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THE GREATEST FILMS The "Greatest" and the "Best" in Cinematic History www.filmsite.org

The 100+ Most Controversial
Films of All-Time
2006-Present
The 100+ Most Controversial Films of All-Time
Film Title/Year, Director Screenshots
The Da Vinci Code (2006)
D. Ron Howard
Conservative Christian groups fumed and urged boycotts, but the popularity of Dan Brown's thriller
about arcane secrets and occult mysteries won out.
Director Ron Howard's much-anticipated, big-screen religious conspiracy thriller with the tagline "Seek the Truth" was faithfully
based upon Dan Brown's best-selling fictional book in 2003.
It opened with the discovery of the murder of the Louvre Museum's elderly curator Jacques Sauniere (Jean-Pierre Marielle) in the
Parisian museum. He was shot in the abdomen and bled to death - the man's naked body, in a revealing pose, was found with a
pentacle symbol (a symbol for the female goddess Venus) that he had etched into his own bloody chest and an enigmatic
encrypted code written in blood (including a numerical sequence (a security code password for a bank vault) and other clues). [He
was murdered by a self-flagellating, albino Opus Dei hooded monk named Silas (Paul Bettany), who was later learned to be in the
employ of both devious high-ranking Bishop Manuel Aringarosa (Alfred Molina) and a mysterious individual known only as "The
Teacher."]
Religious symbologist and Harvard professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), guest-lecturing in town, was called to the crime
scene, and unbeknownst to him, was considered the prime suspect by police Captain Bezu Fache (Jean Reno) and Lieut. Collet
(Etienne Chicot). French police cryptologist Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou) tipped Langdon off that he was "in grave danger," and
the two fled.
Information provided in clues by Sauniere (the "Grand Master" - and last living protector of holy artifact secrets) led the wrongly-
accused murder suspect Langdon and Sophie through a byzantine trail of clues through France and England and ultimately to
Scotland -- to a millenarian goddess-worshipping secretive sect called The Priory of Sion (with heretical theories about the
marriage of a mortal Jesus Christ with Mary Magdalene who fathered a child - the real Holy Grail was not a chalice-cup but a
royal bloodline!).
Along the way, they met with crippled, obsessed Grail scholar Sir Leigh Teabing (Ian McKellen), who revealed new findings about
the Holy Grail, and DaVinci's master work The Last Supper. [He eventually was discovered to be the ominous double-crossing
"Teacher" in the film's major plot twist.] The search led them to knowledge of the Priory's centuries-old battle with the clandestine
Catholic sect Opus Dei regarding the group's 2,000 year old conspiracy to hush blasphemous information about Jesus' mortality
and celibacy. The trail led to London's mythical Temple Church (where a group of Templars Knights were believed to be buried),
Sir Isaac Newton's tomb at Westminster Abbey, and the Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland.
Several Catholic and Opus Dei groups (portrayed as a murderous cult), as well as conservative Christian groups, called for a
boycott, mostly during the making of the film and during initial screenings, accusing it of blasphemy. The film was accused of
being ludicrous, inaccurate and unhistorical with far too many plot twists. One item that appeared fabricated was the existence of






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being ludicrous, inaccurate and unhistorical with far too many plot twists. One item that appeared fabricated was the existence of
an ancient secret society called the Priory of Sion, which was actually created in 1956 by a man named Pierre Plantard.
The main criticism of the film was that it unfairly mixed real historical fact into a fictional narrative. Even albinos were offended by
the film, and lobbied for changes to the way the film portrayed them. Yet the tedious film was received lukewarmly as a
convoluted, flat and stultified bore, although some liked the thriller aspects of the film.
One major point of contention was the question of who was sitting on Jesus' right hand side in Da Vinci's The Last Supper
painting - was it the beardless, effeminate long-haired Apostle John or Mary Magdalene? Also, there was no holy grail or chalice
on the table in the painting.
Another debatable item was the idea that Jesus, usually thought to be celibate, married Mary Magdalene, who witnessed his
crucifixion - and was pregnant at the time, and that she bore a daughter named Sarah who survived in France and created a
bloodline. One of the non-canonical gospels, the Gospel of Philip, referred to Mary Magdalene as Jesus' "companion" or spouse -
possibly meaning his wife. She was supposed to carry on his Church, an idea that would be heretical and threatening to the
established church. In the last portion of the film, Sophie was revealed as the current living descendant of Jesus, protected by the
Priory of Sion.

