Aladdin vs. Faces of Death
It must be tough putting together definitive lists on arts and entertainment. The cover story for the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly is on the 25 most controversial movies of all time. I was hoping for something with greater historical depth than EW usually displays and expecting something akin to Wizard magazine’s arrested development. The article itself is somewhere in the middle.
Of the entries, only two are clear-cut pieces of horror cinema, Cannibal Holocaust and Freaks, with a few more that might fit the bill if your definition of the genre is broad enough. The rest have enjoyed some form of controversy, but the order in which they were placed seems motivated mainly by how fresh they are in the public’s mind. The closer you get to the top spots, the more likely the film was given some sort of studio-created lip service upon release which was quickly forgotten.
As John Campea points out, part of the problem with this article is that the definition of what might be considered controversial is so hard to pin down. Some of the films were only controversial within a limited timeframe and/or setting. If The Warriors geographically limited brouhaha warrants a mention, than why not Academy award-winning film The Tin Drum, where all copies were confiscated from both video stores and private residences in Oklahoma in the late-90’s, and citizens of that state caught with a copy could be charged with possession of child pornography?
And almost all of the selected films were controversial mainly in the States. For example, Buñuel’s L’age D’or caused riots in the first week it was in Parisian theatres and both Metha’s Fire and Water resulted in death threats for the director, as well as bomb threats for patrons of both films.
I could go on, but I imagine so could anyone else reading this.