The shadow of James Ferman.

“Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.”

                                                                                                Mark Twain

The year was 1999.  After 24 dictatorial years as director of the British Board of Film Classification, James Ferman finally stepped down, and within just a few months we were flooded with spanky new releases of long banned classics such as The Exorcist and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.  Over the next few years, and with the advent of DVD, British audiences could, for the first time since the Video Recordings Act was passed in 1984, finally enjoy the uncut, censor baiting brilliance of countless films like Blood Feast, The Driller Killer and Don’t Look in The Basement.  For fans of obscure horror and extreme cinema, it seemed like a new golden age as grainy, third generation VHS pirates were left on the shelf to collect dust.

But whereas the dust continues to gather on my dodgy old tapes, the BBFC seems to have dusted off Ol’ Man Ferman’s scissors and are, of late, getting worryingly snip-happy.  While it is commonplace for the BBFC to ‘suggest’ cuts to reduce a films certificate for a wider audience (see: Die Hard 4.0, The Expendables), there remains a culture of spinelessness and anxiety regarding the passing of graphic (and particularly sexual) violence.  After the outright rejection of Japanese torture, torture and more torture horror flick Grotesque a couple of years back, heavy cuts have been imposed on the harsh horrors of recent releases A Serbian Film and I Spit on Your Grave.  In the case of the former, 49 cuts were put in place, totaling well over four minutes. 

After watching the freely available uncut version of A Serbian Film (suck on that, ya freedom hating killjoy bastards), I began thinking about how, while the internet means film piracy has changed immeasurably since those VHS trading days, one thing that remains the same is how cutting and banning films does nothing but increase and promote a) interest and knowledge of films that may otherwise slip under most people’s radars and b) film piracy itself.  After rather enjoying the film (is ‘enjoying’ the word?), I felt a need to know what exactly the BBFC had cut from the UK release, so I sought out the full list of cuts.  Reading the list I found it to be, rather paradoxically, both hilariously funny and more distressing than the film itself.  I’ll give you a couple of highlights.

After shot of Marko being fellated by woman and the dialogue, Come, blow harder. Blow harder, remove entire shot of Petar and his mother blowing candles on birthday cake.

In rapid montage, remove shot of Jeca sucking ice lolly intercut with the shots of Milos' face (as he penetrates man's eye socket) and close shots of female genitals.

I would urge you to seek it out, it’s a good read.

I would also urge you to give the film (uncut, of course) a go.  While it may be difficult to morally defend everything depicted in A Serbian Film, it is an intelligent, interesting and utterly fearless piece of work which acts as a nihilistic, eviscerating attack on the increasingly depraved methods of contemporary pornographers.  And at NO point is the violence anything other than devastatingly horrible, and we are certainly not encouraged to applaud it or be excited by it (unlike with say, the Hostel or Saw films, which the BBFC has no issues with).

I also watched the remake of I Spit on Your Grave recently, again uncut, and was rather surprised that the BBFC felt it necessary to cut 43 seconds due to “shots of nudity that tend to eroticise sexual violence and shots of humiliation that tend to endorse sexual violence by encouraging viewer complicity in sexual humiliation and rape”.

This is the same tired old crap that James Ferman used to spew out to defend his decisions back in the day.  Now call me crazy, but what film maker wants to “endorse” sexual violence and encourage the viewer’s “complicity” in rape?  Is there any film out there that could cause a reasonable human being to think ‘hey maybe, just maybe I had it all wrong about this sexual humiliation and rape stuff.  Mayhap it’s not the demon it’s made out to be’?

The BBFC are idiots.  They do not trust you, they belittle you.  They are not protecting you from harmful material, they are stamping on your personal freedom.

Incidentally, the cuts to the I Spit on Your Grave remake pale in comparison to those still imposed on Meir Zarchi’s 1978 original, which total close to three minutes!  See, there’s still some unease left over from the days of the video nasties scandal, meaning stuff that would probably get through the BBFC if shot today is still forbidden when it forms part of  a grainy, washed out looking old exploitation flick.  Cannibal Holocaust, The New York Ripper and Faces of Death have no hope of uncut releases anytime soon, Ruggero Deodato’s The House on the Edge of The Park remains the most censored 18 rated UK release with over 11 minutes of cuts, and Fight For Your Life, once a staple of the video nasties list (not to mention one of my very favourite exploitation films and a perfect definition of the term Grindhouse) remains banned.

Next post:  Business as usual - light-hearted comments about cinema food and fatsuits.