25 Most Controversial Movies
Who says movies can't offend? Some of these got downright banned!
By Kimberly Potts
25. The Brown Bunny
The story: Vincent Gallo directs himself in the 2003 story of a motorcycle racer who tries to get over the violent death of his true love during a weird cross-country road trip.
The scandal: No one remembers much more than the movie's finale, which involves Gallo receiving graphic, unsimulated oral sex from co-star (and former real-life girlfriend) Chloë Sevigny. Gallo launched a vicious war of words on Roger Ebert after the critic dissed the flick, which had caused a Cannes audience to boo, leaving Sevigny in tears and Gallo reportedly apologizing for his onscreen mess. A shorter, reedited version later got a thumbs-up from Ebert, who confirmed he and Gallo had made up.
24. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover
The story: Georgina (Helen Mirren) gets revenge on her brute of a husband Albert (Michael Gambon) after he kills her lover - by making Albert eat the remains of the dead.
The scandal: He ate the remains of the dead! The cannibalism, which Georgina followed by shooting and killing Albert, earned the 1989 movie an X rating from the MPAA, which led the studio to release it unrated. It was later rerated as NC-17 for home video.
23. Baby Doll
The story: Based on a Tennessee Williams play, it's about the rivalry between cotton-gin owner Archie (Karl Malden), who burns down the gin of competitor Silva (Eli Wallach). Silva plots revenge by seducing Archie's 19-year-old bride, Baby Doll (Carroll Baker), who has never consummated her marriage to her hubby.
The scandal: Was it the creepy way Archie ogled his virginal bride, who slept in a crib, through a hole in the wall? Or the "baby doll" nighties (yes, that's where the style started) she wore in the film's infamous billboards and posters back in 1956? Or basic subject matter about a young woman as pawn of the two men? Take your pick, but New York's Cardinal Spellman urged true believers not to see the film, while Time mag declared the multiple-Oscar nominee the "dirtiest American-made motion picture that had ever been legally exhibited."
22. The Message
The story: Anthony Quinn stars in the biopic of Islamic prophet Muhammad.
The scandal: Director Moustapha Akkad's retelling of the origins of Islam was so controversial that he had to go outside Hollywood even to secure financing, despite the fact that, out of respect to Muslim traditions, Muhammad was never actually depicted onscreen. After its release, on March 9, 1977, Muslim terrorists took nearly 150 people hostage in Washington, D.C., in protest, and then-mayor Marion Barry was shot. In an unrelated event, in 2005, Akkad died after being injured in a terrorist attack in Jordan.
21. Crash
The story: Not the 2005 Oscar winner. In this one from 1996, a movie producer (James Spader) in an open marriage meets up with other fetishists who become aroused by car crashes.
The scandal: Scenes of explicit sex are mingled with scenes with gory accidents, and though the provocative David Cronenberg flick won a special prize "for originality, for daring and for audacity" at Cannes, it also prompted some audience members to walk out during the festival's screening, so disgusted and sickened were they by the subject matter.
20. The Devils
The story: A power-mad Cardinal and his peeps, who want to control a Protestant-heavy 17th-century French town, set up the parish's priest to appear to be a warlock running a possessed nunnery.
The scandal: One of the town's nuns, played by Vanessa Redgrave, is a sex-obsessed hunchback who's got a thang for the priest. Along the way, she lets her freak flag fly, including one particularly naughty scene in which she and a pack of other nuns engage in an orgy involving a statue of Christ. The studio hacked away at that scene before even submitting it for a rating back in 1971, and it wasn't until 2002 that even part of it was restored. In Italy, the film was totally banned, and Redgrave and her co-stars were threatened with jail time if they even stepped foot into the country.
19. Deep Throat
The story: A woman (Linda Lovelace) who doesn't enjoy sex goes to a doctor (Harry Reems), who tells her it's because her sexual organs are in her throat. Deep in her throat, hence the title.
The scandal: The X-rated movie was banned in almost half the U.S. Lovelace would later claim that she literally had a gun to her head during filming. And Reems was prosecuted on obscenity charges. Still, it was celebrated by liberals and became notorious back in 1972 as a First Amendment champion - the first porn film to attract a somewhat mainstream, and coed, audience - and it has made millions of dollars. On a budget of less than $25,000.
18. Requiem for a Dream
The story: This is your brain on drugs. And your girl friend's. And your mother's. And …
The scandal: Released unrated after the MPAA slapped it with an NC-17 because of brief full frontal nudity and a particularly raunchy lesbian orgy scene involving a shared sex toy, an R-rated edit was released on home video. But director Darren Aronofsky defended his original 2000 cut, saying the offending scene was not only necessary to convey the ravaging effect of drug use but that it was also inspired by something he had personally witnessed.
17. Triumph of the Will
The story: It's director Leni Riefenstahl's infamous, Adolf Hitler-sanctioned propaganda documentary, covering the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg.
