4. Italy Attempted To Permanently Destroy All Copies Of Last Tango In Paris For Depicting A**l Sex
Marlon Brando's 1972 Oscar nomination vehicle Last Tango In Paris is unfortunately remembered for one scene in the whole film. And it is because of that scene that the film had so much trouble being released in some territories. For anyone who hasn't seen it (and I recommend you do) Marlon Brando plays Paul, an American widower who begins an affair with a younger woman. As you can imagine, there is a lot of sex in the film, but the scene that upset censors the most was an improvised scene that involved butter being used as lube for a**l sex. If you watch it now, you wonder what the fuss was about, but in 1972, the butter flew out of the orifice and hit the preverbal fan. While places like France gave the film raving reviews and people reportedly queued for two hours to see it, director Bernardo Bertolucci had a much harder time in his native Italy. After an initial release in Italy which saw the film gross $100,000 in just six days, the Italian censor board had a change of heart and ordered that the film should be removed from all cinemas. The Italian prosecutor labeled it as ''self serving pornography'' and it what can only be described as a over reaction of sorts, Bernardo Bertolucci was sentenced to four months in prison. But they didn't stop there; in 1976 they ordered for all copies of the film on Italian soil to be destroyed. Clearly some sectors of 1970's Italia were not fans of anal sex.