The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Censorship Controversies occur with films that so flaunt good taste or cross taboo lines that they run afoul of censors in some countries. One should be aware that every country has their own form of censorship and they vary greatly from region to region – the USA, for instance, will cut any nudity on public broadcast tv networks, something that is perfectly permissible and free-to-air in many other countries, and this sits at contrast to India where depiction of kissing is forbidden. Other countries will forbid any Western films or even cinema itself. Censorship standards also change over time with the loosening of social mores.
In general, the themes that court the greatest outrage in Western cinema are those that depict frank sexuality or nudity on screen. Up until the 1980s, almost any mention of homosexuality was regarded as taboo in Hollywood but this has gained widespread acceptance today. However, anything depicting topics like Necrophilia, bestiality or the sexual use of minors still is taboo, as is the depiction of genitalia in mainstream films.
Violence can also regarded as a taboo topic however what is cut and what is not varies widely without any seeming consistency. Usually more graphic examples or torture or realistic scenes of bloodshed attract attention. So too does the topic of Cannibalism.
The most influential act of censorship was the Hays Code established in the USA in 1934, which until the 1960s dictated what acts could be seen on screen including couples not being seen in the same bed, the types of action a hero or woman could be seen doing, any type of sexual activity or reference to homosexuality, among other things. Another notorious piece of censorship was the Video Nasties during the UK in 1984, which banned assorted works for their claimed violent content.
From the notorious 1970s/80s period of Italian cinema, this was listed as one of the notorious Video Nasties. This features a lone cannibal killer amok on a Greek island amid plentiful gore
Italian thriller that attained some censorship controversy when it came out. Minsy Farmer is an assistant coroner haunted and obsessed by the corpses she tends
Splendidly nasty French film that feels like Thelma and Louise by way of Natural Born Killers where two women pick up guns and go on a shooting spree against men who are abusive jerks. Directed by two women and cast with porn actresses, this holds little back
Film that gained a notoriety for its scenes of a stage magician torturing and mutilating people. This seems fueled by a nasty misogyny involving the degradation and killing of women.
Jess Franco is a cult director, having mostly specialised in exploitation and horror. Here he turns his hand to the early 80s slasher film. The result was listed as a Video Nasty in the UK
Italian horror cinema of the 1970s/80s had some of the most extreme material put on screen. Here Joe D’Amato directs a film about a young man with a necrophile obsession and pushes the material to extremes that take you back
Vincent Gallo’s muchly ridiculed directorial effort is an unbelievably indulgent film consisting of long, tedium-inducing scenes where nothing happens. It does arrive at a a surprise left field ending that travels into genre territory
An entry from Italian exploitation cinema’s early 1980s fad for zombie films, this has been put together with no other intent than providing a progression of extremely gory set-pieces
Along with Cannibal Holocaust, this was the most notorious and extreme of the Italian cannibal film fad of the 70s/early 80s. The film becomes a catalogue of violent savageries that are not recommended for the faint of heart
THE most extreme film covered on this site. The defining work of the notorious Italian cannibal genre, a pseudo-documentary work that features stomach churning tortures, guttings and actual animal mutilations
Cult Italian horror director Lucio Fulci plays himself, a horror director being driven to hallucinations and acts of murder by the violence he directs in his films
A horror film set among the UK’s Video Nasties censorship controversy of the 1980s. Niamh Alger works for the censorship board and is drawn into a disturbed state of mind by material she uncovers
One of the key films by Stanley Kubrick, centred around ultra-violent thugs in a near-future setting. Everybody was outraged at Kubrick choreographing scenes of violence to classical music but the film has a considerable brilliance and very dark sense of humour
David Cronenberg tackles J.G. Ballard’s controversial novel, creating a fascinatingly perverse work that ventures into a world where people become sexually aroused by car crashes
Kevin Smith makes a film about Catholicism. Smith’s irreverent humour caused considerable controversy when the film came out, although this is also an interesting and thoughtful work that does make a number of thoughtful theological points
A film that was the cause of much censorship controversy when it came out where two teenage girls decide to become devil worshippers and engage on a spree of cruel and malicious acts