The scandal: Shot to make Hitler appear more powerful (and taller), employing groundbreaking techniques like moving cameras and aerial shots and backed by a stirring Wagner score, it's considered by many to be one of the greatest documentaries of all time. But with footage of the Hitler Youth gathering and pro-Nazi parades and speeches, it also served as a rallying cry for the Third Reich. Riefenstahl, who insisted that she was only doing it for the "art" and was not a tool of Hitler, was greeted with protests throughout the rest of her life.
16. Caligula
The story: The most expensive porn movie ever made, it's the orgy-soaked rise and fall of the titular Roman emperor (Malcolm McDowell).
The scandal: Future Oscar winner Helen Mirren and multiple nominee Peter O'Toole also co-starred in this 1979 Penthouse-financed romp, which focused on Caligula's infamous depravity, including a Bob Guccione-directed scene in which the sex wasn't simulated. (Take that, Shortbus!) Despite - or maybe because of - Guccione's efforts to spice up the movie, and years of fights amongst the producers, writers and cast over the script, it was ultimately panned, with Roger Ebert calling the final version "sickening, utterly worthless, shameful trash."
15. The Passion of the Christ
The story: Mel Gibson's depiction of Jesus' (Jim Caviezel) last 12 hours alive, during which he's betrayed, brutally tortured, tortured some more and nailed to the cross to die.
The scandal: Gibson admitted he made the 2004 film purposefully shocking - the 10-minute whipping scene, for example - so as to maximize the impact of Jesus' sacrifice. Embraced by Catholic church groups, it was panned by Jewish leaders, who feared the implication that Jews were to blame for Jesus' death. Despite the controversy, it has become one of the most successful R-rated flicks of all time, earning more than $600 million worldwide, on a $25 million production budget.
14. Fahrenheit 9/11
The story: Michael Moore's Palme d'Or-winning 2004 documentary about George W. Bush's Saudi Arabian connections, his (alleged) missed opportunities to stop 9/11 and his (alleged) botched handling of the post-9/11 war in Iraq.
The scandal: Boasted by liberals as proof of Bush's campaign to mislead the American public into supporting a war and denounced by conservatives as being full of election-year anti-Bush propaganda, it helped bring about a major polarization of Americans' opinions on the war. While one side called for a ban, some theater owners actually defied the film's R-rating and allowed teens into screenings without an adult.
13. Cruising
The story: William Friedkin directs and Al Pacino stars as a New York City police detective who goes undercover in gay S&M bars to investigate murders suspected to be the work of a serial killer.
The scandal: Gay activist groups charged that the 1980 movie perpetuated stereotypes that gay men were obsessed with depraved sex and violence. Two months after its release, a man with a submachine gun entered the Ramrod, a real gay S&M bar in NYC that was prominently featured in the film, and shot and killed two customers.
12. Dogma
The story: Two fallen angels (Ben Affleck, Matt Damon), banished by God (Alanis Morissette), head to earth to try to take advantage of a "loophole" that will redeem them, so they can expose God as fallible.
The scandal: Director Kevin Smith, who was raised as a Catholic, received hundreds of thousands of pieces of hate mail and, reportedly, a few death threats because of the 1999 film, which was also denounced by the Catholic League. Release was delayed for an entire year to give the controversy time to die down. Well, that didn't work, but Smith spoofed the naysayers by participating in a protest of the film at a New Jersey theater.
11. Titicut Follies
The story: A documentary by first-time director Frederick Wiseman, shot at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Bridgewater, a hospital for the criminally insane.
The scandal: It showed the shocking, sometimes inhumane treatment of the patients, including those who were left locked away in dark cells and taken out only to be, literally, hosed off, while another inmate was shown being force-fed via a tube shoved down his nose (he died a few days later). Astonishingly, Wiseman had full permission from the hospital. Shortly after its release in 1967, a court declared it an invasion of the inmates' privacy and indecent - ostensibly because it included male frontal nudity - and it was banned until 1992; today, it's available at Wiseman's Zipporah Films website.
10. A Clockwork Orange
The story: A gang rapist (Malcolm McDowell) is brainwashed by his government to get sick every time he witnesses an act of violence.
The scandal: The Stanley Kubrick-directed 1971 flick was initially rated X, largely because of an über-violent rape scene during which McDowell's Alex gleefully croons "Singin' in the Rain" while pummeling his victim. That was enough to stir controversy in the U.S., but in England, packs of punks dressed like Alex and his pals committed copycat acts of violence while also singing the Gene Kelly classic. It was enough to make Kubrick (who'd also reportedly received death threats because of the film) ban his own movie in England, and it wasn't officially available in the country again until after his 1999 death.
9. South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
The story: Matt Stone and Trey Parker extend the scope of their mocking (and, OK, occasionally vulgar) TV show to riff on politics, parenting, Broadway, Disney films, censorship and Canada, in a wacky but clever story that ultimately has the U.S. considering war against Canada as retribution for third-graders having watched an R-rated flick.
The scandal: Though considered one of the most obscenity-laced films in history, the 1999 'toon was largely given positive reviews by critics - and even by most Canadians (the subjects of the Oscar-nominated song "Blame Canada"). One country not a fan of the film: Iraq, which banned it because then-dictator Saddam Hussein was portrayed as, well, the gay lover of Satan.
