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 statute. 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.

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 ($50,000). It was the first highly profitable independent film made by a black filmmaker. It caused tremendous controversy for its militancy, under-age sex, anti-white sentiment, revenge-themes, and violence, although it was one of the most important black American films of the decade.

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 independent film (budgeted at $150,000), aimed at urban black audiences, was released by independent distributor Cinemation, and was shot on location in about three weeks. It 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, split-screens, freeze-frames, zoom-ins, 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.

It contained an explicit sex scene of well-endowed Sweetback having unsimulated sex on stage in a brothel (with poorly-lit full-frontal nudity), and an earlier scene in flashback - the most controversial of the entire film - in which underaged, orphaned Sweet Sweetback as a 13 year-old minor (played by Melvin Peebles' own 13 year-old son Mario) had sex with an older black prostitute and lost his virginity in an all-black brothel - explaining the derivation of his name when she said: "You've ... gotta ... sweet ... back!"

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.

Deep Throat (1972)
D. Gerard Damiano

Unintended for mainstream audiences, this notorious X-rated porn flick from writer/director Gerard Damiano became one of the decade's top-grossing films, and the most influential and successful (and profitable) of all films of its kind. Deep Throat was filmed in 6 days for $25,000 and was subsequently banned in 23 US states.

It was an 'event' film - a hard-core stag film that was OK to see on a date or in mixed company, yet it was banned in many localities as obscene. It inaugurated a period known as "Porno Chic" - it was the first cross-over adults-only film that became a hit. After its initial period of release, it became a cultural phenomenon and it was fashionable to talk about the film (and its educationally feminist theme of female sexual gratification) or make references to it (such as Watergate's 'Deep Throat').

This hour-long, revolutionary X-rated film (shot in about a week's time, with graphic enactments of oral, vaginal and anal sex, group sex, and masturbation in a dozen and a half sex scenes) told a simplistic plot (with some comic elements) about a sexually frustrated woman (Linda Lovelace, born Linda Susan Boreman) who wanted to "hear bells" during sex. Her doctor, Dr. Young (Harry Reems, born Herbert Streicher) discovered that her clitoris was located in her throat, and that she would have to experiment with various clients before experiencing orgasm -- this ultimately led to her sexual fulfillment accompanied by fireworks, rockets blasting and ringing bells.

Years after the film was screened, Lovelace denounced the film, claiming that she was drugged, coerced and raped during filming and that "there was a gun to my head the entire time". In the mid-70s, actor Reems was prosecuted by the federal government (under the Nixon administration) on obscenity charges - a first - although later overturned, and the film was championed by Hollywood and other intellectuals for its liberated defense of First Amendment rights.

An R-rated documentary film titled Inside Deep Throat (2005) examined the film's production history and impact on American culture, including interviews with both the director and male star Harry Reems.