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Friday 29 October 2021 InQuire
Entertainment
Censor: British Cinema's History of Horror Censorship By Ed Streatfield, Newspaper Entertainment Editor
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rano Bailey-Bond’s directorial art. Contextually, Britain had the strictdebut Censor is a tantalising new est censorship of any western European British psychological horror perination regarding cinema. After the reod film. The film stars Niamh Algar as lease of home video, a loophole allowed Enid, an authoritarian reticent censor any film to be published without cerduring the 1980s ‘video nasties’ moral tification for VHS release, as the BBFC panic. She vehemently believes that if only gave certification for cinemas. Mary society was ridden of any ‘morally corWhitehouse, the conservative figurerupting’ influences found in media, Brithead pushed for gory horror films to be ain would transform into a cinematic banned to prevent societal degradation, dream of blissful violence free fantasy. and copycat killers. Seventy-two films However, as she encounters a film which were then compiled in a list which contriggers childhood trauma of losing her travened the Obscene Publication Act sister, she’s unyieldingly convinced the 1959; the ‘video nasties’ list. Ironically, director is her captor. Therefore, the film this list was regarded as the tablets of revolves around dualistic metaphor of Moses by horror fanatics. Containing media censorship for the self-censorship a mixture of subversive classics and from traumatic experiences. Shot with nauseatingly salacious films includ35mm film, Super8 and VHS, the cineing The Evil Dead, Posmatography replicates the luminous session, Cannibal but muffled hues found within Holocaust, I Spit cassettes, especially from the on Your Grave psychedelic Giallo technicoland The Drillour terrors of the time. Mirer Killer. The roring Cronenberg’s VideoBritish press drome, Bailey-Bond raises consequentialcontinually pertinent quesly waged a war tions in the mass media on all fronts age of the psychological as the Daieffects of being exposed to ly Express synthetic violence, published a the overreach notoriousof governly misment conleading trol and censorImages courtesy of ship o
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Silver Salt Films, BFI, Film4
front page: ‘Four Children in Ten Watch Video Nasties: six year olds hooked on violence, sex and horror films’. Of course, this study was conducted involving children who after saying they had watched these films, couldn’t state the plot, as they were timelessly lying about seeing these films for the prestige of their playground peers. The Video Records Act of 1984 then gave total overwhelming control to the censors of the BBFC, with no guidelines, to ban or cut to shreds any film they deem necessary, which was only revoked in 1999 after drafting guidelines drawn by the public. The film acutely reflects the authoritarian veneer of Thatcher’s Britain as Enid ignores the merciless quelling of the 1985 miners’ strike on her radio, as state
ordained real violence is legitimised but macabre fantasy is a luciferian root of suffering. Although Bailey-Bond demonstrates impressively mature direction for her debut with a compelling plot, at times the film confirms conservative biases unintentional to the message of the film. Although from Enid’s fanatical confirmation bias home video stores become as dank and dreary as Dracula’s dining room, this doesn’t prevent Michael Smiley’s character, a leery sexist horror studio producer from being objectively so. Although this may be Bailey-Bond’s unquestionably justified depiction of horror’s history of misogyny, all of the proponents of horror within the film are unmistakably dubious, even outside of Enid’s perspective. Nevertheless, this film positively
confirms the future of horror is female
Image courtesy of The Daily Express with Rose Glass (Saint Maud), Julia Ducournau (Raw) and Jennifer Kent (The Babadook); closing the eyelids of the male gaze monopoly. The climax of the film results in brutal blood curdling violence which raises the question of whether horror consumption influenced these actions, which aren’t subtle and ambiguous, but frustratingly misleading. However, despite this the film still provides finetuned performances, direction bursting with potential and another exciting voice within the canon of Britain’s new wave of horror directors. 7/10 Censor is Available on Curzon Home Video, Amazon Prime and Apple TV
Jodorowsky's Dune: The Greatest Sci Fi Never Made By Harry Brown, Entertainment Writer
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n 1984 fans of Frank Herbert’s Scifi Novel Dune were excited to finally see a live action adaptation of the acclaimed work. However, many would leave the cinema after watching David Lynch’s adaptation feeling disappointed. The film was a commercial and critical failure with Critic Roger Ebert at the time calling the film ‘a real mess, an incomprehensible, ugly, unstructured, pointless excursion into the murkier realms of one of the most confusing screenplays of all time’. Yet one cinemagoer was excited to see the mess of the film and that was Avant-Garde filmmaker, Alejandro Jodorowsky (The Holy Mountain). Jodorowsky had been in development hell with his vision of Dune just under a decade earlier, and disappointed that he had never been able to complete it. He had big plans (the film was to be ten hours long) although early screenplays reached 14 hours. The cast would include his 12-yearold son as the lead, painter Salvador Image courtsey of Dali, diMUBIress rector and
actor Orson Welles and Rolling Stones’ front man Mick Jagger. At one point in development the music was to be done by prog rock band, Pink Floyd. Commissioned to draw up the story boards and concept art of the growing script was Jean Giraud, H.R. Giger, and Chris Foss. They had to try and bring the director’s
line as concept art and storyboards were all completed before the finance had dried up. This was due to the sheer ambition of the project. The film had a $9.2 million budget, 2 million of which had been used before filming even began. Dali, who dreamed of being Hollywood’s highest paid actor, wanted to be paid
he knew of how talented a director Lynch was so he would obviously succeed. He was dragged to a Paris screening of the film by his sons and gradually became happier and happier when watching the film as he realised how awful the film was, whilst other fans were becoming more disappointed. Jodorowsky’s Dune
Images courtesy of Sony Picture Classics
Photo by Columbia Records ideas to life which according Jodorowsky himself included ‘whore-ships driven by the semen of our passionate ejaculations’. He also veered from Dune’s original ending by wanting the young protagonist Peter to turn into a sentient planet and travel around the universe. The grand ideas of Jodorowsky can still be seen on-
$100,000 per hour for his scenes. The point of most contention between Jodorowsky and producer, Jean-Paul Gibbon, however, was the run time, which was much more than the 2 hours wanted by the producers. When hearing that David Lynch would adapt Dune, a project he had worked so hard on, he was in pain as
would not leave an empty mark on scifi filmmaking as many who had worked on his pre-production team would go on to be a part of the filmmaking team for Alien, bringing with them the ideas conjured up for Dune. The extensive script, storyboards and concept art were sent to many studios and would end up influ-
encing many sci-fi films to come like Star Wars, Terminator, and the Fifth Element. Hope- fully Dune fans can be excited in a different way to how Jodorowsky was when Denis Villeneuve’s interpretation releases on 26th October.