![]() Lock, Stock wasn’t just about people getting beaten with blunt instruments, it was about gambling, drinking, pubs, drugs and black-market aftershave. We could have no complaints.īut just as gratifying as all that was the underlying sense of grownup-ness about the whole thing. Lock, Stock had four-letter words by the bucketload (more than 120 Fs in all, plus a generous handful of well-delivered Cs) and violence that was both consistent and imaginative: enacted with guns and knives, but also with tanning beds, garden tools, car doors, golfing paraphernalia and studded sex toys. ![]() It was pretty much everything we could have hoped for. Two of them carried the desired certificate: Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels – a British gangster flick starring Jason Statham and Vinnie Jones – and Crash, a slow-burn psychosexual drama about people who get erotic thrills from car accidents. It was the latter tactic that got me to see my first 18-rated film in full, thanks to a new DVD player, bought by a mate’s dad, that had come with a stack of recently released films. Human beings tend to want what they can’t have, and 12-year-old boys are no different: any film classified 18 was by definition a film I was desperate to see. Even the certificate itself – white numbering against a background of deep, carnal red – carried its own exhilaratingly adult connotations. ![]() That was where the really foul language flowed, where the sex got terrifyingly explicit and, crucially, where the real bloodletting went down. ![]() From my limited experience, that was a broad bracket that took in a whole new world of invective, some unnervingly moderate sex scenes and a decent amount of blood and gore.īut it was the 18-rated films that were the holy grail. The 15-rated films were where things got interesting. That little coloured shape in the bottom corner of the video box was the be-all and end-all, and there was a rigid hierarchy: U-rated films were to be avoided at all costs, PG piqued little interest, 12 suggested there might be something in there worthy of attention: a bit of swearing, the odd moment of violence, maybe even a glimpse of flesh. When I was 12, all that mattered was the certificate. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |