Seems that Nick Palumbo's MURDER-SET-PIECES (2004) has just been banned by the BBFC, the UK's state censor board. According to the BBFC's website:

"The BBFC has rejected the DVD Murder Set Pieces. This means that it cannot be legally supplied anywhere in the UK. The decision was taken by the Director, David Cooke and the Presidential Team of Sir Quentin Thomas, Lord Taylor of Warwick and Janet Lewis-Jones.

Murder Set Pieces is a feature with a single-minded focus on the activities of a psychopathic sexual serial killer, who, throughout the film, is seen raping, torturing and murdering his victims. Young children are among those terrorised and killed, and their inclusion in this abusive context is an added concern. In relation to the adult victims, there is a clear focus on sex or sexual behaviour accompanied by non-consensual pain, injury and humiliation.

David Cooke, Director of the BBFC said:
“It is the Board’s carefully considered view that to issue a certificate to Murder Set Pieces, even if statutorily confined to adults, would involve risk of harm within the terms of the Video Recordings Act, would be inconsistent with the Board’s Guidelines, and would be unacceptable to the public.

“Rejecting a work outright is a serious matter and the Board considered whether the issue could be dealt with through cuts. However, given the unacceptable content featured throughout, and that what remains is essentially preparatory and set-up material for the unacceptable scenes, cutting the work is not a viable option in this case and the work is therefore refused a classification.”

Under the terms of the Video Recordings Act distributors have the right to appeal the Board’s decision. Murder Set Pieces also raises potential legal questions, for instance in relation to the Protection of Children Act 1978, as well as possible breaches of other legislation such as that on obscenity. Having concluded that the work would in any case have to be rejected on grounds of harm and unacceptability to the public, the Board did not think it necessary at this stage to reach a final view on these legal issues, but they would have to be considered in the event of any appeal."

There we have it - after a decade or so of liberalisation and transparency, it still comes down to a bunch of titled toffs deciding what us rabble get to watch.

I have no interest in seeing Murder-Set-Pieces, but banning it and then describing exactly what it contains draws attention to the film from people who might otherwise have ignored it, and will send the few people who want to see it (including the minuscule proportion of those people for whom this material might be dangerous) scurrying to the unpoliceable underworld of file sharing networks.

Hmm. It's interesting how a film that I've never had any interest in seeing now piques my curiousity merely because an authority figure has decided it shouldn't be seen. I wonder if that happens with anyone else?

Curious...

D.

Sucks in that it gives this crappy film another thing to brag about.

This is the first horror-type film banned by the BBFC post James Ferman's reign. They have recently passed both Late Night Trains and Flavia the Heretic uncut. The version that they banned was apparently the full uncut 103m version - my understanding is that the version passed as an R by the MPAA is about 20m shoter. They have also passed the unrated versions of films such as Hostel and Hills Have Eyes uncut.

They have come under a bit of pressure recently for being too liberal after Holocaust Day was used by some pro-censorship groups to publicise the fact that they had passed SS Experiment Love Camp uncut (although the film had been passed back in 2005). There have been recently been several newspaper articles highlighting the "Video Nasties" that were banned/heavily cut in the 1980's but which have now generally been passed uncut. There was an attempt by some MP's to get a more restrictive censorship bill passed as law although the majority, and the government, blew this away.

These films were made in 1974 and 1975. How nice to know that, when it comes to film censorship, the UK is now only 33 years behind the times!

Such a fuss over such a dreadful, and depressing, film. Sheesh.

Although they did reject LOVE CAMP 7 (one of the original video nasties) in 2002. Also, in 2004, the BBFC rejected an extra feature on THE HOWLING DVD that showed in its entirety the porno rape loop glimpsed early in the film.

Its a bit disingenuous to claim that UK censorship is 33 years behind the times. The BBFC is a lot more liberal than they used to be and very little stuff now gets banned outright. In the recent furore over SS Experiment Camp their spokesperson was quite happy to go on record and justify classifying it uncut. It is one of the world's more liberal censorship bodies and generally passes uncut unrated versions of films that the MPAA won't give an R to. The MPAA is far more restrictive but what they classify doesn't have the force of law and distributors can always ignore them and release unrated versions.

10 years ago in the UK The Exorcist, Straw Dogs and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre were stll banned on video with the latter still refused a cinema certificate.

It's all very well to claim that the BBFC is one of the world's more liberal censorship bodies, but very few countries in the 'free' world actually have censorship bodies these days. What they have are voluntary classification systems (which is the major difference between the BBFC and the MPAA).

Incidentally, the BBFC recently insisted on removing several horsefalls from Aleksander Ford's KNIGHTS OF THE TEUTONIC ORDER, a film which has been shown in virtually every country in the world (including Iran) without encountering censorship problems of any kind.

That may be the case as far as 'legitimate' releases are concerned but the fact is that the BBFC cuts more than ever today. The vast majority of censorship these days is visited upon hardcore porn at the R18 category (but, I know this is a family forum so I won't go into details). The BBFC is obliged to adhere to various acts of Parliament and, as a consequence, is obliged to remove whole chunks from some of the more extreme sexual material that is submitted for classification.

