Banned Stuff

I really like stuff that has been banned. Whether it is film, music, literature, or anything for that matter, I have some inherent desire to explore it. This is largely down to the fact that, in the UK anyway, stuff usually gets banned for containing excessive amounts of extreme violence, sex, referencing to drugs, or it's just dangerous. All of the latter flick my switches, probably because I find the contemporary strain of menial routine a little to much to cope with sometimes.

Anyway, here is some banned stuff, in no particular order.

My mate told me about this crazy Italian horror movie, called Cannibal Holocaust (what a fucking name!). I made a massive point of watching it, as soon as possible.

Yeh, basically, the director was an absolute nutter. The idea behind the whole thing was that a stereotypically buffooning group of teen documentarians head down to the Amazon in search of 'unique' indigenous tribes. Note I am using the word 'unique' in the most sarcastic way possible.

A total gorefest follows, with 6 real animal deaths on screen and loads of macabrely extreme violence from a Blair Witch-style handycam perspective. The director was actually taken to court on murder charges, following claims that many of the actors actually died on screen. They had also disappeared, but it was fine. It was all part of the film. I will leave you with an image that without a doubt sums everything up:

This is the one of the many scenes that got poor old Ruggero Deodato in to so much trouble. There were rumors that he actually impaled one of his actresses, but in reality he created the image with a bicycle seat and some inventive camerawork. Obviously.

So yeh, Cannibal Holocaust is an experience, one of those things that you should definitely do before you die, like taking heroin or shitting in a bag and sending it to your former employer etc. You can watch it here: (It worked for me)

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That's right kids! Manhunt!

'We are taking it off the shelves with immediate effect!'

Dixons nerd, 2007

I'm no gamer. I'm not going to lie. To be honest, I sometimes feel like I'd quite like to be, seeing as I've observed gaming as a means of replacing love objects or providing 'organised' fun and happiness. Sadly, I was never really any good at computer games, apart from this one.

I don't think the original game was banned in the UK, (it was in loads of other lame countries), however it spawned masses of controversy and allegedly made some kid hack his friend to death in a park in Leicester with a hammer and a massive knife. You can read about that here. Much to my dismay, the sequel didn't stand a chance.

From what I can remember there is a bullshit story line about the game being set in the future. The guy, James Earl Cash (!?) who you control was in prison for some sort of crime, most probably petty theft, and you are released into some deserted city to partake in a 'blood-sport' TV show. You know, the kind of show that would be on Dave of a late Thursday night.

There's some massive ploy about the producer of the show wanting to kill you and stuff, but basically you work your way through the different levels picking up several different sadistic implements of inflicting grievous bodily harm. You are then awarded points for 3 distinct levels of killing the goons who walk around asking for it.

You walk up behind someone, hold down the button of death, and a big ring swirls around their head, first flashing yellow, then orange, before a dark-menstrual-blood red. If you're not a complete pussy you wait until the red ring, before letting go of the button. Following your discretion, James duly destroys the victims body with whatever is at hand. My favorite weapon was the claw hammer.



But like, yeh. The whole point of video games is to do crazy stuff in a virtual world that you couldn't/would never dream of doing in real life, right? Exactly. I'm not wholly convinced that in my lifetime I will ever have the opportunity/willpower/lack of remorse to shoot someone in the head at point blank range, or hit someone over the shoulder with a sickle. This is where Manhunt comes in. I mean, where do you even buy a sickle?

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GG Allin. Punk rocker, Psychopath, Rapist, Sado-Masochist, Misogynist, Messiah. Everything about him was brushed under the middle-class American carpet from his rise to cult prominence in the late 1970s through to his death in the early 1990s. Almost all of his live shows that were publicised outside of the East Coast underground hardcore punk scene were banned, or stopped just moments into his sets.

To really understand what he was about, you should watch this. He devoted the entirety of his relatively curtailed 36 years on this planet to the practice of 'Rock'n'roll', and thus not giving a shit about his own body, reputation or anyone/anything else. For this he has to be admired.

So yeh, from what I've gathered a standard GG Allin live show largely consists of assaulting members of his own band and the audience both physically and sexually, setting shit on fire, defecating and self-harm, whilst singing about his views on women, ethnic minorities and children in the most politically incorrect fashion possible.

There's a film about him that I recommend watching. It's called Hated: GG Allin and the Murder Junkies. Here's the cover so that you'll recognise it on your next trip to Tesco:



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That's right. Next up is Outbound Travel to Chechnya! Apologies, for I understand that this is almost completely obscure. However, I shall explain.

When it comes to travel, I only seem to become attracted to really dangerous places. I guess it mirrors my convoluted tastes in the opposite sex a little. I find no desire within to go to Bangkok, for example. The thought of getting drunk with loads of people from Middlesboro, contracting Chlamydia and perhaps fucking a man provide me with no rush of endorphins.

I've become obsessed with Chechnya, and I've read books about it. I like it because everything about it is so interesting, and it is has some kind of appeal as a 'beautiful mess,' if you know what I mean? I think its a combination of the fact that there's no real way of getting there, it's inhabitants are either crazy mountain people or stereotypically Islamic extremists, and there's quite a severe risk of kidnapping/death. Moreover, stuff like this happens as well. I'd quite like to know what a place is like where stuff like that happens. Oh, be careful before you watch that as well.

**Banned Stuff is something that I am always scouring google/blogs/wikipedia for in my vast expanses of spare time. I am going to try and find at least one cool banned thing every week, and write about it.

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