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The Most Controversial
Films of All-Time Part 4 |
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The Most Controversial
Films of All-Time Part 4 |
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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 Deer Hunter
(1978) # 12 Storywriter/producer/director Michael Cimino's epic about war and friendship was a powerful, disturbing and compelling look at the Vietnam War through the lives of three blue-collar, Russian-American friends in a small Pennsylvania steel-mill town before, during, and after their service in the war. Although a Best Picture Oscar-winner, the meandering, sometimes shrill, raw film was extremely controversial on many accounts - political, historical and emotional. The flawed, extravagantly-expensive film was often pretentious, ambiguous, overwrought and excessive, and loosely edited, with under-developed character portrayals and unsophisticated, careless film techniques. Critics argued that the film grossly distorted historical fact. The most talked about sequences were the contrived, theatrical, and fictional Russian Roulette tortures, imposed twice in the narrative - on the American POW's during wartime, and played as a game in a Vietnamese gambling den. [However, there were no documented cases or historical reports of the deadly game in actuality.] Historically inaccurate or not, the fabricated scene of a Vietcong atrocity metaphorically depicted the brutal absurdity of the war. Director Cimino was also criticized as distortedly and one-sidedly portraying all the Asian characters in the film as despicable, sadistic racists and killers. He countered by arguing that his film was not political, polemical, literally accurate, or posturing for any particular point of view. |
 
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The Devils (1971, UK) 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 Inquistion-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. 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. |
      
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Dirty Harry (1971) 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? |
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Do The Right Thing (1989)
# 22 African-American writer/director Spike Lee's third (and breakout) feature film was this complex, angry and unapologetic social protest film about racism, racial pride, intolerance and oppression, class struggle and violence. This controversial and incendiary independent film, receiving a Best Original Screenplay Academy Award nomination for Lee, was about racial tensions that eventually erupted into a riot on a sweltering summer day in the multi-ethnic Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. It was told with vibrantly bright colors, realistic and goofily-named characters and dialogue, a supplementary "Greek chorus" of black men on the corner commenting on the day's events, and energetic editing and quasi-documentary, cocked camera angles. During the opening credits, Public Enemy performed the film's hard-edged anthem and title song, "Fight the Power" - foreshadowing the coming emergence of rap and hip-hop music into the mainstream culture. The multi-ethnic cast of the film provided three-dimensional characters and day-in-the-life stories, and featured the early career work of Samuel L. Jackson (as DJ Mister Senor Love Daddy) and Rosie Perez (as demanding single mother and girlfriend Tina). The tension began to escalate in this slice-of-life film because of a complaint by a militant activist neighborhood patron named Buggin' Out (Giancarlo Esposito) that there were no pictures of 'brothers' on the "Wall of Fame" in a white-operated, Italian "Famous Pizzeria" restaurant owned by Sal (Oscar-nominated Danny Aiello), followed by his attempt to "boycott [Sal's] fat pasta ass". The film climaxed with the brutal choke-hold police murder of Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn), the arrest of Buggin' Out, and pizza delivery boy Mookie's (Spike Lee) incitement of a fiery riot by hurling a trashcan through Sal's storefront window, causing further racial divide and police brutality. Although it was feared by film critics that this would cause and incite similar responses from black urban-dwellers, this proved to be a misrepresentation of the facts by the film's detractors, that dubbed the film "irresponsible". Two contradictory quotations ended the film, one from Martin Luther King, Jr. advocating non-violence, and the other from Malcolm X advocating violent self-defense in response to oppression. |
 
 
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Dogma (1999) Director Kevin Smith's fourth film was an imaginative, comic and fanciful theological work (with foul language) about a monumental struggle or race between the good and evil regarding the fate of Earth and mankind. On one side were two fallen, ousted or banished angels: Loki (Matt Damon) and Bartleby (Ben Affleck), who have been exiled to eternity at an airport in Wisconsin. After they discovered a loop-hole in Catholic doctrine (plenary indulgence) that would allow them back into heaven, they decided to make their way to a cathedral to be rededicated in New Jersey to have their sins forgiven (part of a revamped 'Catholicism Wow!' program announced by hip Catholic Cardinal Glick played by George Carlin, including the "Scary" crucifix being replaced by the "Buddy Christ" ), and to have their wings cut off, become human, and reenter the kingdom of heaven. If successful, they could prove the fallibility of God and destroy the universe by nullifying all of human and earthly existence. God (angry slack-rocker Alanis Morissette) dispatched a disdainful and bitchy seraphim - a messenger from God named Metatron (Alan Rickman), to appear in a pillar of fire in the bedroom of lapsed-and fallen Catholic Bethany Sloane (Linda Fiorentino) who worked at an abortion clinic. The infertile woman, who was experiencing a crisis of faith but was Jesus Christ's last surviving descendant, would be recruited to stop the two rogue angels from ending humanity. He instructed her about meeting two muses or prophets (Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes as slackers Silent Bob and Jay) who would assist her along the way. Other characters in the tale included Chris Rock as a ranting Rufus, the erased or forgotten 13th apostle, and Salma Hayek as disaffected heavenly muse Serendipity who 'inspired' men at a low-rent strip club. The film's premiere drew hundreds of protesters and disdain from religious leaders, and Smith himself received 300,000 pieces of hate mail. The Catholic League publically criticized Miramax and Disney, for the film's anti-Catholic, sacrilegious and blasphemous stance, and its satire of modern religion. |
  
