20 Horror Movie Scenes They Were FORCED To Cut

14. Spanking - Hellraiser

Clive Barker's Hellraiser is one of the most transgressive and boundary-pushing horror films of all time, its bold fusion of body horror with sadomasochistic themes naturally causing discomfort with censorship bodies the world over.

Yet it's always fascinating to see where the line is deemed to be drawn, and in the case of the original Hellraiser, it actually wasn't the graphic depictions of skinning and dismemberment that set the censors off.

In a 2009 interview reflecting on the film, Barker revealed that he was forced to cut a scene from the film in which Frank Cotton (Sean Chapman) and his lover Julia (Clare Higgins) partook in some spanking.

This, apparently, was too much for the powers that be, but depicting flaying and bodies being torn apart was evidently totally fine. 

Considering that modern censorship boards remain far more twitchy about graphic sex than violence, it's clear that depressingly little has changed over the last four decades.