Favorite controversial movies - Obligatory Blazing Saddles entry

[AF 802]

Whether it was for it's time or now, what's your favorite movie that generated controversy and what for?

As the title says, I enjoy Blazing Saddles. Mainly for the fact that Mel Brooks wasn't afraid to go all out and make fun of all the racist, anti-Semetic and other bigoted things of the time, and it's sad that something like this today would be shut down immediately. We need more movies that aren't afraid to actually go all out.

 

[Mapo Tofu]

Antichrist because I hate myself

 

[Lysenko]

Stage Sisters because Chinese government sent Xie Jin to gulag for making it. No good movies allowed in cultural revolution China.

 

[HiddenFist]

Natural Born Killers, I completely enjoyed the violence, approach, and the bad guys winning. Not to mention the moral guardians and media reeeing over the "copycat crimes" it "inspired".

 

[The Shadow]

I feel like Blazing Saddles is more controversial now than it was in the 70s. I'm sure there were still people offended by it but most people I know that saw it in theaters remember it as being a really funny movie.

It's hard to really find a list of controversial films that doesn't just amount to a list of intentionally shocking exploitation films, but The Wild Bunch is definitely a favorite of mine. It's more or less a swan song of the classic Western going out in a blaze of glory as Spaghetti and Revisionist Westerns came into vogue. It's mostly mostly only controversial for its lovingly photographed violence. Otherwise it's a fantastic film with one of the best casts ever assembled.

It's mostly only controversial by the standards of its time, and is pretty tame by today's standards. Unlike Bonnie and Clyde from the same era (also controversial for similar reasons) I don't find it corny in retrospect.

 

[Nekromantik]

Well...

The Sinbad movies with Ray Harryhausen work. They would say too many white people.
The Guinea Pig movies. I think one of them was a favorite of a serial killer in Japan. They had to tone them down after that.
Cannibal Holocaust. It's racist, it has animal cruelty.
Really pick an exploitation or blaxploitation film.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

I saw Straw Dogs not too long ago, and that movie is especially interesting because it was already controversial back in the 1970s for its depiction of violence and the rape scene. The violence isn't as shocking today when you have movies like Green Room floating about, but the rape scene could never be done today, period (I know there's a remake but I have no idea how that handles the rape). It's like you have a movie that people were already disturbed by back in 1971, and yet it's arguably more disturbing now than it was 47 years ago.

 

[BeanBidan]

Men behind the sun
120 days of sodom
Cannibal holocaust
Honey I shrunk the kids
Suicide circle

 

[Nekromantik]

I saw Straw Dogs not too long ago, and that movie is especially interesting because it was already controversial back in the 1970s for its depiction of violence and the rape scene. The violence isn't as shocking today when you have movies like Green Room floating about, but the rape scene could never be done today, period (I know there's a remake but I have no idea how that handles the rape). It's like you have a movie that people were already disturbed by back in 1971, and yet it's arguably more disturbing now than it was 47 years ago.

A lot of remakes of movies from that time try to up the gore, but I think it becomes so over the top it's almost cartoony. It takes away the bite that the original had. Just because over the top CGI gore and blood can be added doesn't make it better.

Examples: Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Last house on the Left, and Straw Dogs.

 

[Durenduren]

The bunny games
9 1/2 weeks
The story of O

Basically any early erotic films people would back away because it's too "porny" to most of them unless it's critics or people with very alternative sexual lifestyles who would watch it.

 

[BeanBidan]

A lot of remakes of movies from that time try to up the gore, but I think it becomes so over the top it's almost cartoony. It takes away the bite that the original had. Just because over the top CGI gore and blood can be added doesn't make it better.

Examples: Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Last house on the Left, and Straw Dogs.

Don't forget Black Christmas. There's more violence but it's shit, I found the suspense of the original to be the best thing about it. Also the phone call scene was funny.

 

[KimCoppolaAficionado]

Saw (the original one). It was an interesting concept at the time with very few others in the genre. Now, of course, "serial killer forces victims to play sadistic games" is practically its own subgenre.

 

[SpessCaptain]

Watership Down! God damn I love that film like a rat in a plague, people complain it's a film about a book about rabbits, how can it not be cute as fuck??

But it's so intense. Kids watch it, expecting an Easter Special and an hour in the become truamatized and fucked up but better for it. It's a transitional film.

Enjoy.

 

[The Shadow]

I guess The Exorcist might have been controversial in its time for its subject matter and graphic content, despite being a major mainstream and critical success. I really like The Exorcist. It's one of the few horror films out there that is a better fiom for treating its subject matter with 100 percent seriousness.

Not everyone thinks it's scary, but I think most can agree it's well made and it works.

