Cannibal Holocaust (1980)
In 1980 director Ruggero Deodato pissed a whole lot of people off when he released his highly controversial Cannibal Holocaust. It’s standard Italian cannibal fare, but Deodato went the extra mile and passed it off as a documentary. And if we’re being honest, he went a couple extra miles. Actors were forced to sign an agreement that prevented them from appearing in any other movies, television shows, commercials and so on for an entire year in order to maintain the illusion that these people were really murdered onscreen. Deodato’s plan worked and a week after the film premiered in Milan he was arrested by Italian authorities. The director avoided jail time by pulling his actors from hiding and demonstrating the infamous impalement scene for the courts. This didn’t stop the controversy, however. The film still depicts sexual violence and contains actual footage of some seriously cruel animal deaths.
Deodato has defended the animal deaths over the years. “They don’t make the connection between the food on the table that mummy has cooked from the supermarket, and the fact that the animal has actually been killed,” Deodato told Electric Sheep Magazine in 2010. “When you go to a Third World country people kill animals.” I suppose one could argue Deodato has a point, but I feel like I don’t need to see animal deaths unless I’m at a Morrissey concert. As far as the quality of the movie is concerned, it’s just fine. In my younger days I used to like it more but over the years it’s slowly become whatever. Quality aside, when it comes to films that created mass hysteria, few can hold an implement stick to Cannibal Holocaust. (Chris Coffel)
Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)
If you look in the Encyclopedia for “Parental Outrage over Horror Films”, you’ll find Silent Night Deadly Night. The anger over this OG Killer Santa movie is textbook moral outrage from family groups over something they ultimately did not, and refused to, understand. To a degree. While I don’t believe the creators of Silent Night Deadly Night ever intended for kids to catch glimpses of Santa decapitating sledders, it was unfortunate that these TV spots aired during a prime time for tykes to be watching Family Ties. And while the anger did help etch the films legacy in concrete, it’s also what ultimately got it pulled from theaters, knee-capping the franchise from the popularity it should have had. Silent Night Deadly Night is a goddamn effective slasher film and it should be remembered as such. But what it lacked in initial popularity, it made up for in a heavily meme’d Part 2 and its three brain boiling, straight-to-video sequels. (Jacob Trussell)
Ghostwatch (1992)
There’s nothing particularly offensive or upsetting about Lesley Manning and Stephen Volk’s Ghostwatch by contemporary standards, but when the film originally aired on the BBC back in 1992, it made the British public believe that the spooky events taking place on the screen were real. The key element was recruiting Michael Parkinson and Sarah Greene as the hosts and presenting the footage as authentic. Both of them were respected TV presenters at the time, and back then they weren’t associated with pranks and fiction. People really trusted Parkinson due to him mostly covering serious subjects like politics, and he betrayed that trust by participating in this chilling mockumentary. Afterwards, the BBC received thousands of complaints from terrified viewers and harsh write-ups from the press. We can laugh about the hysteria in these post-internet enlightened times, but back in the olden days of 1992 people were mad because the film was too believable. (Kieran Fisher)
A Serbian Film (2010)
The content in A Serbian Film ticks off a laundry list of transgressions, the most disgusting of which features an unspeakable sexual act being committed on a newborn baby just as it enters the world. It’s wrong on so many levels, but if the filmmaker’s were trying to say that Serbian people are fucked from birth due to the country’s sociopolitical environment (which they were), it got its message across and then some. That said, the movie tries so hard to shock and disgust viewers that it plays out like a dark comedy for the most part which is part of why it caused such an uproar upon release. The movie has been banned or cut to shreds in several countries, but the most ridiculous example of hysteria surrounding it saw a Spanish film festival director charged with exhibiting child pornography after the authorities received complaints from a Roman Catholic organization over the scenes depicting kids being abused. The charges were later dropped, but it’s still rare for movies leading to arrests in modern times. (Kieran Fisher)
The Hunt (TBA)
While all of the films on this list saw their release followed by outrage and a vitriolic response, they at least saw a release. As of now, The Hunt has been shelved “indefinitely,” and that’s some bullshit right there. The Blumhouse film has a familiar premise — a group of strangers discover they’re being hunted for sport by wealthy assholes — and if you’re thinking “hey that sure sounds like the nearly 90-year-old story ‘The Most Dangerous Game'” then you’d be correct. It’s been adapted numerous times as stylish thrillers, crass exploitation, and everything in between, but this time Universal pulled the release ostensibly out of respect for the victims of two recent mass shootings. I say ostensibly because not only would they be hard-pressed to find a weekend in the year that isn’t in spitting range of one gun-related tragedy or another, but there’s another factor at play here. The film’s target pool appear to be everyday folks from Southern states while the hunters are wealthy elites, and this sent thin-skinned, snowflake conservatives, including our current commander-in-queef, into a tizzy accusing Hollywood of encouraging violence against the Right. Not only is that claim disingenuous — I don’t recall hearing any of them claim that Get Out was targeting black Americans or that the Hard Target franchise was threatening martial artists-turned-actors — but it’s also ignoring the fact that the “Liberal” elites are executing their 2nd Amendment rights. You can see why these dingbats were confused as to which characters they should be rooting for. Worse, their complaints show a complete and utter ignorance as to how this story works as the intended targets always rise up and kick the ass of their oppressors. Hopefully The Hunt will rise up too, even if it’s via a stealth release straight to VOD. (Rob Hunter)
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