A film from the slasher era – the scenes of the psycho of the show incinerating victims with a flamethrower were the cause of censorship controversy. Less a slasher film and more a psycho film, this pushes into some disturbing headspace
The first film from Abel Ferrara, a seething, angry work about an artist who lets his frustrations out by randomly killing with a power drill. Listed as a Video Nasty and banned in several countries
Ferociously paced low-budget hit that put the names of Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell on the map. What made the film a cult hit was Raimi’s full tilt pace and entertainingly over-the-top splatter effects
Shock film in which director Tod Browning depicts the lives of the deformities at a circus, casting real-life freaks in the roles. This was banned for many years before being discovered as a cult classic
The first X-rated animated film. Ralph Bakshi’s first film, taken from Robert Crumb’s cartoons, this is hilariously raunchy as the titular talking cat takes a strung-out but often sharply politicised journey through 1960s counter-culture
One of the notorious 1970s Nazisploitation films, this Italian-made entry is one work that crosses way over taboo lines and makes for extreme watching
Film about a series of gory deaths at a bowling alley, this really pushes an envelope of good taste. This gained attention for makeup effects artist Ryan Nicholson and was the cause of much censorship controversy
A controversy-laden Jean-Luc Godard film that offers an irreverent modern-day retelling of the Immaculate Conception. An amusing idea that vanishes under Godard’s pretensions
Hatchet was a homage to the 1980s slasher film that had a mild amusement. In the sequels, Adam Green upped the number of genre cameos and in-jokes, while pushing the gore effects to an extreme
An immensely disturbing film loosely based on serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. John McNaughton directs with a chillingly understated ordinariness and Michael Rooker has never been better in a role.
From the director of Cannibal Holocaust, Ruggero Deodato, comes this home invasion thriller that rips off The Last House on the Left. This was listed as a Video Nasty back in the day
Sequel to the original that pushes into even more perverse territory. This throws some amusing spins on the original, creating a unique protagonist, while also contriving to exist inside an extremely disturbed headspace
The first two Human Centipede films are masterpieces of twisted extremes. The third entry goes astray in giving the show over to Dieter Laser in one of the most over-the-top performances ever unleashed
An astonishingly perverse work where a mad surgeon abducts three people intending to connect their bodies as a single digestive tract. This is a work that pushes itself into truly warped territory
Controversial variant on the human bloodsports plot of The Most Dangerous Game but where liberals hunt conservatives. A film with a darkly satiric bite that sets out to offend people on both sides of the political fence
One of the most raw and savage films ever made, this sits on a dividing line between true horror and exploitation as we experience Camille Keaton being raped with no detail spared before exacting a brutal revenge
One of the key films upon which the Takashi Miike cult is based. Miike takes a nominal Yakuza plot based on a manga where he pushes the sadism and ultra-violence to a mind-boggling extreme
The original Apt Pupil, an extraordinary study in cruelty about a Nazi war criminal confined to an iron lung and the way his past cruelties influence a teenage boy reading his journals
A highly controversial Gaspar Noe film that is all told in reverse chronological order, depicting the rape of Monica Bellucci and violent revenge by her husband Vincent Cassel
The first and best screen adaptation of H.G. Wells’ novel The Island of Dr Moreau. Wells was not happy but Charles Laughton is a great Moreau and the film develops a remarkable sexual undertow
Notorious Video Nasty, a key work in the Nunsploitation genre with Anita Ekberg as a drug addicted nun who kills her patients. Apparently based on real life
Whether we asked for it or not, director Bruce LaBruce gives us the world’s first gay pornographic zombie film in which a zombie finds it can revive the dead by having sex with them
A work of exploitation notoriety about snuff movies. Seen in heavily cut and edited forms, the film holds an undeniably sordid and nasty charge but mostly comes across as amateurish
Wes Craven’s first film, a savage shock to the system about a group of psychopaths that brutalise two girls. With this, Craven inaugurated the Backwoods Brutality film; this is still one of the best of the cycle
Muchly reviled slasher film that has undeniable effect in its determination to go all the way. I would argue that it is actually a far better film than Friday the 13th
Hilariously adult and filthy minded retelling of the Marquis de Sade story using puppets. Quills crossbred with Meet the Feebles if you like.