 

[BeanBidan]

Watership Down! God damn I love that film like a rat in a plague, people complain it's a film about a book about rabbits, how can it not be cute as fuck??

But it's so intense. Kids watch it, expecting an Easter Special and an hour in the become truamatized and fucked up but better for it. It's a transitional film.

Enjoy.

Is this only about rabbits or is it the movie where there's a one eyed Wolf who takes a female rabbit and the male just screams "THATS MY WIFE!" and then hedgehogs are trying to pass the road and the male gets Vietnam flashbacks and gets run over?

 

[Richardo Retardo]

It really depends on how you define "controversial". A lot of stuff that used to be banned is passe now and a lot of stuff that used to be considered wholesome is very controversial (because of the changed societal attitudes on things like racism).

So, I'll just come out and say the first films that came to mind. M, Taxi Driver, and Serbian film.

 

[Stoneheart]

the phantom menace.
its an okay movie, and everybody hates it because it has star wars in its name.

 

[Nekromantik]

Don't forget Black Christmas. There's more violence but it's shit, I found the suspense of the original to be the best thing about it. Also the phone call scene was funny.

A lot of those movies that got remade couldn't be made like the original. Like Black Christmas phone calls screaming cunt and pussy.

New I guess The Exorcist might have been controversial in its time for its subkect matter and graphic content, despite being a major mainstream and critical success? I really like The Exorcist. It's one of the few horror films out there that is a better fiom for treating its subject matter with 100 percent seriousness.

Yeah, the Exorcist did have the let Jesus fuck you scene. No way you could put that in a movie today.

 

[Syaoran Li]

I'll also put Blazing Saddles on my list of controversial favorites.

Here's two more controversial films I will add to the list.


Gone With The Wind-While considered the prime example of epic cinema, it is often attacked by the SJW's for its sympathetic portrayals of the Confederate South. Still, it set the gold standard for cinematic storytelling. Unlike the similarly groundbreaking The Birth of a Nation which has aged badly in so many ways, Gone With The Wind still holds up as an excellent film.

There is also a nostalgic element to why I love Gone With The Wind. When I was a little kid, I would watch it on VHS with my paternal grandmother (now deceased) and I loved it. In a lot of ways, it helped spark my interest in the American Civil War.

Urotsukidoji: The Legend of the Overfiend-Alright, this one is a doozy. For clarity's sake, I am talking about the edited NC-17 theatrical cut from 1993, dubbed in English. The original Japanese OVA series from 1987 was even more graphic and was pretty much blatant hardcore guro hentai, while the American theatrical edit is more along the lines of a midnight movie/grindhouse exploitation film. Still, it is telling that the sanitized version is rated NC-17.

It is sleazy, gory, sexually explicit, and ridiculously violent yet also has a grandiose apocalyptic story and was quite the spectacle. Nowadays, it is sort of forgotten but back in the 90's it was the anime equivalent of Cannibal Holocaust.

Back in 1993, anime was very much a new thing in America and was primarily marketed as an edgier, sexier, and more violent alternative to American kids's cartoons. It was inevitable that companies like Manga Entertainment and the now defunct Central Park Media would try to get the rights to something as over-the-top as Urotsukidoji. However, this was 1993 and nobody in America knew what hentai was.

Central Park Media decided to edit the three OVA episodes into a coherent film, adding in a very campy English dub and editing out the most extreme parts so they could show the movie in theaters. While it didn't make much of a splash in mainstream theaters due to its NC-17 rating, it was a cult hit in independent theaters, film festivals, the college circuit, and in the few remaining grindhouses left at the time.

In a lot of ways, the theatrical dubbed version of Urotsukidoji is a lot like the classic 1970's exploitation flicks of the grindhouse era. The campy voice acting, gratuitous sex and graphic violence (often in the same scenes), over-the-top visuals, and a sense of spectacle to it all. The fact that the dub's voice actors all used blatantly fake names that sounded like the stage names of 70's porn stars is just the icing on the cake. In a lot of ways, the theatrical cut of Urotsukidoji is like the anime equivalent of Caligula or Cannibal Holocaust, grandiose in its depravity and sheer awfulness.

When I was a teenage edgelord, I liked this movie unironically and defended it as a grindhouse horror movie.

Now I am older and ironically enjoy it as a ridiculous cinematic trainwreck of a film that is so vile it becomes outlandishly hilarious. The awful voice acting in the dub really sells it as the campy trashy spectacle it is. It was the kind of thing that could have only worked in the era it was released, and it was still controversial even back then, much like the aforementioned Caligula and Cannibal Holocaust,

 

[Gorillagorillagorilla]

I saw Felidae. It was horiffic but it was fairly well made.