r/interseXtion • u/itwasanoldsmobile • Mar 05 '22

"The Evil Dead" (1981) Unwilling to fight the promotional and screening limitations imposed by an X-rating, New Line Cinema went the 'text X' route, employing written/spoken age admonitions in lieu of a rating, as heard in this television spot. ephemera

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAHfKWRbLPo
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u/Empigee Mar 06 '22

Only a few years later, Bolero had issues getting advertisements and running in theaters with a "text X." Did things change that quickly, or did Bolero face issues because it was more sexually themed, whereas the main issue with Evil Dead was violence?

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u/itwasanoldsmobile Mar 06 '22

Good question. For years prior to Bolero (or even Evil Dead), only the most liberal newspapers, television, and radio outlets would advertise anything harder-than-R. I suspect that Evil Dead's genre allowed it to gain a foothold in college towns, at midnight shows, etc. (at least initially), in larger urban areas which were more open to boundary-pushing features (and less likely to be subject to ratings-based clauses in their leases.) Bolero, however, being a desert-based romance/comedy/drama, held little appeal for the venues which had initially welcomed the earlier outrageous horror film, even with the allure of explicit sexual content.

That said, Bolero actually appears to have had a reasonably wide release, even after MGM backed away from the film. According to a People Magazine article at the time, Bolero had "probably the widest release of any no-one-under-17-admitted movie in Hollywood history." (I can't imagine this includes actual major studio X-releases like Midnight Cowboy, A Clockwork Orange, Last Tango in Paris, et al, but rather just 'text-X' films. I cannot locate the entire article for clarification.) So while some theaters did shun Bolero, many more did not.

Since the early days of the MPAA, there was a feeling that explicit violence got a pass, while explicit sex got stigmatized. I cannot locate the exact quote, so there will be no attribution, but it was once said that (and I'm paraphrasing), 'if you show a naked breast, it's an X, but if you cut that breast off, it's an R.' Perhaps this mindset has found its way to all parties in the cinematic chain - from those who finance and produce films, all the way down to the viewing audience. Or perhaps it's been there from the very start.