Shock Value - Jason Zinoman [53]
IT’S TEMPTING to argue that bad times translate into good horror films. The classic Universal films opened during the Depression. And the classic horror releases in 1968 have been attributed to the tumultuous era framed by the Vietnam War. But the emergence of modern horror in mainstream culture that began with Rosemary’s Baby and reached its first major breakthrough with The Exorcist had as much to do with the changes in the movie system, including the loosening of standards.
The original Production Code, the industry guidelines that set the limits of sex, sin, and violence in most studio releases, was established in 1930 with the following provision: “No picture shall be produced which will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience shall never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin.” As soon as the Code office began to make a few exceptions, the entire system broke down. By 1966, only 59 percent of films released in the United States carried the Production Code seal. Church groups were outraged. The threat of local ratings boards applying their own rules for exhibitors worried many directors, and culture wars broke out around obscenity and violence after every controversial movie. In an effort to prevent more government intervention, the major studios created the MPAA ratings board. To some, this sounded like a curtailment of free expression, a new power given to a secret committee to determine what was appropriate for children. In fact, it had the opposite effect. The ratings board helped movies like The Exorcist reach a much larger audience.
By making an effort to police themselves, the studios won some goodwill from their critics, and the nuts-and-bolts debates about content moved from the public square to the private rooms of Manhattan and Hollywood. The original idea was spelled out by the MPAA Declaration of Principles, which introduced the original four ratings: G, M, R, and X. These were supposed to operate as guideposts to help parents decide what was suitable for their children. The head of the ratings committee became a new power broker in the movie industry, shaping debate and putting a face on the decisions of the board. He never directed a movie, designed a ghoulish special effect, played a serial killer, or produced an exploitation film. But no one had his fingerprints on as many horror movies in the early seventies. “By creating their own rating system, the studios keep the decisions away from the government. I thought it was a very intelligent thing to do,” Roger Corman says. “It was the best of the bad solutions.”
The new ratings and the horror film grew up together. The earliest version of the system was enacted at the same time that George Romero was putting the finishing touches on Night of the Living Dead, and the film was often used as an argument for why ratings were necessary for protecting children. After its initial run, Night of the Living Dead returned to a New York engagement at the Waverly Theater on a double bill the following summer with Slaves, a blaxploitation film starring Ossie Davis leading a slave uprising. In a pan in Variety, a critic wrote, “Until the Supreme Court establishes clear-cut guidelines for the pornography of violence, ‘Night of the Living Dead’ will serve nicely as an outer-limit definition by example.”
How to lobby to get the rating you wanted became a preoccupation of anyone looking to make a horror movie. Many newspapers and exhibitors refused to show any films rated X, so such a rating would send directors back to the cutting room. And since producers needed to get an M (which would become a GP and PG) to not lose any young ticket buyers, directors had to cut back the sex or violence in the editor’s room. According to estimates of several people involved with the ratings board, as much as one third of the films submitted to the MPAA in the early seventies were recut to get a new rating—and surely the proportion is greater for horror. The major problem was deciding what qualifies as too violent or