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The Most Controversial
Films of All-Time Part 7 |
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The Most Controversial
Films of All-Time Part 7 |
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Controversy-invoking films may be from almost any genre - documentaries, westerns, erotic-thrillers, dramas, horror, comedy, or animated, and more. Standards for what may be considered shocking, offensive or controversial have changed drastically over many decades.The voluntary ratings system of the Motion Picture Association of America can influence a film's public showing in a theatre -- an NC-17 rating or an unrated film may often close down a film's screening and lead to commercial failure.
Note: The films that are marked with a yellow
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The Most Controversial Films of All-Time
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| Film Title, Director, Explanation | Example |
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The Last Picture Show (1971)
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. |
  
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Last Tango In Paris (1972, It./Fr.)
# 9
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. |
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The Last Temptation Of Christ (1988)
# 6
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." |
   
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Lolita (1962, UK)
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 and incestual pedophilia. However, it contained virtually no female nudity (and a body double was used in one brief dimly-lit scene), and strict precautions were taken during filming. The first view of Lolita was in the garden where a lawn sprinkler soaked her pale sundress; in one controversial love-making scene in a hotel, they slept in the same bed and she wet-kissed him on the mouth after having showed him "everything" -- during the fade-out, Humbert explained in voice-over: "Gentlewomen of the jury, I was not even her first lover"; in another scene, Lolita nuzzled next to his crotch and inched her hand up his inner thigh when she asked him for a $2 allowance; in the film's most provocative scene, Lolita rocked pleasurably on Humbert's lap while reading the newspaper comic pages. The film was finally picked up by Showtime Cable Channel, which showed it on August 2, 1998, and then was subsequently released to theatres, video stores and DVD. |
   Lolita (1962)      Lolita (1997) |
Men Behind the Sun (1988) (aka Hei tai yang 731)
This unrated (would have been NC-17 undoubtedly) provocative and sickening documentary-style film (denounced by some as an exploitation film) displayed some of the grotesque Japanese atrocities and perverse medical experiments committed toward guinea-pig human victims in Unit 731 (a biological warfare R & D unit) during WWII. One atrocious scene showed a Chinese woman forced to thrust her deliberately frost-bitten hands into hot water, and then had her flesh ripped off her hands to expose the skeletal bones; it was also criticized for its use of actual autopsy footage depicting a drugged young boy whose organs were extracted from his body while he was alive, and for another scene in which a live cat was ripped apart by a room full of starving rats; in a decompression chamber sequence, the intense pressure caused a man's intestines to shoot out of his anus. |
  
