Honestly the BBFC's censorship decisions are ****ing terrible. For one, cutting these films only makes horror fans want to seek them out even more; I think the MPAA has the right way of going about things: films don't need to be submitted and won't be banned - however unless they are certified by the MPAA they can't be bought or viewed by anyone under 18 I believe. That just sounds like a far better and more efficient way of doing things while keeping everyone happy - the BBFC's view of themselves as some kind of guardians of morality is so outdated; who really needs to be told what they can and can't watch in 2018, especially with a thousand sites on the internet where you can literally watch actual deaths?
Like, seriously, Anthropophagous was banned until June 2015 and that's tame as shit - there's no sexual violence (the foetus scene is definitely, err, of questionable taste but it definitely isn't done in a sexual context or sexualised at all) or animal cruelty or anything that normally causes issues (and I do somewhat understand WHY the BBFC feels compelled to remove scenes of that nature, although I don't agree)
One final thing, and then I promise I'll end the rant - the censoring of animal cruelty is pointless. Yeah, hear me out. I can understand if the viewer doesn't want to see such a scene, and that's entirely down to viewer discretion (where you would think anyone who doesn't want to see it simply wouldn't watch the film) but to use Cannibal Holocaust as an example: several actual animal kills in the film were released intact as they were deemed "humane" whereas others were removed. This only further undermines the BBFC's point in the sense that the end result is the same: the animal still dies, and will remain dead whether the scene is in the movie or not. Therefore the fact that some animal deaths see release and some don't is just retarded. Surely the only reason the inhumane deaths are cut out is to avoid inspiring people to perform these acts (that's a chestnut the BBFC love to dig out when defending their censorship), so are they preaching that it's perfectly fine to kill animals for fun as long as you make it quick? (probably not but I can think of no other reason for cutting some scenes and not others
)
I think the case of Cannibal Holocaust is particularly pertinent since I think that it's a historically significant film in the horror genre that should be released uncut.
Anyway, rant over. Many thanks if you actually read through this post. Am I just insane, or does anyone else agree?
tl;dr: long angry spiel about film censorship in the UK.