THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE II HAS BEEN BANNED IN AUSTRALIA, AND I’M FURIOUS ABOUT IT!
November 29th 2011 05:39
A three-member panel of the Australian Classification Review Board has by unanimous decision determined that the film The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) is classified RC (Refused Classification). The Review Board is an independent merits review body. It makes a fresh classification decision after an application for review has been formerly filed. This decision supersedes the original decision made by the Classification Board.
The Review Board convened on yesterday in response to an application from the Minister for Justice, Brendan O’Connor, to review the decision made by the Classification Board on 9 May 2011 which classified The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) with an R18 (Restricted) with the consumer advice, ‘high impact themes, violence and sexual violence’.
According to the Review Board “The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) could not be accommodated within the R 18 classification as the level of depictions of violence in the film has an impact which is very high. In addition, the film must be refused classification because it contains gratuitous, exploitative or offensive depictions of violence with a very high degree of impact and cruelty which has a high impact.”
Hang on. So Salo, or 120 Days of Sodom (1975) doesn’t contain “gratuitous, exploitative or offensive depictions of violence with a very high degree of impact and cruelty which has a high impact.” … Fuck me, pull the other one, it has bells on it!
A Serbian Film (2010) was recently banned, just as it was about to be released on DVD (albeit in a cut version similar to the UK cut).
Hang on! A three-member panel?! Three people decided the movie was too offensive for the rest of the adults in Australia to have the choice to see.
A Serbian Film and The Human Centipede II are intelligent, very well made movies. Yes, they are confronting, yes, they are disturbing, and yes, they are uncompromising. But that’s the whole fucking point! More importantly, they are cinematic nightmares, pure and simple. But they are fiction, they are illusion, they are fabricated to create a response of horror in the audience, precisely what good effective horror movies are specifically designed for; to illicit a purge.
The horror genre is the only genre that provokes a genuinely palpable emotional response in the viewer: fear and repulsion. Of course it’s an acquired taste, the more imaginative creative outlets usually are, and far more filmmakers attempt to make horror movies and fail to create an atmosphere or horror and/or terror. But I’m getting off track …
Censorship.
The Morality Police.
Video Nasties.
It happened in the mid-80s, and it’s happening again. Small bodies of authority deeming movies damaging to the moral core of society and as such we should not be allowed access to them. As consenting adults we are not allowed to make our own minds up as to whether or not we want to watch such movies.
It’s tantamount to a witch-hunt. Directors Srdjan Spasojevic and Tom Six should be burned at the stake for making such reprehensible movies! But wait! What about Gasper Noe, director of Irreversible (2002)? Surely he must be just as guilty if he filmed a ten-minute long lingering rape scene? What about Miguel Angel Vivas, the director of Kidnapped (2010)? That movie is one long sustained home invasion with an emphasis on graphic violence and human cruelty. Surely he’s guilty too? But no, both those movies sit on the shelves of your local video store, alongside the movies of Adam Sandler.
If anything should be banned it should be Adam Sandler from making movies.
Not The Human Centipede II.
It’s a crime against the art of cinema.
And yes, I’m fucking furious about it.
Monster Pictures who were intending on distributing The Human Centipede II are not giving up! I champion Tom Six, the director of the movie, and I champion Monster Pictures!
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