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The Message (1976, 1977) (aka Mohammed,
Messenger of God) # 11
Taglined as "The Story of Islam," this epic-length 178 minute dramatic biopic was the debut feature film of Islamic, Syrian-born producer/director Moustapha Akkad (who later produced John Carpenter's successful horror film Halloween (1978)). It starred Mexican-born actor Anthony Quinn (Abdallah Geith in the 198 minute Arabic version) - following his success in the desert epic Lawrence of Arabia (1962) -- as Mohammed's desert-dwelling warrior uncle Hamza. It was set in 7th century Mecca and documented the beginnings of Islam and the life and teachings of the prophet. The film's script - written by Irishman H.A.L. (Harry) Craig - took two years of research and writing before its readiness for filming, due in part to the restriction that Muslim authorities had to approve the finished screenplay before filming could commence. Problems began almost immediately when it was unfoundly rumored that Peter O'Toole, and then American star Charlton Heston, would star in the lead role, causing two days of bloody riots in Karachi, Pakistan. This caused a stir because it was feared that the film would violate the strict Muslim belief (forbidden by Shari'a, Islamic holy law formed after Mohammed's death) that any representation of the Diety Allah or His Prophet Mohammed (and his immediate family including wives, daughters, and sons-in-law) could not be depicted on screen nor could his voice be heard. However, the politically-correct film represented him either off-screen, as the camera's point-of-view, or with occasional symbolic appearances (i.e., his camel-riding stick, his tent, and his holy camel). Nonetheless, endless protests, riots and death threats (by telephone) accompanied the film's production and making (totaling seven years). In its troubled production history, the film was forced to move from Saudi Arabia to Morocco for filming, where Akkad promised that he would construct a $100 million film production studio, as well as recreate the city of Mecca (and a model of the town's sacred holy shrine, the Kaaba, at a cost of $400,000), and hire thousands of extras. [The film was originally backed for up to $60 million by Saudi monarch King Faisal, until he pulled out of the project while disallowing filming on location in Mecca and Medina. Later, Faisal denounced the infidel filmmakers in Morocco and caused the dismantlement of the whole film operation, resulting in relocation costs of more than $2 million.] Akkad was forced to move and find financial backing and sponsorship from terrorist-friendly Libyan leader Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi. Ultimately, The Message was shot in two versions with different cast members, a Western version in English and a special Arabic version (entitled Al-Ris-Alah), adding to the costs. The film faced a dilemma regarding its marketing for US audiences, for its emphasis on a non-Western religious leader who didn't even appear in the film. Eventually, it was decided to use the tagline: "In four decades only four... "The Robe" "The Ten Commandments" "Ben-Hur" and now... For the first time...the vast, spectacular drama that changed the world!" Difficulties with the film's title forced it to be changed to The Message for its world premiere in London in late July, 1976. Various religious groups called the film 'sacrilegious' and 'an insult to Islam' and it was banned from showings in much of the Arab world. Without all the surrounding controversies whirling about, the film was still viewed as a bland, compromising film that was overlong. There was further controversy when the film was scheduled to premiere in the U.S. in Washington, DC, in March, 1977. The Hanafi Black Muslim extremist group led by Hamas Abdul Khaalis staged a heavily-armed siege against the local Jewish chapter of the B'nai B'rith (its national headquarters) under the mistaken belief (without having seen the film) that Anthony Quinn played Mohammed in the film. During the two-day crisis, they took nearly 150 people hostage, and threatened to blow up the building while demanding the film opening's cancellation. Future DC mayor Marion Barry was shot when the terrorists overran the District Building, and many others were injured. The hostage situation was eventually defused by the FBI and Muslim ambassadors, and the theater chain that had booked the film cancelled the showing. This disastrous opening unfortunately ruined US box-office for the controversial film, as various moviehouses were forced to cancel their showings due to political pressures and further fears of violence. Ironically, in late 2005, Akkad died from injuries sustained during terrorist attacks in Jordan. |
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Midnight Cowboy (1969)
John Schlesinger's film was a major milestone although controversial at its time for its gay-related content and subject of male prostitution. Its title "midnight cowboy" referred to nocturnal cowboys in the big city - those who were hustlers. The ground-breaking film was the first (and only) X-rated (for adult-oriented, not porno) mainstream film (later reduced to R) to be voted Best Picture, with an A-list stars, at a time when the ratings system was first introduced. This Oscar-winning film, an exceptional, provocative, and gritty character portrait, was made on location in New York to portray seediness, corruption, and big-city anonymity, and was based on James Leo Herlihy's 1965 novel. It was unusual for its rating to be so high, since the unflinching film did not contain significant profanity, graphically-brutal violence, or frontal nudity, although it did portray some partial nudity and simulations of sex. It told an adult-themed story about a naive, swaggering, transplanted (and emasculated) dishwasher/stud - a displaced small-town "cowboyish" Texan named Joe Buck (Jon Voight) who struggled and aspired in the sordid 42nd Street area of NY to become a successful hustler or gigolo - while posing as a "macho midnight cowboy," although he eventually resorted to homosexual street hustling to survive. Upon his arrival in the big city, he vainly posed shirtless in front of his hotel room's mirror, and pasted up a beefcake poster of Paul Newman from Hud and a picture of a topless woman. His first 'trick' was fast-talking, brassy society girl Cass (Best Supporting Actress nominee Sylvia Miles) who out-hustled Joe for a cab-ride fee. In a comedic sex scene in which they humorously activated channels with the TV remote control beneath their bodies - the metaphoric climax came with the closeup view of the winning results of a slot machine jackpot - spewed-out coins. Joe's first homosexual client was a religiously fanatical and homosexual Jesus-freak Christian named Mr. O'Daniel (John McGiver). During the encounter, Joe flashbacked to his disturbed and abused boyhood when he was baptized in a river (recalled as terrifying), and an incident when town rednecks viciously assaulted him and his former girlfriend "Crazy" Annie (Jennifer Salt) when they were having sex in a car. He was homosexually raped and she was traumatically gang-raped. Another homosexual client in New York was a bespectacled, geeky young student (Bob Balaban) in a dark movie theatre - while experiencing oral sex, Joe had memories of making passionate love with Annie (who promised him she was being faithful by telling him: "You're the only one, Joe," but who had a reputation for being a tramp), but the client ended up penniless. The Texas stud was befriended by a limping and coughing homeless con artist named Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman) and they experienced an unspoken homosexual relationship together which included frequent bickering. They both experienced the riches of the American dream when invited to a freaky Greenwich Village party by a "couple of fruity wackos" (Gastone Rossilli and Warhol's Viva), where they found free food, drugs, and opportunities for sex. Joe took stoned socialite Shirley (Brenda Vaccaro) to bed for his first successful heterosexual score with a paying female client ($20). At first, though, he suffered sexual inadequacy until angered when she teasingly suggested that he was gay: ("Gay, fey. Is that your problem, baby?") - and then he performed vigorously. Afterwards by phone, she recommended his studly services to an unhappily-married female friend. Joe's final trick was with another homosexual - a middle-aged Catholic man named Towny (Barnard Hughes). Back at the man's hotel room, in the last sordid act of his street-life existence, things turned violent. Joe ended up in a rage, brutally attacking the self-loathing, mother-dominated, despicable man after receiving a St. Christopher's Medal and only ten dollars. He committed a horrible crime - he robbed the man of all his money and then brutalized the customer, probably killing him. He left after jamming the phone receiver into the man's bloodied, toothless mouth. |
    