8. JFK
The story: Oliver Stone again. His 1991 spin on the many John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories, based on the true tale of New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner), who tried to prosecute people he suspected of involvement.
The scandal: Media outlets charged that writer/director Stone was attempting to change Americans' view of history by mixing actual news footage, models and reenactments to create a single theory of what might have led to JFK's death, including the famous rejection of the "magic bullet" theory (so memorably spoofed on Seinfeld). Not to mention the suggestion that everyone from the CIA and the mafia to the FBI and Kennedy veep Lyndon Johnson might have had a hand in the killing. It went on to win a Best Picture Oscar nomination - and led Congress to approve an act that decreed classified documents relating to the assassination should be available for public viewing.
7. Pink Flamingos
The story: A transvestite trailer-park dweller (Divine) "wins" the title of World's Filthiest Person Alive in the 1972 film that kicked off wacky director John Waters' infamous "trash trilogy."
The scandal: Sex, bestiality, nudity, Waters' self-proclaimed "exercise in poor taste" had it all. But its ultimate gross-out scene? The one in which Divine procures a fresh piece of dog poo and then - and then - eats it! The cult classic, made for $12,000, was banned in several countries and prompted theater owners to pass out "Pink Phlegmingo" vomit bags.
6. Last Tango in Paris
The story: An American widower (Marlon Brando) trying to deal with his wife's suicide goes to the City of Light, where he meets a woman who's about to get married - and begins a degrading affair with her.
The scandal: Director Bernardo Bertolucci was given a four-month suspended prison sentence in his native Italy, where the 1972 movie (released just after Brando's comeback film, The Godfather) was banned because of its hateful nature and explicit sex - including the infamous scene during which Best Actor Oscar nominee Brando utters his famous "Pass the butter" line.
5. Song of the South
The story: Disney's first live-action movie mixed in animated scenes to tell the stories of kindly ol' Uncle Remus, including the tales of Br'er Rabbit, Br'er Bear … and the "Tar Baby."
The scandal: The movie, which has faced accusations that it promotes racial stereotypes and the idea of the slave-slavemaster relationship in a positive light, won a 1947 Best Song Oscar for "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" and was a major cultural force in its day. But it's been on the shelves for half a century and has never been released on home video in the U.S. because of Disney's concerns that "depictions in the film … viewed in today's world, might not be viewed as kindly or as politically correct." The studio is, however, currently mulling the idea of DVD release.
4. The Birth of a Nation
The story: Two families - the northern Stonemans and the southern Camerons - are friends whose children fall in love with each other then must duke it out during the Civil War.
The scandal: Is it in the National Film Registry? Yes. Was it really the first film to be shown in the White House? Yes. Was it a landmark in silent-film storytelling at the time of its release in 1915? Yes. But director D.W. Griffith's retelling of the birth of the Ku Klux Klan (the "nation" in the title) isn't just historic: Its portrayal of black characters as savage, witless sex abusers who weren't capable of managing their post-slavery lives after the Civil War - and its portrayal of the KKK as the rescuers of the American South - kept it mostly out of public view for decades, until its DVD release in 2002. In fact, it's still used as a propaganda film by the KKK.
3. The Last Temptation of Christ
The story: While hanging on the cross, Jesus (Willem Dafoe) is tempted by Satan with a hallucination of what an earthly life would have been like, including marrying and having children with Mary Magdalene.
The scandal: City leaders in Savannah, Georgia, banned the Martin Scorsese-directed movie and sent a letter to Universal urging the studio to ban it everywhere. Another group offered to buy it for $7 million so it could be destroyed. A group of French Catholics tossed Molotov cocktails into a theater during one unspooling in Paris, injuring more than a dozen people. United Artists and General Cinema chains refused to show it, and Blockbuster refused to carry the home-video release. Hey, no surprise: The book the 1988 movie was based on had been banned by the Catholic church and had caused its author, Nikos Kazantzakis, to be excommunicated.
2. Midnight Cowboy
The story: A Texas hustler (Jon Voight) and his dying pal (Dustin Hoffman) try to survive as nearly-homeless men on the mean streets of New York City.
The scandal: The only X-rated film ever to win an Oscar - and Best Picture at that - though that's sorta misleading since, while there were some shots of bare boobs and butts, back in 1969, "X" wasn't associated with pornography at all, just adult content not to be viewed by anyone under 18. (Not to say that Cowboy wasn't a realistically gritty look at sexual decadence!) A few years later, when it was being prepped for rerelease, it was resubmitted and came up with an R.
1. Natural Born Killers
The story: Mickey (Woody Harrelson) and Mallory (Juliette Lewis) road-trip across America, leaving a trail of bullet-ridden bodies behind them.
The scandal: Revised from a script by Quentin Tarantino, Oliver Stone meant to spoof the media's canonization of violence and violence-causers, but the blood-spattering onscreen became the story instead. Several murderers in the U.S. claimed the 1994 bloodfest inspired them (including Columbiners Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold), and one of the victim's family members filed a lawsuit against Stone. Even bestselling author John Grisham entered the fray, reportedly refusing to consider Harrelson for the adaptation of his novel A Time to Kill because of the actor's association with Killers.
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