Andy Warhol, a 32-man police raid, and a watershed moment for X-rated cinema in Britain
This month sees the release of the Faces of Death reboot in UK cinemas, a reimagined version of the movie that was banned in this country for some 25 years due to some of the horrific scenes involved, including concerns over whether they were real or not.
It’s a sign of how far things have come that the new film would barely have bothered the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC), but that certainly wasn’t the case with the Andy Warhol-produced film Flesh that arrived on these shores in 1970.
Rather than scenes of horror, Warhol’s movie, which was written and directed by ‘The Factory’ office manager Paul Morrissey came under scrutiny due to – and the clue is in the name – too much skin on show, his New York City-set film telling the tale of a young male gigolo as he navigates a day in the Big Apple, selling sex to both men and women. As you might imagine, some of the subjects explored were not to everyone’s tastes almost 60 years ago, and the amount of sex on display meant it was immediately thought of as X-rated.
But it hadn’t officially been classified as so – in fact the film, which was made two years before it began to be shown in private UK screenings, had not been passed by the BBFC at all, and that proved to be the crux of a furore that began with a complaint from the public about the movie and ended up being debated in both the Houses of Parliament and the House of Lords.
January 15th, 1970, was the date of the film’s premiere at the Open Space theatre in London, a venue that had been suggested by the liberal then Secretary of the BBFC John Trevelyan, who knew that issuing a certificate to the film would cause outrage, but encouraged private clubs to show it instead, but this decision would actually end up causing the opposite of what he intended.
A few weeks later, a member of the public told the police that the film was being shown unclassified, leading to some 32 officers raiding the theatre, confiscating not just the tape but the projector, the screen and a full list of everyone in attendance.
Trevelyan was furious, after all, it was he who recommended the film be shown in the first place, and he organised a public protest, which escalated into the merits of the film being debated in Westminster. Trevelyan knew that there would be no issue from the Obscene Publications Act of the time because it didn’t cover films, and it had also had such critical praise that it would pass any test of ‘artistic merit’. Meanwhile, in New York, where the film was not banned, anyone showing a British passport was let in to screenings for free.
Less than a month later, it was confirmed that there would be no prosecutions for the screening, although the Met police did punish the theatre for selling tickets to non-members for the film, something which Trevelyan called “anomalous and vindictive”. And by October of 1970, the BBFC had passed the film for showing, albeit with an ‘X’ certificate, a classification which was abolished in 1982 for the ‘18’ rating we now know.
Flesh began to be shown in cinemas around the UK, including in Nottingham, and the film acquired cult status – in fact, the cover of The Smiths’ legendary self-titled first album is a still of the lead actor Joe Dallesandro in the movie.
