubtedly would have been an NC-17 rating with its full frontal nudity and explicit unsimulated oral sex - a turning point in the candid depiction of non-pornographic sex on screen for a mainstream film.

Rosemary's Baby (1968) Roman Polanski Polish director Roman Polanski's first American feature film and his second, scary horror film (following his first disturbing film in English titled Repulsion (1965)) - was about a young newlywed couple who moved into a large, rambling old apartment building in Central Park West, where the title character Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) experienced a nightmarish dream of making love to a Beast. Becoming paranoid and hysterical, she believed herself impregnated so that her baby could be used by an evil cult in their rituals. The creepy film ended with the devil's flesh-and-blood baby being cared for by the mother! The film was one of the first with the theme of Satanism and the occult, before the onslaught of films such as The Exorcist (1973), The Omen (1976), and Demon Seed (1977). Its most memorable sequences were the surrealistic dream sequence during which Rosemary was impregnated by Satan (husband Guy's appearance changed into a grotesque beast-like figure resembling the Devil, with yellowish eyes and clawed, scaly hands), and the final scene in which she discovered her Anti-Christ child in a black-draped crib. The National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures reviled the film, condemning it for "the perverted use which the film made of fundamental Christian beliefs, especially surrounding the birth of Christ, and its mockery of religious persons and practices" - these criticisms were due in part to sequences depicting Rosemary's guilt over her lapsed Catholicism, antireligious references to the Pope made by Roman Castevet (Sidney Blackmer) ("You don't need to have respect for him because he pretends that he's holy"), the portrayal of Rosemary's pregnancy as a sexually-transmitted disease, and the film's view of Satanism as the birth of the Anti-Christ. The incredible irony of the film was that the plot would be similarly played out a year later Polanski's pregnant actress/wife Sharon Tate would be terrorized and murdered by the strange cult of Charles Manson followers in her Benedict Canyon home. A real-life tragedy also occurred when the Bramford apartment building (actually the Dakota apartments - the actual locale in the film) was where Mark Chapman shot John Lennon in 1980.

Salo (1975, It.) (aka The 120 Days of Sodom) Pier Paolo Pasolini Salò was directed by the notorious Italian poet, novelist, painter and film-maker Pier Paolo Pasolini, who was murdered before it was released. It was based on a work by the notorious Marquis de Sade - to depict the short-lived, lakeside republic of Salo in Nazi-controlled N. Italy at the close of WWII, where four fascist officials in a secluded chateau near Marzabotto totally controlled, abused, enslaved and victimized an anonymous group of young and attractive peasant teenagers (both male and female) and subjected them to sexual and physical tortures, psychological humiliation and violence over a period of a few days. This extreme exercise of power was supposed to symbolize the evil of fascism itself. The nihilistic film was filled with debaucheries and cruel sexual perversions (ie., a mock wedding ceremony in which the couple was denied consummation and then anally raped). Other outrages included strangulation, scalping, tongue-extraction, eye-gouging and nippleburning, including the forced eating of human excrement. In one scene, the youths were stripped, collared, leashed, and forced to act like dogs. It aroused outrage and disgust when it was released. It was prosecuted by various film certification boards and banned outright in numerous countries.

September Dawn (2007) Christopher Cain The backdrop of this independent film (with a fictionalized Romeo and Juliet romantic subplot) immediately brought about controversy. The histrionic melodrama told about the infamous September 11, 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre in which about 120 Californiabound settlers (Gentiles) were brutally murdered by Utah Mormons. It was reportedly based on the official 27-page confession of convicted Mormon John D. Lee. Conveniently, the massacre - that occurred on September 11th - helped the story draw close parallels to Islamic fundamentalist terrorism in modern times. It has been disputed whether the slaughter was ordered by the LDS church leader Brigham Young or not, but the church has admitted that a group of religiously-zealous Mormon militia (with the help of local Native Americans) led the massacre in southern Utah Territory. In the film, Jon Voight starred as local Mormon bishop Bishop Jacob Samuelson and Terence Stamp starred as Young, who implicitly spoke out: "I am the voice of God, and anyone who doesn't like it will be hewn down" and demanded an oath of silence regarding

his murderous orders. As with many other controversial films, the angered LDS church didn't preview the film, but instead issued a statement (with their version of the historical event) calling the film a "serious distortion of history." It believed that the film, a simplified good vs. evil treatise, was a piece of anti-Mormon propaganda and not historical truth-telling.