One of a rare handful of films that can be considered the most extreme ever made, this a catalogue of the true-life atrocities and experiments inflicted on prisoners during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in WWII. An intensely uncomfortable watch not recommended for the faint-hearted
The Monty Python team’s finest hour, a wickedly irreverent spoof on Christianity that contains some of their most side-splitting gags
A psycho film about a serial killing photographer that stalks Las Vegas, this collapses under its determination to be edgy
Oliver Stone film with Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis as a couple on an ultra-violent mass murder spree. Stone gets heavy-handedly preachy but directs with an excess of style that proves enormously entertaining
From German director Jörg Buttgereit, a shocking and full-on film about necrophilia that defies all taboos and holds little back. This has a raw, in our face shock value that hits direct to the gut
A Mexican film about a scientist who turns his son into an ape man that goes amok. A 1940s mad scientist film with the addition of modern exploitation elements. Listed as a Video Nasty in the UK.
One of the original Video Nasties. In all rather regards, this is a fairly scuzzy looking grindhouse psycho film. Nothing terribly interesting to the show, although it does eventually offer a couple of gory killings, which is what got the censors upset during the day
Classic psycho film that came out the same year as Psycho but was killed in release being seen as morally repugnant. From the great Michael Powell, this features a killer obsessed with filming women as he kills them and finds an uncomfortable brilliance in the way it blurs a director’s obsessions and a viewer’s complicity in what they see on screen
Bafflingly surreal film from Andrzej Zulawski in which Isabelle Adjani gives birth to a tentacled monster in a subway. Nobody has any idea what the film is about but it has become a cult work since
An effort from the heyday of the 1980s slasher film. Made with slightly more directorial competence that most of its contemporaries, a level of gore that caused censorship issues in some countries, although this proves weak when offering script rationale for proceedings
This was one of the classic 1980s splatter films. Stuart Gordon throws most of H.P. Lovecraft’s tone out the window and goes for hilariously black comedy served up with outrageously over-the-top effects
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s adaptation of the work by the Marquis de Sade is a catalogue of depravities and tortures and one of the most disturbing films ever made
Possibly the most extreme film ever made, a venture into the underground of Serbain snuff filmmaking. A film that holds back from breaking no taboo and ventures into exceedingly disturbing places
Portrait of a disturbed teenage girl on a killing and torture spree. Makes fictitious claims to be based on a true story but mostly seems designed to outrage an audience. At which, despite an undeniable amateurishness, you cannot deny it succeeds
Not the first but the most famous of the psycho Santa films. At the time, it was just another slasher film exploiting a holiday title. However, this does the slasher movie formula rather well while digging into Christmas sentiment with a bite that takes you aback
A serial killer film that is fairly strong stuff, starring Ted Raimi as a killer who skins his victims and wears their bodies. This pushed the censorship envelope considerably back in its day. With Ricki Lake as an innocent housewife who befriends Raimi
A hardcore and irredeemably nasty film, this has the aesthetic of a snuff movie and features lots of scenes of victims tortured and vomiting
Arguably the world’s first Found Footage film, this gained a notoriety by conducting a scam that tried to sell it as a real snuff movie
Animated parody of the Tarzan films made with a very adult sense of humour that was banned in several countries as a result
One of the key films in the cult of Takashi Miike that has been frequently banned for its taboo-defying outrages in which a mysterious visitor causes a family household to descend into perverse extremes
One of the most extreme films among the early 1980s fad for Italian zombie films, which it also manages to merge with the Italian cannibal film. Beyond the provision of gore effects, there is not much else to the film