Shortbus (2006)
D. John Cameron Mitchell
This drama of young bohemians in post 9/11 New York was the most sexually-graphic American movie
ever released in non-porn theaters.
Writer/director John Cameron Mitchell (director of the cult classic Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001)) brought his second arthouse
feature film (aka "The Sex Film Project"). The sex was encased within a non-pornographic dramatic narrative about emotionally-
challenged post 9/11 New Yorkers searching for sexual happiness and self-discovery
It was screened both at the Cannes Film Festival, and at the Toronto International Film Festival. It was the "most explicit" or
sexually-graphic film ever screened. It also had the widest release of any film showing unsimulated sex. Sook-Yin Lee, host of
CBC Radio's Definitely Not the Opera, starred as married couples sex therapist Sofia who was pre-orgasmic (even with husband
Rob (Raphael Barker)), but became sexually liberated by film's end.
This highly controversial film - named for the underground Brooklyn sex salon ("for the gifted and challenged") in the unrated film,
contained unsimulated, hardcore images of sexual intercourse (gay and straight), masturbation, a dominatrix sex whipping, an
orgy scene and a gay menage a trois scene (with oral sex) accompanied by a rousing singing of the national anthem: "The Star
Spangled Banner."
The film's conclusion occurred during a blackout in the city. At the Shortbus club during the rousing singing of "In the End," Sofia
became excitedly engaged in a kissing and sexual threesome with another couple, Nick (Jan Hilmer) and Leah (Shanti Carson).
As she finally achieved orgasm, the lights of the city were simultaneously restored.
Lights Restored in NYC With Sofia's Electrifying Orgasm