Song of the South (1946) Harve Foster (live action), Wilfred Jackson (animation) This remarkable Disney film was based on the "Uncle Remus" stories of Joel Chandler Harris, and was presented as one of their earliest, innovative live-action and animation mixtures. Set after the Civil War at a time when slavery was abolished, its animated sequences featured Uncle Remus characters (i.e., Br'er Rabbit, Br'er Fox, and Br'er Bear) accompanied by live-action portions with folk story-teller Uncle Remus (Special Oscarwinning James Baskett). The film's song "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" won the Academy Award for Best Song. Remarkably, it has never been released for home video consumption in the US (although it has been available in European and Asian markets). After this film's last theatrical release in 1986, it has simply vanished and been unavailable for purchase. Recently, a Disney spokesman reiterated the fact that the film may continue to be unavailable due to "the sensitivity that exists in our culture" and fears of political-correctness repercussions. Although it has been rumored that the NAACP banned this Disney movie, that was untrue -they simply expressed their disapproval of the portrayal of African-Americans in the film, and their concern about its potential to present an image of an idyllic master-slave relationship. The main objection was its stereotypical depiction of blacks in the live-action sequences, although others have mistakenly thought that the movie actually depicted slavery and tacit approval of the master-slave relationship.

South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999) Trey Parker This R-rated, adults-oriented 81 minute animated film, a spin-off of the animated TV series South Park, has been judged one of the most obscenity-filled, vulgar and profane animations ever made - clocking in at almost 400 profane words, with even more examples of offensive gestures, use of racial epithets and ethnic slurs, blasphemous references to God, scatological humor, and acts of violence by its young cast of characters. Even its subtitle was a reference to a large uncircumcised phallus, and the film's song "Uncle F--ka" contained almost three

dozen uses of the F-word. [Note: The song title was changed from "Mother F--ka" to escape an NC-17 rating by the ratings board.] The film's story opened with the viewing of a film within a film by third-grade boys - an Rrated movie featuring Canadians Terrance & Phillip - as a result, they were 'corrupted' and their parents led censorship efforts that ultimately pressured the United States to wage war against Canada. It was an incongruous combination of an animation starring four pint-sized 8 year-olds (Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny), a musical (with twelve songs including the Oscar-nominated "Blame Canada"), a political satire (Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was depicted as the homosexual lover of Satan), a parody of Disney films (i.e., Beauty and the Beast) and Broadway, and a diatribe against misguided censorship (i.e., the motion picture ratings system) and American parenting. Angels were portrayed as nude females, and one child was incinerated when lighting his flatulence.

Straw Dogs (1971) Sam Peckinpah This disturbing film further ignited controversy over screen violence and misogynistic sexual abuse of women in the early 70s. The unflinching film from Sam Peckinpah (following his equally divisive film The Wild Bunch (1969)) starred Dustin Hoffman as David Sumner, a bookish, mild-mannered American mathematician on sabbatical living in a rural England town - the childhood village of his teasingly-seductive young bride Amy (Susan George). After she flaunted herself flirtatiously in view of the local townsfolk, one of the local thugs (one of whom was an ex-boyfriend) assaulted the provocative wife in a graphic double rape scene, which led to a cathartic eruption and escalation of violence. The film was accused of implying that she brought on the assault (possibly as a means to insult her impassive husband) and actually might have enjoyed the first rape (a glamorization of rape). The climactic, stunning and barbaric ending also appeared to morally endorse vigilante violence, especially because of the main character's redemptive yet unsatisfying homicidal rampage. It was re-edited for an R-rating and faced censorship bans in England for 30 years.

Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971) Melvin Van Peebles This unconventional, revolutionary, and seminal blaxploitation film (released just before the Hollywood-financed Shaft (1971)) from the early 70s with an all-black cast was directed, coproduced, edited, scored, and written by African-American independent film-maker Melvin Van Peebles (his film debut) - he also starred as the macho black hustler title character. The

Hollywood establishment refused to financially back this gritty, low-budget, sex-filled, realistic film with never-before-seen images, soft-core sex and inflammatory racial politics, so Peebles self-financed it and sought monetary backing from Bill Cosby. It was the first highly profitable independent film made by a black filmmaker. After he refused to submit the film to the ratings board (the MPAA), he rated his own film with an X-rating - and Peebles used this to his marketing advantage in its tagline advertising on posters: "Rated X By An All-White Jury!" However, only two theaters in the entire United States would screen the film at first - until it became a big hit and highly profitable. The radical Black Panthers praised the film, while the mainstream black-oriented Ebony Magazine denounced it - Hollywood studios were ultimately forced to acknowledge the monetary potential of the untapped, urban African-American market (similar to the effect Easy Rider (1969) had on its countercultural audiences) as a result of this influential film. The documentary-style, cheaply-made film shot on location in about three weeks was an anti-White, anti-authority diatribe - explained in the film's opening: "This film is dedicated to all the Brothers and Sisters who had enough of the Man...Starring: The Black Community." It was supplemented with jump-cuts, experimental lighting, freeze-frames, tinted and overlapping images and montages as it chronicled the successful (uncharacteristically) flight of a black fugitive nicknamed "Sweet Sweetback" (due to his large-sized manhood and insatiable sexual prowess) through Los Angeles - and toward and across the Mexican border. The film opened with underaged Sweet Sweetback as an orphan boy (Melvin's 13 year-old son Mario) engaging in explicit sex (and losing his virginity) with an older prostitute in an all-black brothel, and further explicit sex acts throughout the film featured poorly-lit fullfrontal nudity. The film ended with the superimposed text: "Watch out -- A Baad Assss Nigger is Coming Back To Collect Some Dues..." Peebles reportedly received VD during the making of this film. In Mario's own autobiographical film Baadasssss! (2003) years later about the making of the landmark independent film, he revealed the upset caused by the explicit scene he was forced to engage in.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) Tobe Hooper Hooper's low-budget, seminal exploitation horror film (with a quasi-documentary feel) was made on a budget of $300,000 - and became highly profitable (approximately $31 million) through its advertising campaign ("Who will survive - and what will be left of them?"). Surprisingly, there was little blood and no close-ups of the fatal blows, although it became the 70's most controversial cult horror film and the precursor of later slasher films. Its unpleasant storyline was loosely based on the real-life Wisconsin serial killer and skin-

fetishist Ed Gein - as was Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and Demme's The Silence of the Lambs (1991). The skillfully-directed film told about a family trio of unsympathetic, cannibalistic, homicidal, ex-slaughterhouse workers/fiends: a Gulf station attendant, a hitchhiker (Edwin Neal), and Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) - who slaughtered college-aged kids (and anyone else) who happened to trespass in their area - and then intended to eat their human flesh and sell the remains as 'sausage'. The R-rated, painful-to-watch, nightmarish film opened with a sober narration about a crime spree - vandals desecrating graveyards in a remote section of Texas. During a visit to Sally Hardesty's (Marilyn Burns) grandfather's grave, she and her wheelchair-bound, sadistic and fat brother Franklin (Paul A. Partain) and friends Pam (Teri McMinn), Pam's boyfriend Kirk (William Vail), and Sally's boyfriend Jerry (Allen Danziger) investigated her grandfather's run-down, deserted farm. The murders began with the first appearance of Leatherface from behind a sliding door in another deserted house (where there were skeleton bones and human remains strewn about) - he wore a bloody butcher's apron and a mask stitched out of human skin - and wielded a roaring chain saw. The masked man suddenly appeared and sledge-hammered Kirk's head, and then hung a screaming Pam on a meat hook through her upper back. After carving up the dead Kirk with a chain saw, Jerry was also killed with a sledgehammer after discovering a deep-frozen, half-dead Pam in a large chest freezer, and Franklin was slaughtered through his stomach with the chain saw. Running in terror, Sally unfortunately ran into Leatherface's house, where she was soon held captive in the infamous dinner scene (and had her finger cut as a blood-appetizer for the weakened, withered, vampiric and patriarchal Grandfather (John Dugan)). In the film's climax at dawn, a bloody and deranged-looking Sally escaped in the back of a pickup truck and left the killer spinning on the highway with his buzzing chainsaw. The horror flick deeply divided critics - some praised it for its depiction of deprived, 'offthe-main-highway' rural America and the social effects upon its people. Others deplored it for its effective yet mindless slasher mentality. It was banned twice in France for potentially inciting violence, and for 25 years in the UK.

