Odd censorship

The Grinch is in the cinema at the moment. A U rated film designed to, unlike the Grinch himself, bring joy to the faces of young kids accompanied by suffering parents. Amazingly The Grinch has something in common with a lot of horror and action movies and even some of the infamous video nasties. It had to be cut before it was released. When it landed in front of the BBFC ( British board of film classifiers) it was given a PG certificate for some mild bad language. The film's distributors wanted a U certificate so removed the mild bad language. This is called a category cut. The film could have been released uncut but wasn't for financial reasons.  Because the UK & Ireland are such small markets any cuts requested by the BBFC end up in the versions screened in Ireland as well. The mild language in question. The word "ass". Very silly ain't it, someone thinking that word could in any way be offensive. Kids hear far far worse in school every day. It's far from the silliest bit of censorship that's affected us though. Annoyingly if it wasn't for money, most of these snips wouldnt have even happened.

Jingle All The Way

Martial arts weapons like throwing stars and nunchuks were routinely removed from films in the 80's and 90's. Even when the weapon was nunchuks made of peppermint candy canes welded by a mini Santa Claus in a children's christmas film.

Casino Royale

In a film with people being slowly strangled to death and getting nails shot into their eyes it was a shot of a rope dangling over a shoulder that was a step too far.

The Angry Birds Movie

"Lets get the flock out of here." Wait a minute, that's a play on words, it sounds like "Let's get the fuck out of here." Let's ask for it to be removed even though it contains nothing offensive and will go over kids heads anyway.

Star Wars : Attack Of The Clones

Dismemberment? Grand. Decapitation. No hassle. A headbutt seen from the distance and shown in a split second flash?? NOOO can't be having that.

Hard Boiled

In a movie where over 300 people get bloodily shot down, including a scene where a group of special needs adults get machine gunned, it's someone getting kicked in the chest that got chopped.

Taken 2 

In an effort to make this franchise more family friendly this one got snipped so shoddily it looked like Liam Neeson killed the main bad guy by caressing his face instead of forcing his head onto a coat hook

Alvin & The Chipmunks.

The word crap was judged to be far too offensive for wee kiddies. Crud though. Crud was ok. Imagine having to cut a film about Alvin & The Chipmunks though. You'd need to really start re-evaluating things.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2

A shot of Michaelangelo spinning sausages like nunchuks was removed from this 1991 movie, presumably to put a halt to pork product related violence on the playgrounds of England.

Black Knight

Martin Lawrence goes back in time. Martin Lawrence uses an aerosol can and a lighter to fight off enemies. The sight of this improvised weapon was too much so it was cut. Martin Lawrence now looks like he can breathe fire with no explanation. Fair enough.

The Angel's Share.

Ken Loach's 2014 film got snagged by silly language constraints. 7 cunts is grand but 13 cunts will warp our minds. So 6 cunts is the difference between a 15 cert and an 18 cert. Bye bye 6 cunts.