If football is a game of inches, movie ratings can be a game of seconds. Twelve steamy seconds, in fact, were all it took to earn Alan Parker`s Gothic mystery, ”Angel Heart,” the dreaded X rating.
It was only when ”Angel Heart” was released to video in an unrated version that viewers were allowed to see what had been judiciously edited out of the now R-rated theatrical version.
A recent spate of theatrical films is challenging the integrity of the rating system. ”Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer,” ”Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!” and ”The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover” have been released to theaters unrated rather than be tagged with an X rating.
Not since the profanity-laced ”Who`s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” or the too-intense-for-younger-viewers ”Gremlins” and ”Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” has there been such an outcry to revise the rating system.
Because most theaters will not show, nor will newspapers accept advertising for, X-rated films, millions of dollars at the box office are at stake. Until a rating is devised to distinguish between films for adults and adult (pornographic) films, the debate will continue.
Meanwhile, home viewers are getting a choice denied them in theaters as more and more uncut versions of controversial films are released to video.
”Angel Heart”: Available in an R and an unrated version, which includes the infamous 12 seconds of a blood-drenched sex scene between detective Mickey Rourke and voodoo child Lisa Bonet.
”Crimes of Passion”: Also available in R and unrated versions. Kathleen Turner stars as a fashion designer who moonlights as hooker China Blue. Among the kinkier scenes on the unrated video is a menage a trois among Turner, a police officer and his nightstick.
”Devil in the Flesh”: Available in R and X-rated version. This Italian import gained notoriety for a graphic sex act performed by star Maruschka Detmers. You won`t see it on the R-rated video.
”The Executioner`s Song”: The video release of the gritty Emmy Award-winning mini-series based on Norman Mailer`s book about convicted murderer Gary Gilmore (Tommy Lee Jones) includes nudity that was added to the version released to European theaters.
”Last Tango in Paris”: Originally rated X, but in the mid-`70s, Bernardo Bertolucci`s acclaimed film starring Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider was cut by United Artists for an R rating. A spokesman for MGM/UA Home Video said that video retailers wary of stocking X-rated product asked that both versions be made available on video.
”9 1/2 Weeks”: The video allows Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger about 3 1/2 extra minutes to play out their increasingly obsessive sexual
relationship.
”Scandal”: The story of the government sex scandal that rocked England in the 1960s is available in the R-rated American version and the original unrated British version. Missing from the American version is less than a minute of footage from an orgy scene.
Adding footage to the video releases of already popular films can lure viewers to take another look. But beware!
It can also be a wily marketing move to spark interest in a bad film.
”Johnny Be Good,” a fumbled comedy starring Anthony Michael Hall, was originally rated PG-13 before it was spiced to an R with gratuitous topless scenes.
Of less prurient interest are the wealth of restored Hollywood classics and so-called director`s cuts available on video. The uncut ”King Kong,” for example, includes once-censored footage of the mighty Kong quizzically poking at Fay Wray.
Although video is often vilified for playing havoc with the big-screen image, it is fast becoming the last bastion for audiences to see a film as the director intended it.
Paramount Home Video is reported to be planning the release of a series of director`s editions, beginning with ”Fatal Attraction,” which would include the original ending.
Already available are restored versions of Sam Peckinpah`s ”The Wild Bunch” and ”Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid”; Howard Hawks` ”Red River”;
Frank Capra`s ”Lost Horizon”; David Lean`s ”Lawrence of Arabia”; Blake Edwards` ”The Wild Rovers”; and the Errol Flynn swashbuckler ”The Sea Hawk.”
