Hollywood Uncensored (1987)

I love this movie so much

Waste of time

Good concept, poorly executed.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

I was very interested in seeing a documentary about the history of censorship in Hollywood. After all, movies back in the 'good old days' were FAR dirtier than most folks would imagine--with topics such as adultery, homosexuality, extreme violence and nudity! Yep...these films were often VERY different than we'd have expected our grandparents and great-grandparents to watch. Unfortunately, however, most of this is barely discussed in this indifferent film. No discussion of gays--just a solid focus on sex...and a bit on drugs. Unfortunately, many of the best examples of these pre-Code excesses are never even mentioned. My assumption why they never discussed "Tarzan and His Mate" and many of the other films is that they didn't own the rights to the pictures--so they focused more on films in the public domain. This really shows, as the prints are often pretty bad--and the whole thing comes off as mildly interesting when it SHOULD have been a lot more exciting. About the only parts I really did like were a few clips of excised portions of classic films--and I sure wanted a lot more of this. Worth seeing, perhaps, but there simply are better films out there on the topic--and my advice is to see them instead. "Complicated Women" and "Thou Shalt Not: Sex, Sin and Censorship in Pre-Code Hollywood".

Hollywood Uncensored (1987)*** (out of 4) Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Peter Fonda host this look at Hollywood and the trouble they've always had in regards to their products being censored. We start off hearing from Will Hayes from an archival video and then we learn about the various no-no's that were forced on Hollywood including no kisses lasting over three seconds, no nudity, no profanity, during kisses one foot must remain on the floor, no graphic violence and of course crime or the bad guys could never win. Fairbanks starts off talking about a film he did in 1930 (PARTY GIRL) and from here we see clips from films like BABY FACE, I'M NO ANGEL, THE DENTIST and KING KONG. From here we see troubled films like THE GANGS ALL HERE, THE OUTLAW, THE FRENCH LINE, HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL, BABY DOLL, PEEPING TOM, TAXI DRIVER, CARNAL KNOWLEDGE, WOODSTOCK and finally the outrage caused by SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT. Since this documentary first aired there have been plenty of movies to take a look at various problems that filmmakers have had with the censors and the MPAA. This one here is actually pretty good because you get to hear from some of the actual people involved with the battles. Jane Russell is interviewed about her work on THE OUTLAW and THE FRENCH LINE and she discusses the battle getting the movie released and even battles she had with the producers because of what he wanted her to do. Carroll Baker and Eli Wallach talk about their experience on BABY DOLL and Mamie Van Doren discusses the pyramid breasts. Martin Scorsese is also interviewed about TAXI DRIVER and he also comments on PEEPING TOM and how he was finally able to see an uncut version of it. Sheree North is also interviewed about replacing Monroe at Fox and about various issues she had with her sexuality on film. Fans of this "dirty" movies will certainly enjoy hearing their stories and it's always funny how in so many cases it was one person trying to determine what everyone should watch, shouldn't watch or what everyone should think.

First off I want to say I liked this movie, but I do think it missed the boat on some very important movie censorship issues. The fact they did not even mention the Hedy Lamarr movie filmed, 'Ecstasy', in Germany, where Hedy was totally nude, is irresponsible. Also , they did not mention the exploitation of Brooke Shields, in the movie 'Pretty Baby', where she was completely nude at 12 years old. These were 2 very blatant omissions, in my opinion. I also think there should have been some mention of the evolution of Xrated movies and including the far right , headed by Richard Nixon, to ban the showing of 'Deep Throat'. Some very important social issues were missed in a great opportunity for this movie to be more complete. That said, I still enjoyed the commentary, the scenes and the various collages with music that rounded this movie . I did not realize it was 20 years old and it did hold up well , where I got the gist of censorship in Hollywood. I would definitely suggest to others to see this movie.

I picked this movie up after reading about it in my Psychotronic Video Guide. This is a real cool flick. Lots of extremely rare clips from movies like KING KONG (a nasty ape!) and HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL (NUDITY!) as well as a very young Shirley Temple acting way to old in a very early film role. I loved the parts with Carrol Baker and Eli Wallach talking about Baby Doll. And it makes it extra cool since Peter Fondas one of the hosts!!