| Author | Message | ||
     Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
Thought this was interesting when I came across this BBC news item - about films which the censors have re-classified. Shows how times change! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17315918 | ||
| Stephen Theaker (Stephen_theaker) Username: Stephen_theaker Registered: 12-2009 Posted From: 77.98.13.43 |
Yes, I've watched some of the Universal horrors with the kids, as well as films like The Thing From Another World. Didn't frighten them half as much as Azkaban or the Weeping Angels. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
I wonder if people are becoming more and more difficult to scare/offend - kind of de-sensitised? Or is it just that the censors used to be much more strict, ie. believing it would scare/offend folk? | ||
| Stephen Theaker (Stephen_theaker) Username: Stephen_theaker Registered: 12-2009 Posted From: 77.98.13.43 |
I don't think it's that those things are necessarily less scary than they used to be, it's more that they are scary in a way that now feels safer. They're in black and white, in period, they're quite bloodless, the effects are more obvious - they're all distancing factors. I would never let the kids watch, say, Paranormal Activity, because it would leave them terrified once the film had finished, whereas an old Frankenstein film won't upset their applecarts. Having said that, Telzey saw the Pet Shop Boys video for Heart this week, and was appalled by the ending, because the vampire got to bite the girl and the good guy lost... | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.23.136 |
I can certainly still be shocked by material that shows up in vintage cinema - De Mille's Sign of the Cross is a classic example. I don't think the issue is desensitisation - surely rather that audiences are more aware of the technology of effects. It's also worth noting that we're talking about the BBFC, which was ridiculously censorious for most of its life but has now become more liberal. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.40.253.211 |
Every now and then I get nostalgic for seeing poor old Mary Whitehouse's face looking astonished and outraged that not everyone in the world shared her Christian values. But not for long. There's a fun essay in Ramsey Campbell, Probably about Whitehouse, if I remember correctly. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.155.216.166 |
I have to admit, I never found the original Thing from another world scary, even when I were a nipper. The same goes for the original of the Fly (although the 80's remakes are up there in my top 10 or 20 horrors of all time). | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.27.108 |
I've always loved the Hawks - still find it tense and frightening. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
One of the most gripping, tense, exciting and flawlessly performed sci-fi/horror narratives ever committed to celluloid. I concur 100%, Ramsey. Every time that film comes on I am right there with them, experiencing their fear and bewilderment and sharing their struggle to comprehend and combat the alien menace in their midst. The script, direction and performances are all superior to the Carpenter remake which is itself a classic. The only elements the remake improves upon are the special effects and the cinematography. This takes us right back to the same points I was making on the 'Beasts' thread about apparent flaws not being flaws at all... but the ultimate criticism of the modern (spoilt) viewer's inability to suspend disbelief and allow the story to work its timeless magic. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.31.62 |
I meant to say on the original subject of the thread that it isn't the first instance of a film the BBFC banned and ultimately gave a PG. Wait for my BFS column! | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.31.62 |
"Or is it just that the censors used to be much more strict, ie. believing it would scare/offend folk?" To put it mildly. Cut by the BBFC: Chaplin. Laurel and Hardy. The Marx Brothers. Anthony Mann Westerns. Hitchcock films. Bergman. Losey. Ophuls. Godard... You get the idea. | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
I don't think it's that those things are necessarily less scary than they used to be, it's more that they are scary in a way that now feels safer. They're in black and white, in period, they're quite bloodless, the effects are more obvious - they're all distancing factors. There's certainly some truth in that, but I think it depends on the quality of the film. For example, I once sat my two younger sisters down and showed them THE HAUNTING - B&W, period (now), bloodless - and it just about ruined them! Afraid THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD never did it for me. I love a good monster movie, but it usually depends on the quality of the monster, and old flat-top never really cut it for me. | ||
| Stephen Theaker (Stephen_theaker) Username: Stephen_theaker Registered: 12-2009 Posted From: 77.98.13.43 |
Definitely - I was talking about the particular films we'd watched that now have low ratings, rather than every black and white film in general. The Haunting is still a 12, Freaks still a 15. Surprised to see Quatermass Experiment is down to a PG - I think the found footage section of that is still very disturbing. I think the thing, when we're talking in the context of ratings, is that scary doesn't always equal disturbing, and some films will be disturbing however old they get. So the girls jumped out of their skins when the hand comes through the crack in the door in The Thing From Another World, but they didn't go to bed worrying about an actual invasion. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.154.169.2 |