Titicut Follies (1967) Fredrick Wiseman First-time filmmaker Frederick Wiseman's despairing cinema-verite (observational or objective) masterpiece, one of the greatest documentaries of all time, was about the horrid and abusive conditions ("painful aspects of mental disease") at the state-run Massachusetts

Correctional Institution in Bridgewater, a prison-hospital asylum for seriously ill, heavilytranquilized men (defined by authorities as "criminally insane" or "sexually dangerous"). The film's title referred to a mock-softshoe song/dance routine ("Strike Up the Band"), performed and acted out at the beginning and end of the film by the inmates and prison officers during an annual vaudeville/variety show (the 'Titicut Follies') performance at the institution. The silent and passive camera witnessed the stripping, dehumanizing and humiliation of mental patients (who were treated like wild animals) by bullying guards, wardens and psychiatrists. One inmate, who was starving himself to death as protest, was force-fed through a rubber tube roughly inserted into his nostril - followed shortly by the image of his face as he laid in a coffin while being prepared for his funeral. This highly controversial film (filmed in 1966 on black and white 16 mm. film over a period of 29 days) was barred from distribution and withdrawn from circulation from 1967-1992, by legal action launched by state authorities, because it was considered a violation of the rights of privacy of the prison inmates it filmed, and because it was considered obscene (the film showed male frontal nudity). It was only shown at the New York Film Festival in 1967, and had two limited runs in New York -- aside from a few screenings before film societies. [Note: Director Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor (1963) similarly exposed the conditions in US mental hospitals.]

Triumph Of The Will (1935, Ger.) # 15 Leni Riefenstahl Nazi Fuhrer leader Adolf Hitler commissioned dancer/actress-turned filmmaker Leni Rienfenstahl to make this notorious documentary to record and celebrate the sixth Nazi Reich Party Congress held in September 1934 in Nuremberg. This spectacular propagandistic film glorified and praised the might of the unjust and evil Nazi regime and state with masterful images, rapid cuts, a Wagnerian score, and ingenious camera angles and compositions. This infamous, extravagant two-hour film is still considered the most powerful propaganda film ever made, with grandiose opening shots of Messianic Hitler's arrival by plane, his heroic entrance and adulation by saluting ("Sieg Heil") multitudes and uniformed party members and soldiers (and Hitler Youth), and his charismatic exalted character during rousing speeches. Director Riefenstahl was imprisoned by the Allies for four years after the war, although she continued to protest by insisting that her work was purely historical and an example of cinema verite, rather than the repellent work which it was criticized and accused of being.

Protests greeted Riefenstahl at a 1974 Telluride Film Festival tribute, and the AntiDefamation League decried a 1975 screening in Atlanta as ''morally insensitive.'' Riefenstahl herself never shook her Nazi-tainted past, and repeatedly claimed the film was more imagery than ideological.

