BBFC Problem Films

[Robbmeister X]

I just finished watching Murder Set Pieces. It isn't as bad a film as I thought it would be, since the first twenty minutes go nowhere. It has some good ideas to it, and despite some iffy acting is an averagely competent little psycho flick. Some of the gore scenes are pretty interesting, though not on the whole more graphic than those in many films that have been passed. The problematic thing is the context of the violence, which contravenes current BBFC guidelines in a way that would ensure the film faced maybe ten minutes of cuts if it was ever passed.

A film which people assume is censor-banned but which has simply never been submitted is the Larry Clark indie flick Ken Park. It's a pretty decent arthouse film whose real sex scenes are neither more gratuitous or explicit than those in Romance or Q (Desire), which passed intact. Some of the characters are meant to be minors, but only according to US law (i.e. they are around eighteen to twenty), not British; the actors are all of legal age. If anyone bothered submitting it, it would definitely pass uncut. The only reason Romance is not available on UK DVD is because no-one has bothered releasing it, since it was passed intact for cinema release.