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Mondo Cane (1962, It.) (aka A Dog's World)
This Italian-made globe-trotting, amateurish "shockumentary" was luridly advertised as a travelogue - with glimpses of dark-skinned, bare 'savages' engaged in grotesque and bizarre rituals and scenes of human perversity! The film was castigated as pornographic, trashy and vulgar, although by today's standards would be considered very tame. Footage included the beheading of a horde of bulls and the mass head-bashing of some pigs in New Guinea, force-feeding of native girls to make them more marriageable and fertile contrasted with weight-loss techniques, Singapore's "House of Death", hula dancing in Hawaii, the eating of dog in Thailand contrasted with a wealthy pet cemetery in the US, pig-suckling, and the effects of radiation and atomic testing on a small island. The film inspired a series of sequel "Mondo" films and dozens of imitators, including Rolf Olsen's Shocking Asia (1974) and Conan Le Cilaire's Faces of Death, Part 1 (1978) series of films. |
 
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Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979, UK)
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. |
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Created in 1996-2008 © by Tim Dirks. All rights reserved.
The Most
Controversial Films of All Time: Films always
have the ability to anger us, divide us, shock us, disgust us, and more.
Usually, films that inspire controversy, outright boycotting, picketing,
banning, censorship, or protest have graphic sex, violence, homosexuality,
religious, political or race-related themes and content. They usually
push the envelope regarding what can be filmed and displayed on the
screen, and are considered taboo, "immoral" or "obscene"
due to language, drug use, violence and sensuality/nudity or other incendiary
elements. Inevitably, controversy helps to publicize these films and
fuel the box-office receipts.
are the films that "The Greatest Films" site has selected as the 