13 Movies That Contradict Their Own Message
1. Death Wish II
The Intended Message: Rape is awful.
The Real Message: Rape is sexy and titillating.
The hypocrisy of the Death Wish franchise is well-documented: the Charles Bronson-starring movies decry violence while similarly glorifying it, and though the first film was actually relatively restrained - compared to the sequels, anyway - the second movie in particular has a real issue where its sexual politics are concerned.
There are several rape scenes in Death Wish II, and though they're clearly just the precursors to Paul Kersey's (Bronson) inevitable, bloody rampage, the fact that director Michael Winner chose to sexualise these sequences seems to clash harshly with the movie's assumption that rape is, you know, bad.
The most egregious instance of this sees Kersey's housekeeper Rosario (Silvana Gallardo) being raped by the gang, and the prolonged, five-minute sequence focuses extensively on Gallardo's naked body, clearly with the intent of titillating the audience.
Granted, this tonal schizophrenia is common in the exploitation genre, but given the series' attempt to have something approaching social relevance, it completely fumbles the ball by making the rape scenes so queasily gratuitous.
What do you make of these morally contradictory movies? Got any other suggestions? Shout them out in the comments!