Movie News

Otherworldly forces take over Horror Channel with Supernatural Week , eight nights of ghostly scares highlighted by the Channel premieres of Paranormal Activity , and creepy body horror, It Follows .

The special event, running from Saturday 15 May - Saturday 22 May, also sees the return of genre favourites such as demon chiller Firstborn , John Carpenter's classic car-rage chiller Christine , the twisted supernatural gasper Sinister , the star-studded supernatural cult classic Flatliners , the paranormal chiller The Quiet Ones , and Sean Byrne's devastating ride into psychological trauma, The Devil's Candy .

The week gets underway on Saturday 15th with a movie directed, photographed, produced, written, and edited by Oren Peli, Paranormal Activity . This is a found footage masterpiece which picked up the genre where The Blair Witch Project left off. Katie and Micah, a carefree couple, become haunted by an unseen presence in their house. They decide to investigate the increasingly bizarre and escalating intrusions by setting up a video camera to capture evidence of the demonic presence in their house, only to find much more than they ever imagined. The low-budget horror film, shot in a week, became a global phenomenon and ushered in a new era of low budget tech inspired 'found-footage' movies. John Carpenter drives a Stephen King classic to the big screen on Sunday the 16th, Christine . High school geek Arnie Cunningham falls in love with "Christine", a bright red 1958 Plymouth Fury which has seen much better days. Setting himself the task of restoring the car to its original condition, Arnie has become consumed with passion for the sleek, rounded, chrome-laden car. His friends are horrified but it's too late - anyone seeking to come between them becomes the victim of Christine's horrifying wrath. John Carpenter's classic car-rage chiller stars Harry Dean Stanton.

Born in 1914 at the dawn of cinema, Italy's censorship law felled some cinematic giants including Last Tango in Paris , but is now set to be awarded a 'rejected' rating, as unsuitable for a modern audience.

Film censorship has been abolished, announced culture minister Dario Franceschini in a statement:

The system of controls and interventions that still allow the state to intervene in the freedom of artists has been definitively ended.

As a result, it will now no longer be possible to block the release of a new film or demand edits for moral or religious reasons.

Filmmakers will instead classify their own movies with an age rating. Their decisions will be audited by a new commission made up of 49 members chosen from the film industry, but will be experts in education and animal rights.

According to a survey by Cinecensura , an online exhibition promoted by the culture ministry, 274 Italian films, 130 American movies and 321 from other countries have been banned in Italy since 1944. More than 10,000 were cut in some way, including works by directors such as Federico Fellini. However the last major case of censorship was in 1998 with the blasphemous and grotesque Toto Who Lived Twice , which was strongly criticised by Catholics.

The Gestapo's Last Orgy is a 1977 Italian prison film by Cesare Canevari.
With Adriano Micantoni, Daniela Poggi and Maristella Greco.

In the tradition of THE NIGHT PORTER, SALON KITTY and SALO only far more depraved comes perhaps the most notorious Nazisploitation epic of them all: Daniela Levy  stars as a beautiful young death camp prisoner forced into a nightmare of brutality, torment and sexual degradation. But will a Commandant's vilest urge trigger her ultimate vengeance? Marc Loud co-stars in this fetid slice of filth-strudel

The BBFC has just banned a Blu-ray re-release of the notable Video Nasty The Gestapo's Last Orgy. The video was banned as a video nasty in 1984 and has never been released in the UK since. The video is available uncut in the US though.

The BBFC seems to be embracing more politically correct language in its rating explanations and consumer advice lately, so it is getting hard to distinguish the reasoned explanation form exaggeration and propaganda. Anyway the BBFC explained the ban as follows:

THE GESTAPO'S LAST ORGY is an Italian exploitation film, from 1977, in which a Jewish woman revisits the site of a concentration camp in which she was formerly imprisoned and subjected to torture, terrorisation, humiliation and sexual violence.

BBFC Guidelines state that: As a last resort, the BBFC may refuse to classify a work --.where a central concept of the work is unacceptable, such as a sustained focus on rape, other non-consensual sexually violent behaviour or sadistic violence.

THE GESTAPO'S LAST ORGY is largely composed of scenes of strong sadistic violence, humiliation, degradation and non-consensual sexual activity, including rape, all of which occurs within a clearly anti-Semitic context. Its central concept is therefore unacceptable, and the sadistic and sexually abusive material it contains is too pervasive to be effectively addressed by cuts.

Accordingly, the BBFC has refused classification to this work.

Offsite Comment: Still Too Outrageous For Britain's Censors

27th January 2021. See article from reprobatepress.com

The very idea that a work of fiction -- a very clear work of fiction -- can somehow deprave and corrupt an otherwise normal person (and make no mistake, the idea of corruption is one of unbalancing the normal individual, not tipping an already morally disturbed individual over the edge) is one that belongs in a past that we have long left behind. There's no scientific evidence to back it up, and the whole idea belongs more to the enforcement of morality -- the prevention of bad ideas entering the public sphere -- than stopping actual harm to anyone.

Read the full  article from reprobatepress.com

Suffer Little Children is a 1983 UK video horror by Alan Briggs.
Starring Colin Chamberlain, Ginny Rose and Jon Hollanz.

The film was cut for an unofficial BBFC 18 rating issued prior to the implementation of the VRA. The film was seized by the police anyway and the film got caught up in the tabloid hysteria around the video nasty era. The film was passed 18 uncut for UK DVD release in 2017.

The DVD version has a significant number of variations from the VHS. version.

See Gav Crimson's detailed history of the censorship of Suffer Little Children and the timeline of newspaper coverage .

Summary Notes

This amateur video production, (not particularly well regarded), is claimed to be a reconstruction of events involving child demonic possession which took place at 45 Kingston Road, New Malden, Surrey, England in August 1984. None of these events were reported to the press though, not the to mention the fact that the film was conceived and shot in 1983, well before the supposed baseline event.

The video was submitted to the BBFC for a pre-VRA unofficial rating in December 1984. The BBFC asked for about 2 minutes of cuts. However the distributors suffered a police raid on the day after the submission and the police seized the film. The police seemed to think that the uncut version was illegal and would not give the distributors the opportunity to implement the cuts that would make it legal. The DPP considered the film for 3 months before deciding that no further action would be taken as long as the film was only distributed in the BBFC approved version. The film was caught up in press frenzy at this time, with the inevitable calls for a ban and worse.