Description
Book SynopsisBetween the late 1950s and mid-1970s, British cinema experienced an explosion of X-certificated films. In parallel with an era marked by social, political, and sexual ferment and upheaval, British filmmakers and censors pushed and guarded the permissible limits of violence, horror, revolt, and sexuality on screen.
Adult Themes is the first volume entirely devoted to the exploration of British X certificate films across this transformative period, since identified as the long 1960s'. How did the British Board of Film Censors, harried on one side by the censorious and moralistic, and beset on the other by demands for greater artistic freedom, oversee and manage this provocative body of films? How did the freedoms and restrictions of the X certificate hasten, determine, and reshape post-war British cinema into an artistic, exploitational, and unapologetically adult medium? Contributors to this collection consider these central questions as they take us to swinging parties, on youth
Trade ReviewAdult Themes offers a full range of fascinating insights into Britain’s film culture across the long 1960s, specifically the deployment of the X certificate as a means of mapping previously uncharted territory in an increasingly permissive social climate. Taking in such varied films as
Peeping Tom, The Party’s Over, Secrets of a Windmill Girl, 10 Rillington Place and Zee and Co, made and released during John Trevelyan’s liberalised leadership of the British Board of Film Censors, the twelve chapters (plus a thoughtful editors’ introduction) provide new perspectives on how films of this era responded to, mediated, and sometimes anticipated attitudinal change - or directly challenged the status quo – by means of the new possibilities granted to them by the ‘X’. Highly recommended reading for those interested in British cultural history, the Sixties, censorship and regulation, and the always contested cinematic terrains of sex and violence, crime and horror. * Melanie Williams, Professor of Film and Television Studies, University of East Anglia, UK *
I well remember the British X certificate and how I sneaked into my first one --
Circus of Horrors (1960) -- in those distant days of yesteryear. These co-editors and their contributors have performed an indispensable job in covering such a wide area and providing information that will form indispensable reading for generations to come. Well-researched, expertly written in clear and concise ways and attuned to significant issues of culture and history, this will become a definitive work in this area for years to come. * Tony Williams, Professor of Film and Literature, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, USA *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements List of illustrations Introduction: ‘Passed As Only Suitable for Exhibition to Adult Audiences: X’
Anne Etienne (University College Cork, Ireland), Benjamin Halligan (University of Wolverhampton, UK), and Christopher Weedman (Middle Tennessee State University, USA) 1. Green Penguin Films
Kim Newman (Independent Scholar) 2. The Commercial Idealism of Controversial Cinema: Raymond Stross and the Censorship of
The Flesh Is Weak Christopher Weedman (Middle Tennessee State University, USA) 3. Colour, Realism and the X Certificate:
Horrors of the Black Museum and
Peeping Tom Sarah Street (University of Bristol, UK) 4. Mediating Desire: Karel Reisz’s Adaptation of
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning Simon Lee (Texas State University, USA) 5.
Lolita, Censorship, and Controversy: The Archival Remains of the Dispute Between Canon L. J. Collins and Stanley Kubrick
James Fenwick (Sheffield Hallam University, UK) 6. Paternalism, Bohemianism, and the X Certificate:
The Party’s Over and the Pre-Swinging Set
Kevin M. Flanagan (George Mason University, USA) 7. Mediatising Modernity: Femininity in the X-Rated Swinging London Film
Moya Luckett (Texas State University, USA) 8. What Are the X-Rated Secrets of the Windmill Girls?
Adrian Smith (Independent Scholar) 9. The Potent Sexuality of the Middle-Aged Woman: Alice Aisgill, Karen Stone, Zee Blakeley and Ruby
Lucy Bolton (Queen Mary University of London, UK) 10. Censoring Carmilla: Lesbian Vampires in Hammer Horror
Claire Henry (Massey University, Aotearoa New Zealand) 11. ‘The horror film to end all horror films’:
10 Rillington Place and the British Board of Film Censors’ Shifting Policy on True Crime
TimSnelson (University of East Anglia, UK) 12. Class and Classification: The British Board of Film Censors’ Reception of Horror at the Time of the Festival of Light
Benjamin Halligan (University of Wolverhampton, UK) Contributors Index
