The “anti-erotic” movie Roger Ebert said would “drive thoughts of sex out of your mind for weeks”
The bare minimum that should be expected from any erotic drama is that it sets the pulse racing and offers at least the tiniest bit of titillation. Unfortunately, one example was so flaccid in every way that Roger Ebert was convinced it would wipe the mere notion of sex from the collective consciousness.
That might sound a little hyperbolic, since everybody knows the world is full of randy buggers, but that just goes to show how much he hated the picture. Sex sells, and it has since the dawn of human history, but the vaunted critic thought that a monotonously tedious instance of cinematic eroticism would flop in more ways than one.
However, he was wrong. The picture in question earned almost $30 million at the global box office in 1967, and not to tar every paying customer with the same brush, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why so many people were willing to part with their cash and catch an erotic flick on the biggest screen possible, regardless of how polarising the reception was.
The first half of writer, director, and star Vilgot Sjöman’s two-parter, I Am Curious (Yellow), was hardly marketed as a bonanza of exposed flesh and sensual scenes that would lure handsy creeps to their nearest multiplex, but there was still plenty of controversy, and no small amount of censorship, levelled towards its more salacious moments.
When it played in a Boston theatre in March 1969, the reels were seized by the local police department, with the picture accused of being pornographic. The film was banned in Maryland, leading to a three-year legal battle that eventually saw it screened with 90 seconds of footage removed, a cinema was set ablaze in Houston for daring to show it, and it was pulled from screens in Florida and Colorado, among others.
And yet, Ebert didn’t see what all the fuss was about. “I Am Curious (Yellow) is not merely not erotic,” he wrote in a one-star review. “It is anti-erotic. Two hours of this movie will drive thoughts of sex out of your mind for weeks. See the picture and buy twin beds.”
“It is possible, of course, to manufacture an elaborate defence of the movie,” he explained. “I could do it myself with one hand tied behind my back. I could talk about the device of the film-within-a-film, and the director’s autobiographical references, and all that. But the movie is simply, basically, boring. It is stupid and slow and uninteresting.”
As for the “celebrated sex scenes” that caused nationwide outrage? They didn’t float his boat, either: “They may not be sexy, but they are undeniably scenes.” Not only did Ebert not understand the hype and pearl-clutching, he even fired a shot in the direction of anyone who found themselves convinced to see the movie based on its headline-grabbing infamy alone.
“If your bag is shelling out several bucks to witness phallus (flaccid), then I Am Curious (Yellow) is the flick for you,” he suggested. For anyone else who was enticed by things other than the promise of penis, “Forget it. It’s a dog. A real dog.”