United 93 (2006)
D. Paul Greengrass
The trailer that positioned this chillingly realistic 9/11 docu-drama as a formulaic thriller occasioned
more dismay than the movie itself.
This R-rated chillingly-realistic, unflinching, emotionally-moving ultra-verite docu-drama by British writer/director Paul Greengrass
told the courageous and tragic story of heroic crew members and passengers on United's Flight 93 (flying from Newark NJ to San
Francisco), the fourth hijacked plane on September 11, 2001. They were able to thwart the terrorists and prevent the plane from
reaching its intended target - but instead crashed into a field in western Pennsylvania. The film was made all the more real by
including some of the actual FAA ground crew and military officers involved in the actual event as cast members, and by retelling
the tale in real-time.
Necessarily containing intense and frightening sequences of terror and violence, the film (although precisely told and respectfully
treating its subject matter without editorializing, theories, stereotypical human interest stories or personal dramas, or flag-waving
politics) was criticized for its trailer that made the film appear different than it actually was -- as a conventional thriller.
Others wondered whether it was "too soon" after the event (on the 5th year anniversary) for US audiences to view - and varying
opinions contributed to the emotional debate. Universal also received criticism that it was exploiting a national tragedy, although
opinions contributed to the emotional debate. Universal also received criticism that it was exploiting a national tragedy, although
others felt it was important to help remember and be inspired by the shattering event.
Hounddog (2007)
D. Deborah Kampmeier
Outcry over a rape scene involving an Elvis-loving pre-teen (played by 12-year-old Dakota Fanning)
helped sink this drama set in 1950s Alabama.
Writer/director Deborah Kampmeier's exploitative and solemn Southern drama was heralded by its own controversial pre-release
publicity. On July 21, 2006, the day the film wrapped its shooting, reports of the scandalous rape scene of a 12 year-old actress
in the film were released. The same kinds of accusations brought against it recalled the uproar over other controversial films about
exploiting a barely pubescent actress, such as Brooke Shields in Pretty Baby (1978), or Dominique Swain in the remake of Lolita
(1997).
This worn-out movie's tagline seemed appropriate: "Gotta always somehow make good outta what can poison you." Due to the
clamor over the allegedly graphic rape scene, and other complaints about the sexualizing of a minor character, the film was re-
edited (sanitized).
Even before the film had been viewed, child advocates and the Catholic League called for a federal investigation to determine if
any child pornography laws were broken during the making of the film. Petitions created online called for the arrest of Fanning's
agent and mother and attempted to block the film's distribution. At the Sundance Film Festival where the film premiered,
representatives of the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) went on stage and delivered an horrendous statistic -
eight children under age 12 had been sexually assaulted in the time it took the audience to watch the film.
The gothic-tinged, coming-of-age story set in the 1950s American South (in a small town in Alabama) told about a young,
precocious, and thin tomboyish heroine Lewellen (Dakota Fanning) lacking a mother and suffering from an abusive childhood in a
shack-home. She was being 'cared for' by both her stern, Bible-carrying, whiskey-swigging grandmother (Piper Laurie, reprising
her scary role from the horror film Carrie (1976)) and her unstable, slovenly and brutish father Lou (David Morse), who was
currently involved with sexy and battered girlfriend Ellen (or "Stranger Lady") (Robin Wright Penn) (later revealed to be Lewellen's
aunt).
In the first scene, young Lewellen (often seen in underwear throughout the film, exhibiting herself) offered a kiss to her best friend
and swimming hole companion Buddy (Cody Hanford), in exchange for seeing his private parts (off-screen). Most of the time, she
fantasized about Elvis Presley (famous for the song Hounddog), and brought beers to her drunken father (who became crazed and
feeble-minded after being struck by lightning on a tractor during a storm).
The film's most infamous and disturbing scene (heavily edited and shortened to be respectful, and appearing severely truncated,
without any nudity or explicitness) was less than a minute in length. She was coaxed into impersonating her idol while naked (her
"Elvis dance" to Hounddog complete with swinging hips and a low singing voice), in order to procure tickets to an Elvis concert
from an older teenaged Wooden's Boy (Christoph Sanders). She was raped in an abandoned, broken-down shed where she had
been lured by friend and intermediary Buddy, who passively watched (and then covered his eyes).
The very shadowy and dark scene showed only closeups of Lewellen's terrified face as the older teen boy unzipped his pants ("I
got a thing about you"), and she begged: "Please, can I have my ticket now....I just want my ticket, please!" As the rape
occurrred, Lewellen's tensed hand gripped an exposed nail and caused bleeding. Afterwards, she looked up at the hole in the roof
of the shack, as water dripped in. Some accused the film of being entirely listless since the intensity of the rape scene was so
completely softened.








September Dawn (2007)
D. Christopher Cain

LDS spokesmen denounced this little-seen account of the 1857 Mormon massacre of California-bound
settlers as a "distortion of history."
The backdrop of this independent film (with a fictionalized Romeo and Juliet romantic subplot) immediately brought about
controversy. The histrionic melodrama told about the infamous September 11, 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre in which about
120 California-bound settlers (Gentiles) were brutally murdered by Utah Mormons. It was reportedly based on the official 27-page
confession of convicted Mormon John D. Lee. Conveniently, the massacre - that occurred on September 11th - helped the story
draw close parallels to Islamic fundamentalist terrorism in modern times.
It has been disputed whether the slaughter was ordered by the LDS church leader Brigham Young or not, but the church has
admitted that a group of religiously-zealous Mormon militia (with the help of local Native Americans) led the massacre in southern
Utah Territory. In the film, Jon Voight starred as local Mormon bishop Bishop Jacob Samuelson and Terence Stamp starred as
Young, who implicitly spoke out: "I am the voice of God, and anyone who doesn't like it will be hewn down," and demanded an
oath of silence regarding his murderous orders.
As with many other controversial films, the angered LDS church didn't preview the film, but instead issued a statement (with their
version of the historical event) calling the film a "serious distortion of history." It believed that the film, a simplified good vs. evil
treatise, was a piece of anti-Mormon propaganda and not historical truth-telling.

