10 Most Controversial Films Of The Classical Hollywood Era

6. The Story Of Temple Drake (1933)

When a film is adapted from a novel, there is already a precedent set well before the film's release. When the source material is highly controversial, chances are that the controversy was carry over to the film, for better or worse. This was exactly the case for the well-received novel, Sanctuary, and its 1933 film adaptation, The Story of Temple Drake. The film tells the story of Temple Drake, a young and promiscuous girl who is kidnapped, raped, and forced into prostitution by a gangster named Trigger. Temple later kills Trigger and flees back home, only to be convinced to confess to the murder by an idealistic lawyer who manages to get Temple to admit that she "enjoyed the rape". Whilst there is an element of moralistic revenge in there, the film's portrayal of rape and murder was so controversial that it overshadowed everything else and was instrumental in introducing the Hays Code into Hollywood. The kicker is that the film was still considered happier and watered down compared to the original source material. It goes to show that Hollywood were pretty fearless back in the day, with controversial films like The Story of Temple Drake somehow managing to get the greenlight. Unfortunately, these days Hollywood has resorted to adapting poorly written fan-fiction (that's controversial for the wrong reasons) into equally poor film adaptations.