Dsilva71

Just saw this one a couple of nights ago. The disc sleave (from Netflix) said it was banned from the New York Film Festival that year. Is this true?

MurraySiskind

I rented a copy of Battle Royal last year. It was a VCD but the quality was great. So at least there are ways to see some of these movies even if they are "banned".

RichC2

Yeah, Tartan decided they'd distribute the movie in such a way that Americans could import it, since they knew nobody would pick it up over here. Thus they now have a Region 0 "Progressive Scan NTSC" DVD release of it that offers "Superior Video Quality", that was released months after their initial Region 2 PAL release.

On a side note, it's funny that two of those chuck jones cartoons got banned, yet "Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips" isn't.. dunno why I why that funny - but it is.

NCMojo

I will not rest, I will not sleep or eat, until Groucho Reads His Laundry List gets the international attention that it deserves.

Viva la revolution!

Buford T Pusser

What about the films of Russ Meyer?

Vixen was a definite problem in some cities. I know Cleveland and Cincinatti would not allow it be played and he took it to court, the Supreme Court IIRC.

Buford T Pusser

Just found this:

1968 began the third and perhaps most astonishing phase of his career: the outrageous, Technicolor sex opus. Vixen, starring the incomparable Erica Gavin, immediately caused a furor throughout the country and, according to Meyer, went on to become his most successful film. "Vixen and all of those films seem so mild now," marvels Gavin, who dropped out of acting in the mid-'70s. "It's really hard to believe that movie was actually banned in Cincinnati! It was a lot of fun and really exciting to work with Russ." In the film, Gavin portrays a married woman in Canada whose bush pilot husband's frequent absences give her to opportunity to pounce on anyone who crosses her path, including her own brother. The husband brings a young married couple to stay with them, and Vixen promptly sleeps with both of them after doing an erotic dance with a fish that must be seen to be believed. The climax of Vixen, which gave it the necessary "social significance" to avoid obscenity charges, features the racist Vixen, a black draft dodger, and a Communist spouting hysterical rhetoric until the tongue in cheek conclusion.



http://www.scorelogue.com/russmeyer.html


I also found another page that mentioned it being banned in Cleveland.

JoeyOhhhh

I believe that short is banned by Warner.

RichC2

Ah, I was going off the list from IMDB. Guess they only list government bans?

Sunday Morning

island of death

aka: island of perversion.

Truly sick & twisted film. But I like it.

Panda Phil

My memory may be faulty, but weren't Birth of a Nation and Todd Brownings Freaks both banned at one point?

Zodiac_Speaking

Haxan (1922): silent film about witchcraft.

Criterion released the dvd and it has played on the IFC channel.

Got statewide release in the 1970's as Witchcraft Throughout the Ages.

lesterlong

Can a movie even be banned? This is the US, home of the free!

Giles

From what I had read on "Realm" was that the film was delayed by Customs in that the levels of explicit sexuality were thought to be unshowable to the American Public. I'd have to re-research this on the web, but I thought it WAS shown at the New York Film Festival.

I don't know about here in the States, but I know that FREAKS was banned in the UK.

Another film that provoked a number of US city censorboard to sit up and take notice was the film: CALIGULA. The only city that really took a very vigilant stand and banned it outright from any public showings at the film's release was in Boston, Mass.

Interestingly, this film's scandolous history was that Penthouse initially released this film with a MPAA R-rating, only when the film became a cult classic a few months later they released the 142 minute X-rated version. The later VHS video version claimed to be the 156 minute 'Cannes' cut of the movie but was only corrected and restored to this lenght when the film was released on laserdisc and DVD. Penthouse own pictorials and stills from the film that graced a 'special issue' further showed additional scenes/alternate filmed scenes that didn't make the final cut of the film. Rumours abound that additional hardcore scenes that didnt get included in the theatrical cut: bestiality and semen facials (seen briefly in the final cut) are legendary into the notority the film spawned.

Nick Danger

The federal government leaned so hard on Irving Klaw that he destroyed all his original photos and films. All of his Betty Page stuff you see are from second-generation materials from collectors.

The feds still bust pornographers.

cultshock

Some of Klaw's stuff was quite extreme for the time period it was made (which is why it was very underground).

The porn industry has always had its problems with the feds and supposedly, after the war is finally finished, they will be turning their attention to adult videos (which have really been pushing the "legal boundries" the last couple of years, as the feds' attention has been preoccupied elsewhere).