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Ecstasy (1933, Czech.) (aka Exstase) This early, scandalous Czechoslovakian foreign erotic drama was once notorious, earth-shattering, and scandalous. It was notable as being the first theatrically-released film in which the sex act (sexual intercourse) was depicted. It was unusual at its time for depicting female sexual pleasure during orgasm (simulated). It told the story of a sexually-frustrated child-bride named Eva (Vienna-born 20 year-old Hedwig Kiesler, or later known as Hedy Lamarr in her fifth film) who had married a middle-aged, impotent Emil (Zvonimir Rogoz), and fled in dismay to her widowed father's estate where she was close to nature. It was censored for its two shocking scenes - in a naturalistic locale reminiscent of the Garden of Eden: a nude swim and naked forest romp in sun-lit woods to pursue her horse Loni (which had run off with her clothes), and an adulterous love-making scene (with an obvious expression of sexual awakening, fulfillment and orgasmic pleasure on her face in a close-up) in a cottage during a rainstorm with a handsome young engineer/surveyor named Adam (Aribert Mog), who had earlier retrieved her horse and clothes. The foreign import was blocked in 1935 by US Customs from entering the US for its obscenity, marking the first instance of customs laws prohibiting a film from entering the US. The U.S. Treasury Department upheld a Commissioner of Customs decision to prohibit the import, although it was later imported in a censored version. Hitler banned the film, and Pope Pius XII denounced it. |
   
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The Evil Dead (1981) This was the first installment of Raimi's Evil Dead trilogy, a low-budget, non-humorous B-grade horror film with the tagline: "the ultimate experience in grueling terror". This was the ultimate "cabin in the woods" film - with evil spirits being unleashed upon five college students in a Tennessee cabin after the reading of a forbidden book. Due to the film's graphic violence, it was banned in several European countries. The film's most controversial scene, the infamous predatory tree rape scene with quick POV tracking shots, was one in which Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss) was attacked in the woods outside the log cabin by tree branches and vines that wrapped around her neck and limbs, stripped her of her clothes, caressed her and then spread her legs - one tree branch suddenly impaled her in her crotch; soon after she was chased back to the house, she was transformed into a demon zombie. In the UK, the film was subject to obscenity trials and various censorship cuts - particularly the misogynistic tree-rape scene. On-screen blood and gore would have given the film an NC-17 rating if Raimi had presented the film to the ratings board when it was first released. |
   
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The Exorcist (1973) Friedkin adapted William Peter Blatty's best-selling, 1971 blockbuster book about satanic demon possession (based on a true-story of a 13 year-old Maryland boy in 1949), and created one of the most disturbing, frightening, shocking, and exploitative films ever made. The horror film masterpiece, the first major horror blockbuster, was one of the most opposed and talked-about films, especially during its pre-release time period. Viewers and the studio took note that there were accompanying ominous events, including the deaths of nine persons associated with the production (including Jack MacGowran and von Sydow's brother) - and a request was made to exorcise the set. Its controversial content, sensational, nauseating, and horrendous special effects (360 degree head-rotations, self-mutilation/masturbation with a crucifix, the projectile spewing of green puke, a mixture of split-pea soup and oatmeal, etc.), for its depictions of desecrations, vivid representations of evil, and for its intense scenes of exorcism (accompanied by blasphemies, obscenities and graphic physical shocks). One of the most controversial scenes was the long sequence of invasive medical testing performed on the hapless patient - criticized as medical pornography. A sweet pre-teenaged girl Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) became possessed by a malevolent evil spirit - and after urinating on the carpet in public and experiencing a shaking bed, was soon transformed and disfigured into a head-rotating, levitating, green vomit-spewing, obscenity-shouting creature. Her divorced, film-star mother Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) was at wit's end, until she called on a dedicated, faith-questioning Jesuit priest Father Karras (Jason Miller) to exorcise the malevolent devil from her daughter's body. An elderly priest Father Merrin (Max von Sydow), whose archaeology project released the Satanic being, also risked his life (and died of heart failure) to administer rites of exorcism with incantations and holy water. The film was enormously popular with moviegoers at Christmas-time of 1973, but some portions of the viewing audience fled from theaters due to nausea, convulsions, fainting or sheer fright/anger (Headlines proclaimed: "The Exorcist nearly killed me!"), and it was reported that one patron in San Francisco literally attacked the screen in an attempt to kill the demon. Mass hysteria led to paramedics being called to some theatres, and others were picketed in protest. The film's showings also led to a reported increase in temporary spiritual possessions or psychoses by individuals, and an increase in requests for priests to exorcise everything from loved ones and pets to houses, neighborhoods and appliances. Evangelist Reverend Billy Graham stated that he "felt the power of evil buried within the celluloid of the film itself". The film was also banned on video in the UK for fifteen years. |
      
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Intro | Part
1 | Part 2 | Part
3 | Part 4 | Part
5 | Part 6 | Part
7 | Part 8 | Part
9 | Part 10
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 