United 93 (2006) # 16 Paul Greengrass This R-rated chillingly-realistic, unflinching, emotionally-moving ultra-verite docu-drama by British writer/director Paul Greengrass told the courageous and tragic story of heroic crew members and passengers on United's Flight 93 (flying from Newark NJ to San Francisco), the fourth hijacked plane on September 11, 2001, who were able to thwart the terrorists and prevent the plane from reaching its intended target - but instead crashing into a field in western Pennsylvania. The film was made all the more real by including some of the actual FAA ground crew and military officers involved in the actual event as cast members, and by retelling the tale in real-time. Necessarily containing intense and frightening sequences of terror and violence, the film (although precisely told and respectfully treating its subject matter without editorializing, theories, stereotypical human interest stories or personal dramas, or flag-waving politics) was criticized for its trailer, that made the film appear different than it actually was -- as a conventional thriller. Others wondered whether it was "too soon" after the event (on the 5th year anniversary) for US audiences to view - and varying opinions contributed to the emotional debate. Universal also received criticism that it was exploiting a national tragedy, although others felt it was important to help remember and be inspired by the shattering event.

Viridiana (1961, Sp./Mex.) Luis Bunuel Bunuel's film has been generally considered a masterpiece and it won the Palme d'Or at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival in the year of its release. The film was originally banned in the director's home country and condemned by the Catholic church for its perceived indictment of Catholic self-righteousness, blasphemy, and obscenity. It was also controversial for its scenes hinting at incest, rape and necrophilia. In the plot, devout Spanish convent novice Viridiana (Silvia Pinal) visited her widower uncle Don Jaime's (Fernando Rey) who was still mourning the death of his wife due to a heart attack on their wedding night - without consummation. To reluctantly satisfy his obsession with her similar looks, Virdiana was clothed in his wife's wedding gown -- and drugged. He

then carried her into the bedroom, loosened her dress, fondled her and was tempted to rape her. The next day, he falsely confessed to her that he had taken her virginity to keep her from returning to the convent for her final vows -- but the ultimate result was his own guilty selfhumiliation and a suicidal hanging. Another of the film's most controversial scenes was a drunken parody and re-enactment of Da Vinci's 'The Last Supper' by a group of beggars, to the sounds of the "Hallelujah Chorus" in Handel's Messiah - one of the celebrants even raped the virtuous and idealistic Viridiana.

The Warriors (1979) # 14 Walter Hill This urban fantasy cult movie (a modern retelling inspired by the Greek tale Anabasis by Xenophon) was director/writer Walter Hill's third feature film. It was a surprise hit although it had a large cast of unknown actors from the New York theater area, and it presented a cartoonish-like display of violence (without blood) and an unrealistic view of NY street gangs (with their flamboyant costumes and face paint). However, the film's original poster, which stated the film's tagline: "These are the armies of the night" and this additional phrase: "They are 100,000 strong. They outnumber the cops five to one. They could run New York City", outraged and scared many people - and some of the film's early showings incited lethal violence (in Palm Springs and Oxnard, California) and caused gang outbreaks. Due to these reports of criminal violence in a few locations, the film was temporarily pulled out of circulation in over half a dozen theaters by its nervous Paramount Studios despite being a box office success. One theater in Washington hired full time security until the end of the film's run. Paramount also attempted to modify the film's advertising campaign by pulling its print and TV advertising, but then was compelled to remove the film from release entirely. The film later gained a cult following when the cable TV and the VCR revolution occurred, and through midnight showings. This controversial film told the story of The Warriors gang (from Coney Island) who attended a truce meeting of gang members in Van Cortland Park in the Bronx, where charismatic gangleader Cyrus (Roger Hill) was shot dead by anarchistic Luther (David Patrick Kelly) of the Rogues gang after a speech, with the Warriors falsely accused of the crime by the Gramercy Riffs. The Warriors gang, led by reluctant hero Swan (Michael Beck) and joined by tough-talking would-be girlfriend Mercy (Deborah Van Valkenburgh) from the Orphans, had to flee back to their home turf without weapons and with every rival gang in

