10 Mean Films For Mean Times

Having previously collaborated on the Marilyn Chambers picture Sensual Paradise (“The most important film ever made on sex relations!”), Wes Craven and Sean Cunningham regrouped to make an extreme exploitation movie tentatively titled Night Of Vengeance, which took inspiration from Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring.

In 1974, the first of many battles with the BBFC began when examiner Stephen Murphy rejected the film for theatrical release. He wrote: “We can find no redeeming merit in script, in acting, in character development or in direction which would lead us to feel that this muddly [sic] film is worth salvaging….Maybe we are wrong. But if we are to go into this area of sexual violence, it will have to be for a film in which we detect greater merit than this.”

A decade later, the situation escalated when police seized uncertified VHS copies of the film, which was banned and successfully prosecuted for obscenity. After years of disputes and appeals, the movie finally became legally available to watch (with cuts) in 2002, but it remained unavailable in its uncut form until 2008. By an extraordinary coincidence, a bigger-budgeted remake hit cinemas exactly one year later. It was passed uncut.