From dubbing profanity with nonsensical lines to just flat out changing the villain of the
film, we look at 8 Insane Ways People Have Censored Movies
8.
South Park • The creators of South Park are no strangers
to having people freak out about their show’s antics but this one is just bizarre.
• When the series made the jump to the big screen, the original title was “South Park:
All Hell Breaks Loose”.
Seems pretty tame right?
But no the MPAA wouldn’t approve the title because it used the word hell.
• So what happened?
They resubmitted the film this time with the title “Bigger, Longer & Uncut” which despite
being an obviously dick joke, was deemed acceptable.
Considering the content of the film this whole incident just seems strange.
7.
Scarface • The 80s classic about an immigrant rising
to become a cocaine lord faced some strange edits when it was first shown on TV.
• Scarface is known for its violence and bad language which meant it wasn’t getting
shown on TV without some serious censorship.
Dubbing over various swear words, the TV edit is hilarious for its nonsensical replacements.
• For example “try sticking your head up your ass” became “try sticking your
head up your toilet”.
Considering there’s about 207 “Fuck’s” in the film alone, the TV dub doesn’t make
Tony look like a tough guy.
6.
Die Hard with a Vengeance • Having the N word appear in a film is
probably not a super good idea if you want to avoid censorship.
• Especially if it’s crucial to part of the plot.
In “Die Hard with a Vengeance” a terrorist holds the city of New York hostage but is
first demand is to have Bruce Willis go down to Harlem wearing a sign that says “I Hate
N******”.
And naturally some African American hoods don’t take kindly to this.
Luckily Samuel L Jackson shows up to save his ass.
• Anyway in the TV edit the sign was changed to the much less offensive “I Hate Everybody”,
making the whole thing look more than a little silly.
5.
Eyes Wide Shut • If it’s not bad words than surely sex
has to be the next one to protect people from and that’s what they did for the explicit
“Eyes Wide Shut”.
• During a scene where Tom Cruise sneaks into a secret society orgy, filled with people
in masks and dark robes…there’s quite an amount of explicit sex.
Y’know kinda like what we see in Game of Thrones or Westworld these days, but back
in 1999 you had to cover that shit up.
• To pass the censors they added in extra robed people so you couldn’t see any of
the sex at all.
So instead of it being a shocking moment it turned into “oh I think there’s sex going
on?
Maybe the secret cult is just playing twister behind that one guy.”
4.
Red Dawn • Normally films don’t self-censor as
hard as 2012’s Red Dawn remake did.
• Basically the plot of the film is that China invades the USA and it’s up to a group
of teens to wage guerrilla warfare and save FREEDOM.
Problem was sometime near completion the studio decided “hey we should release this in China”…yeah
you can probably see the problem.
• So they just fixed the whole film in post so that the invaders were now North Korean
which cost about $1 million to do.
The director believes this change made the film better but he was probably given some
that million to say that.
3.
Banning Every Claire Danes’ Movie • When you go out of your way to ban any
movie starring someone it’s not so much censorship as it is pettiness.
• See back in the late 90s the Philippines decided to ban every single movie starring
Claire Danes.
Why?
Because while she was promoting “Brokedown Palace” she laid some criticism on the country.
Saying the people had nothing and the place was full of rats…which is only 70% true.
• The president didn’t like this one bit leading to the ban.
They also banned her from ever entering the country again but something tells me she’s
not losing sleep over it.
2.
The Big Lebowski • Remember how Scarface had that horrible
dub?
Well it’s got nothing on the lunancy of this bit of censor-dubbing.
• In “The Big Lebowski” John Goodman gets to smash a very expensive car up with
a crow bar while telling a teenage boy “see…this is what happens when you fuck a Stanger in
the ass”.
Its gold and one of the funniest parts of the film so of course it had to go for TV
broadcast.
• But what they replaced it with is just nonsensical.
The line gets changed to “This is what happens when you find a stranger in the alps!” is
it?
I don’t know…maybe it is.
1.
Kitty Twister • Sometimes you just have to wonder what
exactly the point of censors are when they do insane shit like they did with “From
Dusk till Dawn”.
• Robert Rodriguez’s over the top ‘Tarantino meets vampires’ film had a lot that wasn’t
going to fly on TV.
But surprisingly was the changing of the name of a bar called ‘The Titty Twister’ into
‘The Kitty Twister’.
• But they managed to still leave the image of a neon sign displaying titties being twisted.
So remember kids, showing tits on TV…fine… but saying
titty is a problem.