The notorious NC-17 is both alluring and repelling, the rating alone stands as a statement and a double-dog-dare. While some of our jaded generation may see a film just to see what exactly made it so explicit, most won’t even be able to see it because the bottom line is many theaters just won’t put it on the roster because of said rating. So the unfortunate fact of the matter is a NC-17 stamp kills a film’s chances at the box office. Since money talks, studios avoid that NC-17 like a plague.

This brings us to The Evil Dead which fell at my number five spot for my Most Anticipated Films of 2013. Even The Evil Dead trailer needed a Red-Band rating and the MPAA came down hard on the film, stamping it with the much condemning NC-17 rating. After this initial rating some necessary (to box office results) cuts were made to snag that R-rating for strong bloody violence and gore, some sexual content and language.

This brings up an interesting point of debate: why is the Nc-17 rating unacceptable? If you look at it from a purist perspective, it really is a shame that all NC-17 films are cut down to that R-rating. This isn’t to say that I need to see any egregious violence or explicit porno in my movies but I want to see what the filmmaker intended me to see not a watered down MPAA approved cut.

The whole stigma around the rating is  silly to say the least as there really should be something that’s a step above R. Argo and The Kings Speech for instance are ‘soft’ R ratings. The only reason they snag the R-rating is because of that terrible F-word. Aside from that, they’re perfectly suitable films for any age group.

Other movies like Cronenberg‘s Crash, Tarantino‘s Django Unchained or even Kick-Ass are ‘hard’ R. But they’ve got torrents of blood, excessive language or gaudy nudity. They are not films for children or even certain impressionable teenagers. So what’s with the lack of contrast between these R ratings? In 1969, Midnight Cowboy was given an X-rating because it was not easy material and yet managed to win Best Picture. It was a hard R and it made sense to be in a different class from the Argo‘s and King Speech‘s. Isn’t it more than a little silly that the MPAA doesn’t just make this  distinction between ‘soft R’ and ‘hard R’ more clear with the NC-17 rating? Unfortunately, with the massive stigma surrounding the rating, don’t expect the problem to end anytime soon.

Tangent aside, expect Evil Dead to debut under the audience friendly and theater acceptable R-rating on April 12.

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