8 Times Movie Censorship Backfired

By Ewan Paterson / August 9, 2023

Since there have been movies, there has been censorship.

Regulatory bodies and governments the world over have been mandating change in order for films to be released for well over a century now, whether that be the Hays Code from the 1930s or the "Video Nasty"-induced backlash that gripped the UK decades later. Generally speaking, movie censorship is way less intrusive than it used to be. However, it still persists, with films being subjected to jarring edits or even getting outright banned by certain countries.

Understandably, this tends to not always have the desired result. The intent of most film censorship is to guard against depictions deemed "extreme" or provocative - socially, politically, morally, or otherwise. In the case of TV broadcasters, films tend to get censored to avoid sparking complaints from families. More recently, movie studios like Disney have been censoring material for films available on their streaming services.

Guard something too enthusiastically, however, and it tends to have the effect of driving intrigue.

In that context, it's pretty easy to view all cases of censorship as backfiring in one way or another, with viewers either successfully seeking out the banned material or poking fun at the incongruous changes mandated in a released cut. That's certainly the case with the following examples, which all inspired mockery, backlash, or just drove up intrigue.

8. The UK's Horror Bans - Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Exorcist, & More

While the BBFC is today a largely lenient and liberal classification board, this was infamously not the case for much of the latter half of the 20th century. Intrusive cuts were not uncommon and it's only recently, over the last two decades, that films that were previously censored have seen re-releases with those cuts or changes removed. Local authorities also had the final say over what films could and couldn't be screened, so even while works like The Exorcist were given an X rating by the BBFC (a precursor to the standard 18 certificate UK moviegoers are now accustomed to), it was still banned by many councils - effectively meaning that certain areas of the UK went without it.

The BBFC also refused classification for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre following its initial theatrical run, with the film only being unbanned in 1998 - a full 22 years after its UK premiere.

While films across a wide range of genres were subjected to intrusive cuts or even bans by the BBFC and the Conservative UK governments of the 1970s and '80s, the horror genre was most affected. However, these bans and cuts have arguably only led to these films gaining a more notorious reputation and consequently their enduring popularity. The Exorcist didn't have its UK TV premiere until 2001, by which point its cinematic acclaim had been underlined by years of stories surrounding its controversial initial release.

You can even draw a throughline from the days of old horror and martial arts movies being banned in the UK to the thriving boutique home video label scene that has emerged over the last decade, with labels like Arrow Video, 88 Films, and Indicator - all UK-based companies - largely specialising in those genres.