pursuit through the dark night of NYC. Lynne Thigpen's role was as a melodic-voiced, omniscient radio DJ who communicated God-like through coded-message broadcasts, providing a running commentary about the progress of all the rival gangs and the movements and location of the Warriors - she was represented only by her full, sensual fire-red lipsticked lips. The gangs they encountered along each stop of their subway ride across town included the Turnball ACs (multi-racial skinheads riding in old green schoolbuses, with chains and planks of wood for weapons), the Orphans (low-class hoodlums with razor blades), the infamous Baseball Furies (represented the Furies - with baseball bats as weapons), the seductive Lizzies (a female gang representing the Sirens), the Punks (dungaree clad who fight the Warriors in the men's room of the Bowery station, in one of the film's best scenes), the Rogues (led by Luther who memorably taunted with empty clinking beer bottles: "Warriors, come out to playyy"), the (Gramercy) Riffs (the largest and most powerful gang - now vengeful and led by Masai after Cyrus' death) -- and many more -- and finally, the New York City police.

The Wild Bunch (1969) Sam Peckinpah Director/co-writer Sam Peckinpah's provocative, brilliant yet controversial breakthrough Western was shocking for its graphic and elevated portrayal of violence and savagely-explicit, orgiastic carnage, yet hailed for its truly realistic and reinterpreted vision of the dying West in the early 20th century (at a time when mass-produced murder was possible with the Gatling gun). The film opened with innocent village children intrigued by putting red fire ants and scorpions together and setting fire to the swarming pile. The much-imitated, influential film was book-ended by two extraordinary sequences, both massacres. The gang of desperadoes were first assaulted in the film's opening ambush following a failed bank robbery in a Texas border town, and then brutally destroyed in the film's conclusion - as united comrades in a selfless, redemptive act - by a savage and vindictive Mexican warlord named Mapache (Emilio Fernandez) after a double-crossing arms deal. The two scenes included some of the bloodiest, most violent shoot-ups ever filmed. Peckinpah choreographed each of the film's two bloodbaths as a visually prolonged, beautiful ballet - a semi slow-motion, aesthetically breath-taking, non-gratuitous, lyrical, extreme celebration of bodies spurting blood and being torn apart by bullets. The slaughter of innocent bystanders (in a temperance parade), and the use of women as shields (in the allmale film) were served up as counterpoints to the media's honest display of violence during the late 60s, with the Vietnam War, assassinations, urban riots, and other events filling the airwaves. Due to its violence, the film was originally threatened with an X-rating by the newly-created

MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), but an R-rating was its final decision. A socalled 'director's cut' version of the film, threatened with an NC-17 rating when submitted to the MPAA ratings board in 1993 prior to a re-release in 1994, held up the film's re-release for many months.

Year of the Dragon (1985) Michael Cimino Oliver Stone [Co-screenwriter] This much-forgotten cop-thriller gangster film was Michael Cimino's first film after the disastrous Heaven's Gate (1980). It was criticized for alleged racism toward the ChineseAmerican community in its story of angry Vietnam vet and Captain Stanley White (Mickey Rourke), a racist police officer who pledged to "clean up" the violence in mid-80s New York's Chinatown. With the aid of an exotic Asian-American reporter Tracy Tzu (Ariane in mostly gratuitous nude scenes), White staged a relentless, lawless anti-crime crusade against the community and its powerful Asian Mafia (Triad) leader Joey Tai (John Lone), who was responsible for the murder, corruption, extortion and drug dealing. Based loosely on Robert Daley's novel of the same name, Chinese-Americans protested the racial stereotyping, xenophobism ("chinks" and "slant-eyed" and "yellow niggers" were terms used in the film) and sexism before the film opened. Protesters from a coalition of organizations picketed various premieres around the country. Some groups worried that moviegoers would get the notion that Chinatown was unsafe - and feared an economic downturn in the community. Numerous objections of political uncorrectness led the studio to add the following disclaimer to the beginning of the film: "This film does not intend to demean or to ignore the many positive features of Asian Americans and specifically Chinese American communities. Any similarity between the depiction in this film and any association, organization, individual or Chinatown that exists in real life is accidental." ”””””””””””””

Deepu P.Thomas, Pampoorickal House, Athirampuzha Post, Kottayam District, Kerala, India.  0091-9846821130. 0091-481-2595829.

Date: 23/09/2008.