Year of the Dragon (1985)



D. 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 Chinese-American 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."

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 all-male 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 so-called '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.

The Warriors (1979)



D. 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.

Viridiana (1961, Sp./Mex.)



D. 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.

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 self-humiliation 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.

United 93 (2006)



D. 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.

Triumph Of The Will (1935, Ger.)

D. 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 Anti-Defamation 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.

Titicut Follies (1967)

D. 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, heavily-tranquilized 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.]

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

D. 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 The 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, anti-religious 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)

D. 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 N. Italy at the close of WWII, where four fascist officials in a secluded chateau 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. In one scene, the youths were stripped, collared, leashed, and forced to act like dogs.

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 nipple-burning, including the forced eating of human excrement. It aroused outrage and disgust when it was released. It was prosecuted by various film certification boards and banned outright in numerous countries.

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)

D. Trey Parker



This R-rated, adults-oriented animated film, based upon 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. 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 R-rated 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)

D. 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)

D. 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, co-produced, 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 full-frontal 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)

D. 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, 'off-the-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.

Natural Born Killers (1994)

D. 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.

The Outlaw (1943)

D. 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 oft-unbuttoned, 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

D. Mel Gibson



Co-producer, co-writer, and director Mel Gibson's R-rated, self-financed, independent smash-hit 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 Catholic-tinged 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. 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)

D. 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 cross-haired 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)

D. 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 grossed-out 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, a live chicken copulation scene, public urination, the eating of dog feces, and a close-up of a singing (opening and closing) anus). 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 (Danny Mills), her voyeuristic traveling companion Cotton (Mary Vivian Pearce), and her half-dressed, 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.

Other shocking sequences included the "chicken rape" copulation scene, 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)

D. 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 G-string 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)
D. 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)
D. 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)
D. 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 (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, 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.

The Last Picture Show (1971)
D. 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 football-playing 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
D. 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)

D. Martin Scorsese

This controversial, profound, and challenging adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis's 1955 best-selling 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)
D. Stanley Kubrick
and
Lolita (1997)
D. 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 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. 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, but it did include a provocative scene of Swain rocking pleasurably on Irons' lap. 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.

The Message (1976, 1977) (aka Mohammed, Messenger of God)
D. Moustapha Akkad

Taglined as "The Story of Islam," this epic-length 178 minute dramatic biopic by Islamic, Syrian-born producer/director Akkad (who later produced all of the Halloween horror films) starred Anthony Quinn (Abdallah Geith in the 198 minute Arabic version) 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.

Protests, riots and death threats (by telephone) accompanied the film's production and making (totaling seven years), which was forced to move to Libya where it received financial backing and sponsorship from terrorist-friendly Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi. Unfounded rumors abounded that the Mohammed role would be played by American star Charlton Heston or Peter O'Toole. It also caused a stir because it was feared that the film would violate the Muslim belief (forbidden by Shari'a, Islamic holy law formed after Mohammed's death) that 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 film represented him either off-screen or as the camera's point-of-view.

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 siege against the local 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 about 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 film.

Ironically, in late 2005, Akkad died from injuries sustained during terrorist attacks in Jordan.

Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979, UK)

D. 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.

I Spit On Your Grave (1978) (aka Day of the Woman)
D. 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 Buster Keaton) 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 bathtub with a conveniently-placed knife, an axing, and a disembowelment with an outboard boat motor.

JFK (1991)
D. 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 well-publicized 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.

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)
D. Larry Clark

Director Larry Clark's much-criticized dark cinema verite independent film was a well-needed cautionary 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 and bordering on child pornography with lots of raunchy talk and simulated sex.

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 self-proclaimed "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 AIDS-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)    
D. 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 (Oscar-nominated 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 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)
D. 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)
D. 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, dis-emboweled, 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 one of the culprits with her mouth 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.

Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
D. 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)
D. 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.

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)
D. 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)

D. 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 film-makers. 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 on-location 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)
D. 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.)
D. Vilgot Sjöman

This landmark, avante-garde, mock-documentary film (shot with mostl