Martyrs (2008, Fr/Can.)
D. Pascal Laugier
This unrated, gory, nihilistic horror film was accused of being one of the most violent movies ever
made - part of a hardcore trend in French films called the "New French Extremism" that portrayed intense pain,
hatred and suffering.
Writer/director Pascal Laugier's controversial, unrated, gory, nihilistic horror film was accused of being one of the most violent
movies ever made. It was similar to the graphic, torture-porn film franchises in the US begun with Saw (2004) and Hostel (2005),
although more compelling with greater intellectual significance. When the divisive film debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in
2008, it caused many audience members to walk out. The final 15 minutes of the unpleasant film was considered unflinchingly
horrendous in its portrayal of cruelty.
The plot was a brutal tale about two abused young females, who developed a close friendship with one another after being placed
in an orphanage:
badly-battered young 10 year-old Lucie (Jessie Pham), who in 1971 had escaped from her captivity in a torture room-
chamber in an abandoned, unused brick slaughterhouse
another abused victim Anna (Erika Scott)
Fifteen years later in 1986, crazed 25 year-old Lucie Jurin (Mylne Jampano) came upon an isolated house and savagely, cold-
bloodedly murdered with a shotgun an entire middle-class French family - the Belfonds (the two teens Marie and Antoine, and Mr.
Belfond and his wife Gabrielle). Afterwards, she phoned Anna Assaoui (Morjana Alaoui) and told her that she had vengefully killed
her tormenting, sadistic captors from years earlier. Lucie continued to be haunted and terrorized by an imagined ghoulish,
masochistic "Creature" (Isabelle Chasse) - a scarred, filthy, emaciated, stringy long-haired female who caused flesh wounds.
The Creature returned and the suicidal Lucie slit her own arms with a razor blade, jumped through a glass window, and ripped
open her own throat with a box-cutter - giving her peace when she died in Anna's arms in the pouring rain. Anna then discovered
stairs behind a cabinet in the house, leading to an underground chamber. Pictures of female torture victims (martyrs) lined the
corridor of the laboratory. Down another trap door, she found where the imprisoned 'Creature' was chained up - she came upon the
tortured woman with scars and a metal blindfold contraption nailed to her head. Anna brought her up into the house, gave her a
bath, and attempted to painfully remove the steel bolts from the blindfold. Strangers dressed in black arrived and shot the raving,
maniacal 'Creature,' then took Anna as their new prisoner.
Anna was introduced to the depraved leader of a secret torture society - elderly Mademoiselle (Catherine Bgin), who believed
that the quasi-religious group could learn the secrets of the afterlife from tortured and suffering young women, although most-
times, they frustratingly only created victims. After a long period of torture and degradation, most subjects would "see things that
don't exist" such as creatures, monsters, or cockroaches.
Anna was chained up in the same concrete cell where she had found the 'Creature.' She was force-fed greenish slop, slapped,
and regularly brutalized. Her hair was cut and she was sponge-bathed. Eventually she submitted without resistance, and began
hearing voices: "You're not scared anymore."
For the final stage of her suffering, in the film's last horrific 15 minutes, Anna was dragged away, clamped down to a steel medical
gurney, and her skin from her entire body (except for her face) was flayed by a surgeon while she was alive - this caused her to
achieve transfiguration.
The members of the secret society were summoned to the house to learn of Anna's "authentic martyrdom" on the previous day.
She was praised as being only the 4th individual in 17 years to have attained the stage of martyrdom, and the first to relate what
she had seen. She had experienced a state of ecstasy lasting 2 hours and 15 minutes. Although still alive, she was now no
longer communicating.
Just before revealing Anna's testimony - what she had related (about the afterlife, what "lay beyond death") to the society's leader,








