8 Times Movie Censorship Backfired

5. Fart Noises Removed - Blazing Saddles

Blazing saddles fart joke
Warner Bros.

Probably the funniest and most encountered type of film censorship is the TV edit. Films regularly get cut down for broadcasters to accommodate time slots and to remove potentially offensive content that could be seen by younger audiences. These changes can sometimes even impact films that air after the designated broadcast watershed, which, when taking advert breaks into account as well, can make watching films on TV a less-than-optimal experience.

However, sometimes a TV edit can enter "so bad it's good" territory, which was very much the case for some U.S. viewers who tuned in to watch Blazing Saddles as it first started to make its way to television sets in the 1970s. One of the most iconic scenes in Mel Brooks' rip-roaring comedy Western is also a movie first - where a number of cowboys gather around a campfire, eat some beans, and toot up a storm.

It's one of the film's most abruptly funny moments, but it was also the victim of one of the funniest TV edits. Rather than broadcast Blazing Saddles farts-intact, many stations elected instead to remove the onscreen flatulence altogether. With the farts removed, the cowboys look like they're engaging in some kind of ritualistic dance, which is somehow even weirder than if the stations had cut the scene entirely.

Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.