My kids were ok with The Exorcist, but then the oldest walked out of the room to get away from some scenes in Joe Dante's The Hole. They both find The Exorcism of Emily Rose creepier than The Exorcist, too. In fact, for them, 'creepy' (which can be a PG thing) is much more frightening than all-out 'horror'. Sixth Sense, say, was very frightening for them, while Candyman they just got bored with. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.154.169.2 |
In fact it flabbergasted me that they found The Exorcist more funny than anything. Back in the day that film traumatised me. | ||
| Paul_finch (Paul_finch) Username: Paul_finch Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 92.5.54.255 |
Good call on THE HAUNTING. If any modern kid was willing to sit through a black and white movie - which neither of mine were - I'm sure they'd be pretty freaked out by it. Ultimately though, perhaps when it comes to certification of movies, we should be looking at other issues aside from how scary or spooky they are. The first two BEVERLEY HILLS COP movies were both 15s, as I recall - and I'm talking about the full-on originals, not the sanitised versions that were released slightly later. The language in those would have taken them way beyond X-certificate a few years earlier (bearing in mind that much of the humour was based around the language; it wasn't incidental and realistic) Those who know me will know that I can turn the air blue when I want to, though I'm still not sure that deciding that kind of thing was suitable for 15-year-olds was any kind of progress (the fact that most 15-year-olds probably swear like trooper notwithstanding). | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 62.255.207.128 |
I agree with this Paul. My pet hate film is "Airforce One" because it was a piece of xenophobic, completley gratuitous crap propoganda and waved the flag in a very pernicious way, while disguising itslef as an escapist thriller which contained some violence and bad language but was just a bit of fun... Do the censors take the sub-text into consideration or is their judgement based entirely on surface violence, sex etc? Cheers Terry | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.232.188.106 |
Just confirmed with Tim (who'll be 15 in September) the following: - he prefers the 1933 version of King Kong to the Peter Jackson remake; - he enjoyed The Thing From Another World when it was on TCM a couple of months back; - he really liked the 1963 version of The Haunting when he first saw it a couple of years ago, and found it very scary; - he thought Psycho (1960 version) was brilliant, and has since watched it a couple more times (I first watched it with him about three years ago). He also enjoyed Pan's Labyrinth, The Orphanage, and Cronos when we watched them, subtitles and all. So there's at least one teenager who doesn't think that a film being in black-and-white, or a foreign language, is a drawback in any way. It's also proof that film classification is a guideline only, as Tim was, according to the ratings, probably way too young to see most of those films when he did. However, I figured - knowing my son better than a films classification board does - that he was capable of watching, appreciating, and handling them all. Indeed, watching Psycho with someone who had never seen the film, and had no idea what was coming, was fascinating; the closest I'll ever come to seeing it the way an audience in 1960 did. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.29.255.62 |
You should see the console games kids play these days. They make any film look tame by comparison. | ||
| Stephen Theaker (Stephen_theaker) Username: Stephen_theaker Registered: 12-2009 Posted From: 77.98.13.43 |
I didn't say how old my kids are - 8 and 4 at the moment. So a little while till they'll be watching The Exorcist..! When they do get really scared by something (e.g. Super 8 or Azkaban) they find it very reassuring to be told, that's okay, it's *supposed* to be scary. They have seen a couple of things that upset them to the point where I wished they hadn't seen them, e.g. an episode of Star Trek where an evil Kirk tries to rape Yeoman Rand (rated PG) - that scene is pretty brutal, and it's not helped by Spock's "But you kind of liked it..." leering at the end. And the death of Astrid at the end of Doctor Who: Voyage of the Damned. A companion dying, and one played by Kylie Minogue? They didn't like that at all. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.29.255.62 |
>>>an episode of Star Trek where an evil Kirk tries to rape Yeoman Rand I must admit that this thought has me reaching for the mind bleach. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.18.77 |
Very heartening, Barbara! Mind you, would any of those films (except Psycho and the del Toros) have received an R rating? I thought all the lower ratings were advisory rather than prescriptive. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.54.135 |
It's all in the mind, isn't it? The acting helps, too. When I was very young some episodes of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (my favourite show at the time - I had plastic Aurora Seaview and Flying Sub models, books . . .) frightened me so much I would lie awake in bed afterwards, trying to come to terms with what I had seen. A good example is the woman who progressively turns older (she has been experimented on) and finally dies in "Graveyard of Fear". | ||
| Stephen Theaker (Stephen_theaker) Username: Stephen_theaker Registered: 12-2009 Posted From: 77.98.13.43 |