This censorship of hardcore is effectively invisible and tends to go unremarked upon because the material in question is only available in licensed premises. A conspiracy theorist might suggest that one of the reasons the BBFC found it so easy to ease up on conventional feature films was because there was a steady income stream guaranteed from going tough on the smut merchants.

I may be wrong but I think a number of countries in Western Europe have statutory censorship bodies - I believe Ireland and Germany both do and there are probably others.

Whilst I agree that R18 films are frequently cut its simply not true that the BBFC cuts "more than ever" - back in the 1970's they used to cut over 50% of X films for the cinema and hardcore sex films were never classified at all. Then following the VRA in the 1980's whole rafts of video releases were cut.

I'm afraid it is true. Between March and August 2007, the BBFC ordered cuts to over 300 adult titles. A quick glance at the list of titles shows that some were subjected to cuts of over 10 minutes. When you remember that distributors have to pay the BBFC for a first submission, and then again after the requested cuts have been made, it's a tidy little earner for the Soho Square Scissor Squad (or SSSS as we like to call them in our house).

Just to clarify my earlier point though, what I should have said is that these adult films are often cut to bring them down from the more restrictive R18 category to the 18 - thus allowing them to be sold in regular stores.

In this case, the BBFC is required to remove scenes of cruelty and unnecessary suffering to animals by law. Which means (for example) even illegal horse falls from films over 100 years old will have to be removed.

Although I don't think anybody on this board would be positive towards mistreatment/cruelty/death to animals in films, I do think this is entirely pointless. Who does it serve? What's the point in removing an illegal horse fall from a film made (say) in the 1940s?

I am all for the implementation of a tax or levy on the producers/distributors to be donated to an animal sanctuary/charity. Perhaps filmmakers will think twice when it hits them in the pocket.

Interestingly, on the horsefalls point, the BBFC seem to have got stricter rather than more lenient and, although the relevant UK law dates from 1937, horsefalls involving trip wires were basically hardly cut at all, if ever, before the 1970's. Whole rafts of older films have been caught by this including Old Yeller (nb: not a horsefall but deemed distrssed to the title mutt) and The True Story of Jesse James whilst the the 1936 Charge of the Light Brigade and The Wind and the Lion remain unreleased on DVD in the UK as a result. Although this law is supposed to be aimed at actual cruelty in the filming the BBFC have made snips to films which have merely inserted stock footage.

On the pornography cuts point, the material cut would not even have been granted a certificate 10-15 years ago so the impression that the BBFC is a more censorous organisation than the past is a false one. If distributors insist on getting 18 certificates for R18 material then its not surprsing they are going to get cut - the same as if they wanted Hostel and Saw XXXV to get a PG.

It's also worth pointing out that, although the BBFC have now passed uncut versions of many films which were cut by previous regimes, they have also asked for cuts in films which had previously been passed uncut, such as DUCK YOU SUCKER (a horsefall nobody had noticed before), STRANGE BEHAVIOR (immitable suicide technique) and SWEET SWEETBACK'S BAAD ASSSSS SONG (suddenly revealed as child pornography!).

I wasn't trying to say that the BBFC was more 'censorious' - merely that it cuts more titles than ever before. It's pretty obvious that we have access to far more extreme material in the UK than 10 years ago.

The point I was driving towards was that, as is often the case, a despised cultural form has been conveniently singled out and, in the process, a steady income flow seems to have been established for the private (although, as Brad often points out, effectively state-sanctioned) organisation charged with overseeing the censorship of home entertainment.

By the way, the list I referred to also showed that, in the same period, the BBFC had ordered cuts to EMPEROR OF THE NORTH, RACE WITH THE DEVIL, 99 WOMEN and an episode of WALKER TEXAS RANGER

They even cut Clarence Brown's ANNA KARENINA (1935) and Cecil B. De Mille's THE PLAINSMAN (1936).

These are the latest statistics with regard to the BBFC cutting adult material:


January: 23 R18s cut out of 71 (32%)
February: 28 R18s cut out of 90 (31%)
March: 29 R18s cut out of 97 (30%)

(Info posted on the Melon Farmers website).

And in case you doubted the UK censor's eye for making a fast buck, click below for information on their latest racket. Of course, this extends far and wide beyond the confines of the smut market.

BBFC audio commentary scam

RACE WITH THE DEVIL? What's to cut?

A shot of a snake being struck with a stick.

Try shaying that after 8 pints

This business now where the BBFC have decided that each audio commentary now constitutes a new work, and must be classified as such...

Surely this therefore means that a DVD supplied with multiple soundtracks must now have each classified separately, one for each language option, and one for each soundtrack mix, since sometimes sound cues are altered between mixes...

All patently nonsense.

Since distributors are forced into classification by law, surely there should be some sort of discount on offer for minority interest titles where the rather hefty classification fee could make the difference between a release being financially viable or not? Otherwise, the system plainly stifles the availability of such work.

It's worth bearing in mind that the Video Recordings Act was supported by the major studios, who saw it as a way of forcing out independent distributors. Providing a discount for minority interest titles is the last thing the BBFC would be interested in doing.