Movie News

Beloved genre director Stuart Gordon has passed away at age 72.

His magnificent career began with his remarkable 1985 debut feature Re-Animator. The film spawned two sequels as well as a 2011 stage adaptation Re-Animator: The Musical .

The filmmaker followed up this success with two more adaptations of Lovecraft's writing with 1986's From Beyond and 1995's Castle Freak . Other Lovecraft adaptations include 2001's Dagon and the Masters of Horror episode Dreams In the Witch-House.

Other notable films include the 1990 sci-fi film Robot Jox , 1992's Fortress , 1996 sci-fi comedy Space Truckers and the 2005 drama Edmond.

The Invisible Man is a 2020 Australia / USA Sci-Fi horror thriller by Leigh Whannell.
Starring Elisabeth Moss, Aldis Hodge and Oliver Jackson-Cohen.

The film follows Cecilia, who receives the news of her abusive ex-boyfriend's suicide. She begins to re-build her life for the better. However, her sense of reality is put into question when she begins to suspect her deceased lover is not actually dead.

BBFC advised category cuts were required for a 15 rated cinema release in 2020. The Irish cinema releases looks to be uncut but 16 rated.

Now the uncut version was passed 18 uncut by the BBFC for VoD with the consumer advice: strong injury detail, bloody violence, domestic abuse.

The DVD and Blu-ray ratings have not yet been published but a region 0 Blu-ray release suggests that this could also be 18 uncut.

The cinema release was previously passed 15 for strong bloody violence, threat, language, domestic abuse after BBFC advised pre-cuts:

The BBFC commented:

• This film was originally seen for advice. The company was advised it was likely to be classified 18 uncut but that their preferred 15 classification could be obtained by making small changes to one scene to remove bloody injury detail during an attempted suicide. When the film was submitted for formal classification, the shots in question had been removed and the film was classified 15.

Death Ship is a 1980 UK / Canada / USA horror mystery adventure by Alvin Rakoff.
Starring George Kennedy, Richard Crenna and Nick Mancuso.

Survivors of a tragic shipping collision are rescued by a mysterious black ship which appears out of the fog. Little do they realize that the ship is actually a Nazi torture ship which has sailed the seas for years, luring unsuspecting sailors aboard and killing them off one by one.

The 1980 cinema release was X rated followed by 18 rated VHS in 1987. But the film was reduced to 15 for 2007 DVD with the consumer advice:

Contains infrequent strong nudity, moderate bloody violence and horror

The film has just been resubmitted for video release late in the year but the age rating has been raised back up to 18 for:

strong nudity, bloody images

There are variant versions of the film but I don't the differences are relevant to the age rating. The age defining scene seems to be where a naked and busty woman is showering only, for the water to turn to blood, (not her blood). The woman gets stuck in the shower by a jammed door and she is eventually killed off screen by the ghostly ship's captain.

The 15 rating surely fits the bill, and the 2007 consumer advice seems accurate. So why has it been bumped up to 18, and why has the BBFC changed the consumer advice so as to no longer mention the 'moderate' violence? It seems that the consumer advice has been phrased to justify the over exaggerated age rating rather than to provide informative advice to viewers.

Update: BBFC Response

The BBFC explained the rating increase in a tweet

We reclassified the latest version of Death Ship 18 due to extended material that included much stronger nudity and bloody images:

An interesting comment as I have never heard before that the theatrical version was cut.

Update: An uncut version

Thanks to Andy, Tim, Mark, Rob and Bendy.

The film was originally cut in the US to obtain an MPAA R rating. In the UK this Theatrical Version was passed X for 1980 cinema release, 18 rated for VHS, and 15 rated for 2007 DVD. This 2007 DVD package was released with an 18 rating due to DVD extras, presumably meaning the DVD extra titled Uncensored bloody shower scene.

In 2018 Scorpion Releasing in the US issued a Blu-ray with a restored and extended version it refers to as the Original Longer Cut. It seems that this version included the Uncensored bloody shower scene and is now set for UK release on Nucleus Blu-ray with an increased BBFC 18 rating.

Onward is a 2020 USA children's cartoon comedy by Dan Scanlon.
Starring Tom Holland, Chris Pratt and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

Set in a suburban fantasy world, two teenage elf brothers, Ian and Barley Lightfoot, go on an journey to discover if there is still a little magic left out there in order to spend one last day with their father, who died when they were too young to remember him.

