We're lucky enough to live in a society where censorship isn't a huge worry (unless you're into certain forms of pornography, apparently). The West is relatively free of oppressive regimes at least when it comes to the media you're allowed to consume meaning that freedom of expression is king. Which means you get all kinds of weird and wacky crap in our cinemas and on television. There was that weird period in the seventies where all martial arts films were banned by the BBFC because kids kept buying nunjucks and hurting each other with them, which dovetailed with the Video Nasties scandal not long after, but for the most part, films don't get banned much in the UK or US nowadays. Unless it has Human Centipide in the title. In which case, you can't really blame people for thinking that seeing...that might not be a particularly great precedent to set in terms of fillmmaking. There are films that have been banned elsewhere in the world (and, to be fair, Great Brtiain as well) for frankly bizarre reasons, though, and some bizarre films too. The giant purple dinosaur who is corrupting the minds of Asia's youth! The recent comedy that's going to topple the North Korean dictatorship if given half the chance! A British classic about adultery! These are the ten films banned for ridiculous reasons.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
