Do Director's Cuts / Unrated Editions Take Advantage Of Us?

[Bobby Henderson]

I think the discs have to be judged on a case by case basis.

But if I was going to paint the situation in broad brush strokes, yes, I would have to say many "unrated" DVDs are just a stupid come-on. Quite a few "extended edition" versions have also featured fluff that rightly fell on the cutting room floor during the making of the original theatrical cut.

I'm more put off by the "unrated" DVDs though. The current trend is watering down a movie enough for it to get a PG-13 rating so teens can see it in the theaters. Then they do an "unrated" version for DVD to deliver the R-rated cut likely intended in the first place, but without having to pay the MPAA twice to generate two official ratings for two different cuts of the movie. And besides, the "unrated" term just seems to have a rougher or more naughty connotation.

Years ago, when a movie carried an "unrated" label it usually did so for good reason. Often such movies were slammed with the NC-17 rating, which means absolute commercial death for any movie. Most theater chains won't carry NC-17 rated movies and most newspapers won't carry advertising for them either.

The NC-17 rating was originally designed as an alternative to the X-rating -something to differentiate serious adult's only movies from hardcore porn. But Jack Valenti and the MPAA did a quick about-face when they realized they could twist around the NC-17 as a means of keeping independent films mired in a commercial disadvantage against major studio releases.

The MPAA refused to draw a line between porn and other movies that weren't porn. Valenti said he couldn't make subjective decision about what was "art" and what was not. Freaking stupid. The difference between porn and other movies is a physical difference, not an artistic difference. In one movie they're acting like they're having sex. In the other movie they're really having sex.

Any movie that did receive a NC-17 rating had the choice of making cuts to get the show down to an R rating. The MPAA gives major studios very specific suggestions on what to trim. They make independent filmmakers read their minds and submit the show again and again. The independents do have the option to release the movie without a MPAA seal or rating. Lots of movies have gone out in limited release as "unrated" and even with guidelines that no one under 17 would be admitted to the show.

Certain DVD releases, such as the Criterion Collection version of Robocop featured "unrated" versions that truly had very brutal or frank material that justified the seemingly scary "unrated" label. I think Robocop built up that tradition by putting the original "X-rated" cut on the DVD. I remember being horribly jarred by the R-rated cut of that movie the first time I saw it. It's easy to see why the X-rated version of Robocop got the X-rating. The commentary track on that disc is very interesting for the insight it has about the ratings process and about the different contexts of violence in the movie.

And I guess that gets down to why I am pissed off about these PG-13 re-edited to "unrated" discs. They're totally ruining the impact of that "unrated" label. It's like the crying wolf fable. So many of these so called "unrated" discs are getting released that when something else comes along that really has some rough, NC-17 type material people are going to be wailing and throwing up their arms in despair about it because they were expecting something that was only mildly R rated in nature.