Disney's latest Pixar cartoon Onward has been banned by several Middle Eastern countries because of a reference to lesbian parents. The film will not be shown in Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Police officer Specter, voiced by Lena Waithe, has been heralded as Disney-Pixar's first openly gay character. Her lines include: It's not easy being a parent... my girlfriend's daughter got me pulling my hair out, OK?

Other Middle East countries, Bahrain, Lebanon and Egypt are showing the film.

And according to Deadline, Russia censored the scene in question by changing the word girlfriend to partner and avoiding mentioning the gender of Specter, who is a supporting character.

Meanwhile in the US the christian website LifeSiteNews has launched a petition calling for a boycott of the movie. Gualberto Garcia Jones Director of Advocacy for LifeSite whinged:

It's a relentless onslaught against our children's innocence. And, we parents have got to be just as relentless in rejecting Disney's attempt to sexualize our children.

The petition has been signed by about 55,000 people and states:

By forcing the LGBT agenda on us, you are seriously disrespecting our values. The days are now over where we would give you our hard-earned dollars just so you can turn around and offend us and our children's innocence. Please do not pursue this agenda again in the future.

Eternals is a 2020 USA action Sci-Fi fantasy by Chloé Zhao.
Starring Angelina Jolie, Richard Madden and Salma Hayek.

Following the events of Avengers: Endgame (2019), an unexpected tragedy forces the Eternals, ancient aliens who have been living on Earth in secret for thousands of years, out of the shadows to reunite against mankind's most ancient enemy, the Deviants.

One Million Moms is a US morality campaign group. It has called for the boycott of an upcoming Marvel Studios movie because it features an openly gay superhero. The Eternals is said to an include a kiss between superhero Phastos and his husband.

The movie's release is still eight months away, but the campaigners getting early. The group wrote:

Warning! An upcoming Marvel Studios movie will include a homosexual superhero and a same-sex kiss in the film The Eternals , set to hit theaters on November 6. One Million Moms needs your help to make sure as many people as possible are aware of Marvel pushing the LGBTQ agenda on families in the upcoming superhero movie The Eternals , which will be distributed by Walt Disney Studios.

Marvel has decided to be politically correct instead of providing family friendly programming. Marvel should stick to entertaining, not pushing an agenda. As moms, we all want to know when Marvel is attempting to desensitize our family by normalizing the LGBTQ lifestyle.

The Invisible Man is a 2020 Australia / USA Sci-Fi horror thriller by Leigh Whannell.
Starring Elisabeth Moss, Aldis Hodge and Oliver Jackson-Cohen.

The film follows Cecilia, who receives the news of her abusive ex-boyfriend's suicide. She begins to re-build her life for the better. However, her sense of reality is put into question when she begins to suspect her deceased lover is not actually dead.

BBFC advised category cuts were required for a 15 rated cinema release in 2020. The Irish cinema releases looks to be uncut bit 16 rated.

Versions

uncut run: 124:21s pal: 119:23s	Ireland	Ireland : Passed 16 uncut for " Strong psychological threat and violence. Scene of self-harm " 2020 cinema release The Irish cinema is 3s longer and references the cut scene in the consumer advice so it seems likely that this is the uncut version.
advised category cuts cut: 3s run: 124:18s pal: 119:20s		UK: Passed 15 for strong bloody violence, threat, language, domestic abuse after BBFC advised pre-cuts: 2020 cinema release The BBFC commented: This film was originally seen for advice. The company was advised it was likely to be classified 18 uncut but that their preferred 15 classification could be obtained by making small changes to one scene to remove bloody injury detail during an attempted suicide. When the film was submitted for formal classification, the shots in question had been removed and the film was classified 15.

An Australian film industry coalition is calling for new classification between PG and M (which is a PG-15 rating).

Major and independent film distributors and exhibitors are urging the federal government to adopt a new PG13 classification which they say would benefit family-friendly Australian and international films that get M ratings.

Echoing calls by Screen Producers Australia and the Australian Children's Television Foundation, the Film Industry Associations (FIA) also advocates a uniform classification system across all delivery platforms, with self-classification by the industry, overseen by a government regulator.

The say the current review system is no longer fit-for-purpose. It is expensive and unfeasibly time-consuming in an environment where digital distribution has minimised the time between the delivery of a film and its release date, the FIA says in its submission to the government classification review.