I still have nightmares about an episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century where the crew all went blind. And the carousel in Logan's Run. And some children's tv show where they made people out of rags and blocked them up in a horse statue or something? Oh, and watching as the land I'm in turns away from the top of the Faraway Tree - I'll never stop having that one. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
It's actually the scary stuff I watched on TV and film as a kid (there was no 9pm watershed in those days) which turned me on to horror. For example, masked ball scenes have always given me the creeps since I saw Masque of the Red Death when I was very young. And Doctor Who monsters of the 60s - daleks creeping along corridors, cybermen waking up and breaking out from behind plastic sheeting, yeti on the London underground, and especially the ice warriors who freaked me out totally - all these sparked my love of monsters generally, though they terrified me at the time. I guess I just loved being terrified! (and still do, so long as it's pure fiction) | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.29.255.62 |
These are often the shows that GET THERE FIRST, regardless of merit. Kids tend not to judge aesthetically, just respond viscerally. It's entirely possible to be fond of really bad stuff, if it came at a time when overall quality wasn't a consideration. The Boy From Space, an execrable piece of TV, was the piece of fiction that truly disturbed me as a kid. I'll always be grateful.  | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
These are often the shows that GET THERE FIRST, regardless of merit. True. That can be the only explanation why people of my generation still maintain that the TV version of Stephen King's IT is actually scary. | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.232.188.106 |
Good point, Ramsey, about the ratings; yes, they are advisory, and I don't know how you could find out what movies were rated when they came out decades ago (and as the ratings system has changed over the years, you'd then have to work out a translation to modern ratings). And even the R rating is advisory, inasmuch as kids under 18 can see R-rated films in the theatre as long as they're accompanied by someone over the age of 19. Of course, all that goes out the window now that films are available in so many formats for home viewing; apart from the Jackson King Kong, Tim's seen all these films at home on DVD or broadcast on TCM. And how on earth do you rate something like the 1963 The Haunting, which has no blood, violence, swearing, or nudity, but is scary as heck, and extremely disturbing? What would it get if it was released today? PG-13? R? I was talking with a few people between acts of the play I'm in last night, and we got talking about The Haunting, and one fellow, John, said the moment that freaked him out when he first saw it was the same one that scared the crap out of me: when Lois Maxwell is seen behind the trapdoor at the top of the spiral staircase. It sounds innocuous, but in context it's terrifying. (This conversation was followed by the somewhat surreal moment when John said 'My sister Margie's been in a couple of good horror films'; John's surname is Kidder, and Margie is his younger sister Margot, and yes, she has been in a couple of good horror films). | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
And talking of censorship and what children should/shouldn't see/read/hear: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/mar/23/police-complaint-enders-game *rolls eyes skyward* | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.19.251 |
It seems it may not be so simple: http://www.wrdw.com/schools/headlines/Student_claims_Aiken_Co_middle_school_teac her_read_explicit_material_to_class_142658256.html I suppose there's also the question of whether making the alien enemy "buggers" in Ender's Game relates to Orson Scott Card's notorious homophobia. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
Ah, that puts a different slant on things! Obviously I was simply going from the one article and the fact that it said it was a "YA novel". I know nothing at all about the book, nor about Orson Scott Card or his beliefs. I just thought it was another case of an over-zealous parent - which was the way it was reported in the Guardian. Must remember - there's always more than one side to a story. | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
More often there are no sides to a story - just a great, gelatinous mass surrounded by dozens upon dozens of hands trying to ply it into whatever shape they want it to be.  | ||
| Stephen Theaker (Stephen_theaker) Username: Stephen_theaker Registered: 12-2009 Posted From: 77.98.13.43 |
"Must remember - there's always more than one side to a story." As indeed Orson Scott Card tried to show with his erm, "unique" retelling of Hamlet... http://www.raintaxi.com/online/2011summer/card.shtml | ||
| Christopher Overend (Chris_overend) Username: Chris_overend Registered: 03-2012 Posted From: 78.148.192.90 |
I wasn't aware there were passages in Ender's Game that had prostitutes with their faces covered in ejaculate... Maybe someone should Mr Card him a copy of Poppy Z Brite's Exquisite Corpse. I'm sure a man with his stance on homosexuality would love it. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
>>As indeed Orson Scott Card tried to show with his erm, "unique" retelling of Hamlet... http://www.raintaxi.com/online/2011summer/card.shtml<< Good grief! How come a reputable press like Subterranean associated their name with that kind of cr*p? |