Just before revealing Anna's testimony - what she had related (about the afterlife, what "lay beyond death") to the society's leader,
Mademoiselle asked her assistant Etienne (Jean-Marie Moncelet) about the indescribable: "Could you imagine what there is after
death?...Could you?" - she then committed suicide by shooting herself in the mouth (her last words were: "Keep doubting").
The film ended abruptly, with the definition of "martyr" - "noun, from the Greek 'marturos': witness."


Antichrist (2009, Denmark)
D. Lars von Trier
A couple descends into a maelstrom of violent sex and sexual violence after their son's death, but art-
house audiences mostly took its provocations in stride.
Outrageous Danish director Lars von Trier's controversial, compelling, nihilistic psychological-horror film (with only two characters)
portrayed the tortured pain of a grieving, devastated, and unhinged mother. Although approaching the levels of violent torture-porn
(filmed most explicitly with professional porn stars) seen in films like Saw, there was also a perverse beauty in the
cinematographic expertise envisioned in the NC-17 film, shot by Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire (2008) cinematographer
Anthony Dod Mantle.
At its premiere showing at Cannes, there was an uproar at the press conference regarding its "explicit sexual gore." The
provocative film sharply divided critics. In particular, viewers were shocked by its genital abuse, including the bashing of a man's
penis and scrotum, a bloody masturbation scene, the drilling of a hole through a man's ankle, and a self-abusive woman's
excisement of her own clitoris. However, female actress Gainsbourg earned a Best Actress prize by the Cannes jury for her bold
performance, although many considered the film extremely offensive.
During filming of the unrelenting, uncompromising and despairing film - a retelling of the Genesis creation tale in part, von Trier
was reportedly suffering from depression and attempting to exorcise his own personal demons. His artistic work reflected the pain
of his own feelings, and suggested that the natural world ("Eden") was inhabited by Satan (the Anti-Christ), allowing for intensely
cruel and inhumane behavior between individuals.
The chapters in the film were labeled: Grief, Pain (Chaos Reigns), Despair (Gynocide), and The Three Beggars (related to the
three animals). The film opened with a gorgeous black-and-white prologue in slow-motion, during which a young toddler
accidentally fell to his death from a window while his parents were engaged in intensely-passionate sex (complete with a close-
up, thrusting penetration shot) in the bathroom shower and bedroom. After a month of grieving, self-punishment and self-blaming
guilt, the couple (named only He (Willem Dafoe) and She (Charlotte Gainsbourg)) went to their remote woodsy cabin (named
"Eden") to face their self-destructive, worst fears.
Both soon realized the difficulty in reconciling their vastly different emotional and intellectual approaches to grief. As it turned out,
the traumatized female was an occult researcher who had spent the previous summer there with her son, writing her "thesis" on
gynocide (the systematic mass murder of suspected witches during the Middle Ages).
During their stay at "Eden," their marital relationship deteriorated and she lost control of herself, as she said: "Everything that
used to be beautiful about Eden was perhaps hideous. Now I could hear what I couldn't hear before - the cry of all the things that
are to die." In the unholy forest, images of a mother deer with a stillborn baby fetus hanging out of its uterus, dying acorns falling
on their roof, a dying, self-disemboweled fox speaking in a deep voice: "Chaos reigns!", and a cawing crow signaled serious and
disturbing problems for the couple.
Even He was losing his grip on sanity as he attempted to make psychotherapeutic sense of their misfortune, while relentlessly
stripping her of all her defenses and leaving her psyche naked. As he struggled to identify her worst fear -- he crossed out various
possibilities (Nature? Satan? Herself?) while he revised his diagnosis. At one point, She expressed her top fear that: "Nature is
Satan's Church," but also said that she felt "cured." During sex, she demanded that he inflict sadistic pain upon her by hitting
her, and internalized the view that women were inherently evil - the conclusion drawn by witchhunters in the 16th century.
The disturbing scenes of genital abuse (scrotum bashing/bloody ejaculation) and cruel torture followed, demonstrating her long-
simmering resentment and anger. Apparently, she partially blamed their earlier sex act for their child's death. She called herself a
"scheming woman" that was "false" in many ways (false in legs, thighs, breast, teeth, hair, eyes), before performing a
clitoridectomy on herself with a pair of rusty scissors. The Three Beggars were revealed to be related to the woodland creatures in
a constellation -- Grief=deer, Despair=crow, and Pain=Fox, and after they entered the house, He dispassionately strangled his
wife with his bare hands and burned her body on a large open-air pyre.
In the film's black and white epilogue, He hobbled away from the cabin into the woods, ate wild berries next to the three animals,
and was surrounded by a horde of zombie-like women (with blurred faces) climbing the hill around him.







