10 Brutally Violent Films The Censors Tried To Ban
8. The Burning (1981)
The Burning is a Friday The 13th clone with effects by Tom Savini, who contributes numerous grisly sequences as well as the make-up for the villainous Cropsey, a janitor horribly burned in a prank gone awry. The films most notorious sequence is the raft massacre, where Cropsey takes his revenge on 5 teenagers with his weapon of choice a pair of garden shears. In about a minute of screen time, throats are slit and fingers are hacked off, all of which became a bone of contention for the BBFC. When Thorn-EMI released the film uncut in the 1980s, it was impounded under the Obscene Publications Act and placed on the Video Nasties list. A decade later, Vipco released the film on home video but were obliged to remove 30 seconds of footage. The film was finally released uncut in 2001.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
