Why I miss movie censorship

The first thing to note here is that movie censorship still very much happens. Certainly in the UK, the British Board of Film Classification regularly bans films altogether, so it’s not as if we’re suddenly living in Amsterdam, where movies would probably have to break all kinds of real-life laws just to raise an eyebrow. 

However, there is so much less censorship than there used to be in the crazy 1980s, when horror films would fall foul of the censor’s scissors simply for daring to present an exploding head. Hell, in the early ‘80s, some action films would have bloody bullet wounds snipped too.

The second thing to note here is that I loathe censorship and stand opposed to it.

So what exactly do I miss about movie censorship?

The hunt.

That’s exactly what I miss. The thrill of the chase.

By its very nature, movie censorship created more than one version of a movie. As a result, one of these versions suddenly became far more desirable than the other. Horror films that would not otherwise have attracted all that much attention suddenly achieved legendary status when they were banned or trimmed. Many of the flicks that ended up on the UK’s banned video nasties list of the early 1980s were absolutely appalling… and yet after they were pulled from the shelves by the police, they instantly became holy grails for collectors and horror fans alike.

Thirty-five years later, several of these nasties command over £100 in value – even as much as £1,600.

Even though we should obviously have been allowed to watch the unexpurgated version of a movie in the first place, in the exact manner that the writer and director intended, there was an odd excitement when you watched a film and could tell it had been hacked by some zealot. As a general rule, the gory scenes appeared to have been censored by a particularly clumsy chimpanzee. Onscreen, an axe would swing towards the latest victim’s neck and the action would cut abruptly to a shocked onlooker, or blood spraying the walls, or even straight to the next scene.

Of course, sometimes when you finally got your hands on the original version of the film, you’d discover that there was nothing extra to see at all. Either the director had been more restrained than you’d given them credit for, or the editor of the actual film had behaved like a particularly clumsy chimpanzee. But therein lay the thrills – what exactly had hit the cutting room floor? Collectors would flock to film fairs, hungry for under-the-counter copies of films which could not legally be seen in the UK. Dutch tapes, perhaps, whose content would obviously be fully intact, because the Dutch are sensible folk (apart from allowing dope to be sold by canals with no safety rails, obviously.)

Let me give you a solid example of the hunt in action. I first saw the Friday The 13th sequel Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday on the UK rental release, seen here on the left. I loved the film, which seemed pretty darn violent. Then I went on a press trip to America and picked up the ‘Unrated’ US VHS tape, seen here on the right. When I came home and watched the film, my mind was blown. The film was now even bloodier! One notorious scene in particular, involving someone being graphically sliced in half inside a tent, was absolutely ridiculous. In a good way. 

On top of the rush I felt from having sourced this forbidden footage, was the joy of sticking it to The Man. Those dusty old geese at the BBFC didn’t want me to see this stuff, but I DAMN WELL HAD. How’d you like those apples, eh? 

And then, it all went wrong, because with the new millennium came progress. All that pesky liberation of art, plus a revised view on exactly how much mollycoddling the average adult viewer needs. As a result, the hunt was ruined! 

With increasing regularity, even the gutsiest of horror films simply ended up landing on DVD or Blu-ray in an uncut form. Jesus Christ, they even had to try hard to achieve an ‘18’ certificate as opposed to a measly '15'! Of course, there were noble exceptions that still managed to roll up on these shores in a censored state (The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence or A Serbian Film, for instance), but mostly the entire ecosystem that had developed around searching for the uncut versions of films was dying a death.

It used to be a real mission to hunt down an uncut copy of The Toxic Avenger or Zombie Holocaust. And now they're both just on Blu-ray in HMV.

Of course, needless to say, it’s great that we have far less censorship now than we did in the 1980s. 

And yet I really miss the buzz of seeing things I wasn’t supposed to see. 

I miss the legwork of having to physically go places to find banned movies on VHS.

I miss the giddy high when you finally get that forbidden fruit in your hand, then take a big juicy bite.

I miss the hunt for movies that posh 65-year-old men decided might transform me into a raving driller-killer.

Ridiculous, isn’t it? But then, it’s only natural that a ridiculous thing like movie censorship should invite a ridiculous response.

Tell me I'm not alone in this. Does part of you miss movie censorship too? 

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