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and was surrounded by a horde of zombie-like women (with blurred faces) climbing the hill around him.
The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2010)
D. Tom Six
This twisted, repellent Dutch shocker about a mad doctor who turned three young victims into a 12-
limbed abomination proved that it's still possible to appall horror buffs.
One of the more perverse, twisted and repellent ideas for a film was found in this exploitative, torture-porn horror film by Dutch
director/writer Tom Six. It brought to mind David Cronenberg's body-horror films, Japanese horror, and the S&M tone of films such
as Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1975) that told of torturous "medical experiments" (performed mostly on naked females) by an evil
Nazi at a death camp.
In his horrific midnight movie, two American girls Lindsay (Ashley C. Williams) and Jenny (Ashlynn Yennie) traveling in Europe on
a road trip experienced a flat tire at night in the rain, and came into contact with demented retired Nazi-Germany surgeon Dr.
Heiter (Dieter Laser) at his luxurious modern villa. After drugging the drinks of the two girls, and tying them up on hospital beds in
his basement operating room, he explained (via overhead projector slide-show) how he was a master at separating conjoined or
Siamese twins. A third subject, who repeatedly swore and shouted in Japanese (subtitled) at the sadistic doctor as he lectured to
the trio, was previously-kidnapped Japanese tourist Katsuro (Akihiro Kitamura).
Heiter bragged about an experiment in which he had transformed three rottweiler dogs into a "beautiful three-hound construction."
He told them in clinical detail how he would proceed with his surgical operation on them, his lifetime goal, to create a "Siamese
triplet" (a multi-legged human bug). He would first cut the knee-cap ligaments, so that knee extensions would no longer be
possible. Further modifications would require incisions on the chins-cheeks of subjects B and C. He would then attach the three
subjects via their gastric system (mouth to anus!) - forming a human centipede ("Ingestion by A, passing through B, to the
excretion of C").
Advertisements for the mostly-panned and grotesque film claimed it was "100% Medically Accurate." Although the film's
disturbing surgical procedure was described in great detail, the actual results were mostly implied rather than explicitly shown.
The tension-inducing film was greeted with hatred and discussion, and although it received various awards, it was also described
as garbage.
The emphasis was upon the cold-hearted, unfeeling, maniacal and monstrous god-like doctor, Frankenstein-like, in his obsession
to create a new life-form. A second part (or sequence) was released direct-to-DVD a few years later, The Human Centipede 2
(Full Sequence (2011).



The 100+ Most Controversial Films of All-Time
(chronologically, by film title)
Intro | Silents-1930s | 1940s-1950s | 1960-1961 | 1962-1967 | 1968-1969
1970-1971 | 1972 | 1973-1974 | 1975 | 1976-1977 | 1978 | 1979
1980-1982 | 1983-1986 | 1987-1989 | 1990-1992 | 1993-1995 | 1996-1999
2000-2002 | 2003-2005 | 2006-Present

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