" Salo: The 120 Days of Sodom is again under fire from Queensland Minister .... He has pleaded with Attorney General Daryl Williams to have Salo banned. The OFLC reclassified the film 'R' this year after one attempt to fling it off the continent.

" Polyester Books in Melbourne had its front window smashed by a brick at 3:00am one morning. The window once featured a manga painting of two clothed girls, one bound by the wrists and clearly 'wet', the other approaching for her an embrace. Polyester were warned beforehand - remove the image or have it destroyed. Paul tells me they will replace the picture and protect it with perspex. Polyester are offering a $1000 reward for information leading to the apprehension of the offenders. No luck so far.

" Polyester's hassles prefigured the trouble artist Serrano had with his Piss Christ photograph. His retrospective ran for just three days at the Victorian Arts Gallery before being closed by the curator. On two successive days christian wankers attacked Piss Christ; first it was kicked and knocked to the floor by a middle-aged man, then teenagers struck it with a hammer, fracturing the glass and scoring the print. Serrano was outraged that the gallery opted to close the exhibition rather than boost security. Piss Christ was later moved to another Serrano exhibition at South Yarra.

" Men in Black was originally rated 'M' by the censors. Unsatisfied, the distributor or the studio cut 10 to 20 seconds and scored a PG rating.
Wes Craven's mega-successful Scream was released in Australia in its US 'R'-rated form. The director's cut on NTSC laserdisc has 20 extra seconds: the guts are shown falling out of Scott's stomach; the approach shot to Drew Barrymore hanging on the tree is real time, not double speed; the garage door murder shows the girl's head squashing bloodlessly; Gail Weather's cameraman throat is cut; the two killers stab each other a few more times.
   Crash was released in Australia uncut. It also got past the UK censors unscathed with an '18' certificate. In contrast, Hustler White was originally banned from Australia until the razor blade S/M scene was removed. Look out for uncut re-releases of The Toxic Avenger and Bloodsucking Freaks on VHS from Siren Entertainment. Their Hard Boiled sell-thru is supposedly cut. Too bad.
   As for Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers, who knows what amputated condition it will arrive in. Given a "hard R" in the US, a trimmed 'MA' version may hit Australian theatres, echoing the Total Recall situation. But do not expect a director's cut release anywhere except on US and Japanese laserdisc.
   Verhoeven's Robocop has been re-released on laserdisc by Voyager/Criterion with some extra squirts of gore: the ED 209 malfunction scene has more exploding squibs; Murphy's lifts his shredded and bleeding forearm into shot after his hand is blown off; Clarence Bodiker's death is a few frames longer.
   Robert Rodrigez's films Desperado and From Dusk Till Dawn so far exist in post-MPAA prints. And don't hold your breath for the director's cuts. They weren't even restored for their laserdisc releases.
   The long awaited uncut debut of Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part III on NTSC laserdisc flopped. Instead of the director's cut, an unrated European version was used for the "special collector's edition". As reported by Video Watchdog, the audio commentary by Jeff Burr, KNB, and David Schow laments the loss of several violent moments and finishing touches.
   The Australian versions of Castle Freak and Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday are probably the US theatrical versions. Jason uncut includes a naked woman being split in half, waist up. Stuart Gordon's cut of Castle Freak has a nominal amount of extra footage, none of which improves the film.
   Friday the 13th IV was released by Horror House sell-thru video uncut. The 'M'-rated Australian sell-thru of Dracula - Prince of Darkness is cut.

" Postal is a novel new shoot'em up in which you play a mass murderer killing post office workers. I want it! The righteous Queensland government have a big fat $18,000 fine waiting for those who import the game.
Another tastelessly ghoulish title Carmaggedon was released in its full version with an MA rating. In Germany and England the terrorised pedestrians are robots and zombies.
   Duke Nukem is now on sale locally in the full uncensored US edition. The procedure to reinvoke Adult Mode was easy enough to rig anyway.
The Aussie version of The House of the Dead, a brilliant monster-mashing arcade game, features green blood instead of red. Uncensored, fully sanginated consoles are easy to find. Therapeutic!

" Customs regularly open shipments to comic shops looking for adult titles, particularly those by Verotik and Eros Comix. The mandatory classification of comics is yet to be realised. This move would cripple profit margins and slow distribution, not to mention culling many of the more interesting, non-superhero, independently produced comics and graphic novels. It would be another win for homogenisation.

" The 'X' rating is out, the Non-Violent Erotic rating is in. In a compromise, the conservative Liberal government have kept their promise to extinguish the 'X' rating by renaming it 'NVE', a tamer classification that excludes bondage, S/M, "teen" porn, and a host of body-fluid oriented fetishes. Thus, the Australian public can no longer watch on video what they are quite free to do at home. I prefer 'NEV' porn, myself.
   The Lyon's Forum, a group of 50 conservative church leaders and coalition ministers, are respon-sible for powering the current pro-censorship movement. Another body called Watch on Censorship has been established to oppose the conservatism that has followed the Liberals into national rule like a foul stench.

" Fucked as it is, Franka Ariena's Paedophile Index, which prints the names, occupations, and locations of convicted child molesters, inadvertently offers this statistic: by profession, priests and church workers topped the pole at 68 offenders. The nearest group, school teachers, were far behind with 32 delegates.

" Pulp Fiction ran on Channel Seven in a horribly censored, gross looking pan and scan version. In some parts the dialogue was unintelligible. It should have been rated 'MA' and shown at 9:30pm, not at 8:30 rated 'M'. Seven is still running a wimpy version of Silence of the Lambs.
   Channel Ten is now running The Larry Sanders Show uncensored. Amazing! Is it the millennium?