The controversy surrounding the original release of this dark exploration of sexy car accidents now seems quaintly outdated – but the film holds up well
In 1996, David Cronenberg’s movie Crash, now rereleased in 4K digital, became the subject of the last great “banning” controversy for a new film in Britain. His vision of the erotic car crash got brimstone denunciations from the Evening Standard and the Daily Mail. This delayed its BBFC certificate, and Westminster council issued a solemn edict forbidding it in West End cinemas.
But in the 21st century, the press appetite for denouncing shocking films just seemed to vanish, overnight becoming the quaint tradition of a bygone age, perhaps because of a belated realisation that these campaigns were destined to fail and didn’t sell papers, and that, increasingly, nothing sold papers in any case as newsprint lost ground to the internet’s oceanic swell, in which all these films could easily be found. Even The Human Centipede sequel’s brief failure to get a certificate was a formality, laughed or shrugged at. The urge to censor or cancel – as with, say, Maïmouna Dourcouré’s Cuties – has migrated to social media, but even this seems to have no bearing on seeing controversial films if you want.