Carnal Knowledge (1971)
D. Mike Nichols

The prurient title of this raw, taboo-breaking Mike Nichols film (with a script by satirist and cartoonist Jules Feiffer), meaning 'sexual intercourse', brought millions of patrons into the theatres for its character-based tale of the exploits of two Amherst college roommates: shy and naive Sandy (singer Art Garfunkel) and narcissistic womanizer Jonathan (Jack Nicholson), and their dysfunctional, misogynistic sexual attitudes and 'machismo' relationships (and breakups) with women over a 20-year period (from the late-1940s to the late 60s). Their female counterparts included Candice Bergen (as Sandy's respectable college sweetheart and wife Susan), Ann-Margret (as Jonathan's voluptuous mistress and suicidal wife Bobbie), Carol Kane (as Sandy's 17 year-old hippie chick girlfriend Jennifer in the late 60s), and Rita Moreno (as Louise - appearing in the final scene as a prostitute kneeling between impotent Jonathan's legs while pleasuring him and encouraging him to rise up and be manly).

A film print was seized by Albany, Georgia officials in 1972, claiming that it violated obscenity laws, and the manager of the film theatre was arrested (and convicted, but it was later overturned). More than two years later, it was brought before the US Supreme Court which found that the film was not obscene and "did not depict sexual conduct in a patently offensive way." Nowadays, the film would be considered tame, with its minor amount of nudity or explicit sexual activity, although its dialogue was ripe, candidly frank and open for its time (e.g., Jonathan contemptuously termed women 'female ballbusters').

A Clockwork Orange (1971, UK)
D. Stanley Kubrick

At the time, Stanley Kubrick's randomly ultra-violent, over-indulgent, graphically-stylized film of the near future - and most controversial film - was one of only two movies rated X on its original release (the other was Midnight Cowboy (1969)) that was nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. The subversive film was hotly debated when it was released - both highly praised and objectionable for its bleak outlook, and for its pairing of comedy with 'ultra-violence'. [Two other films that were highly criticized a few years earlier for breaking similar taboos were Sam Peckinpah's bloody western The Wild Bunch (1969), and Bonnie and Clyde (1967).]

The dystopic film about fascist social conditioning and free will was heavily criticized and opposed by religious groups for its sexual and violent content. Feminists were outraged with some of the misogynistic images - such as the obscene female poses of the supine furniture in the Korova bar, the prolonged rape of a big-breasted woman, a gigantic penis sculpture being used as a murder weapon on the Cat Lady, and a view of the protagonist's snake gliding toward a woman's vagina.

The most infamous was the rape scene of Mrs. Alexander (Adrienne Corri) in her opulent house, sociopath Alex's (Malcolm McDowell) gang of derby-hatted droogs (Pete, Georgie, and Dim) who were wearing masks with comical noses. After cutting away her skin-tight red jumpsuit Alex delivered horribly vicious blows of his boots to Mr. Alexander's (Patrick Magee) mid-section -- timed rhythmically to his gleeful singing and tap-dancing of Gene Kelly's tune "Singin' in the Rain".

In a later scene, Alex was subjected to corrective treatment -- experimental aversion therapy imposed by the state in which he was behavioristically conditioned (with his eyes clamped wide-open in order to view scenes of violence in films while drugged to induce nausea and forced to listen to his beloved Beethoven) to suppress his violent and sexual drives - and in the process gave up his own individual and personal rights to become a model citizen.

Because of the copy-cat violence (some gangs dressed as droogs sang "Singin' in the Rain" as they carried on violently) that the film was blamed for by the media and courts, Kubrick withdrew it from circulation in Britain about a year after its release. Some believed it was because it was rumored that Kubrick and his family had received death threats. It wasn't officially available there again - in theaters or on video - until 2000, a year after his death.

The Devils (1971, UK)
D. Ken Russell

Ken Russell directed this blasphemous, shocking and excessive depiction of the repressive 17th century when sexuality was equated with Satanism - a loose adaptation of Aldous Huxley's "The Devils Of Loudon". The film's setting was the fortified city of Loudon, 150 miles southwest of Paris, in the year 1634.

The film was vilified and met with outrage in its story of a womanizing (non-celibate), vain, libertine, rebellious activist renegade-priest Father Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed) who faced questioning and persecution for his "diabolic possession" of the local, repressed Ursuline nuns.

It included Vanessa Redgrave as tormented hunchbacked Sister Jeanne, who had unfulfilled, warped sexual desires for Grandier and expressed them through self-mutilation and self-flagellation. The only way the monarchy of Inquisition-obsessed France (including Cardinal Richelieu (Christopher Logue) and King Louis XIII's (Graham Armitage) establishment) could destroy the Protestant-leaning French town of Loudon was to attack the liberal religious leader as a sorcerer and practitioner of witchcraft.

When the priest impregnated nobleman's cousin Philippe (Georgina Hale), married wealthy heiress Madeleine Dubroux (Gemma Jones) in secret, and then refused to remove the city walls around his fortified town, fanatical witch-hunter and exorcist Father Barre (Michael Gothard) was quickly dispatched to question, torture (headscrews, nails into hands, etc), tie up, and execute the profligate priest.

During the proceedings, possessed nuns, led by Sister Jeanne's denunciations, performed orgiastic rituals publicly in Church to bolster claims against him. In the controversial staged mock exorcism scene, dubbed the orgiastic "rape of Christ" sequence, the sexually-hysterical nuns acted as if they were possessed, due to threats of execution from one of the church's accusers. The crazed nuns displayed full-frontal nudity, and masturbated with (or raped) a large-sized crucifix or effigy of Jesus, while Father Mignon (Murray Melvin) watched from afar and committed self-abuse under his robe. As a result, Grandier was convicted of obscenity, blasphemy, and sacrilege, and burned alive at the stake.

Prior to the film's release, the "rape of Christ" sequence was excised. And the scene of Grandier's burning-at-the-stake torture as a heretic was shortened. A scene at the end of the film was mostly edited out - of Sister Jeanne masturbating with the charred thighbone of Grandier after he was executed.

The film contained graphic depictions of open sores and medieval medicine treatments for the plague (with hornets). It provoked protest and outrage from Christian groups and viewing audiences everywhere. It was banned outright in Italy and its stars (Redgrave and Reed) were threatened with three years' jail time if they entered the country.

Dirty Harry (1971)
D. Don Siegel

Dirty Harry took its name from the fact that its unorthodox title character, San Francisco Inspector Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood), became embroiled with the most challenging and controversial ('dirty') cases of urban crime, often using tactics of police brutality and an attitude of "take-no-prisoners" that ignored criminals' rights in order to restore victims' rights. Callahan's open contempt for normal Miranda law restrictions illustrated his belief that criminals must be stopped - by any means, since traditional law enforcement ("by the book") tactics weren't effective.

Siegel's film was considered sensational because of its overt violence (reflecting the early 70s era of rising crime and calls for 'law and order') and occasional glimpses of nudity. The duelling combatants (the cop and the criminal) throughout the film - an individualistic, unconventional, neo-fascist, super-hero police detective with a .44 Magnum weapon who threw away the rule book, and his complementary opposite - a pathological, malevolent and sadistic criminal named Scorpio (similar to SF's real-life Zodiac Killer, played by Andy Robinson) who demanded an extortionist ransom of $100,000, both shared traits of brutal violence and insanity.

The police thriller spawned many debates about the political stance of the film and the complex issue of the conflicting rights of victims, suspects, and society. Was it a reactionary message piece against imperfect, "liberal" judicial trends that let 'sicko' criminals get away, literally, with murder? Or was Siegel encouraging audiences to empathically identify with the indiscriminate vengeance of the violent, fascist, anarchic, unrestrained vigilante 'killer' on the side of the law who acted as an autonomous police power?