Showgirls (1995)
The 18: Boobs galore tale of a stripper who travels to Vegas to be a naked dancer.
No, we’re not sure what the difference is either.
The 15: They could use CGI to put a really nice dress onto lead naked lady Elizabeth Berkley.
For the bits where she’s really rude, they could drop in scenes from Saved By The Bell.
But not the one where Berkley gets addicted to caffeine pills. That one was a bit too edgy.
Ichi The Killer (2001)
The 18: Unbelievably violent death flick about an assassin who kills his targets in as extravagantly gory a manner as possible. Nasty.
The 15: Unfortunately, without the gore, Ichi probably has a two minute runtime.
But with his cheek scars, flamboyant dress sense and psychotic nature, Ichi is a ringer for Heath Ledger’s Joker.
So let’s edit in massive chunks of the Dark Knight to make up the missing minutes and hope that Nolan doesn’t notice.
Natural Born Killers (1994)
The 18: Oliver Stone’s psychedelic serial killer flick has been blamed for so many real-life deaths it’ll probably never be downgraded to a 15. Controversial.
The 15: It’d take a lot of careful editing, but we think we can mash up Killers with Cheers, and call it Natural Born Drinkers.
Some of the scenes with Woody might seem a bit weird, but we’ll make it work.
Death Wish (1974)
The 18: Charles Bronson goes mugger hunting in this ideologically unsound vigilante flick.
The 15: Take out the violence, Death Wish becomes a weird soap opera.
So maybe they could fill the blanks by inserting those Michael Winner insurance adverts over the murder bits, keeping the sounds of death and gunshots still playing underneath.
We’d pay to see that.
Lust / Caution (2007)
The 18: Half skin flick / half World War II drama. We can see where the censors could take this one…
The 15: The kid friendly version might be comparatively dull, but at least it’ll have a manageable run time.
The original was 157 minutes, for goodness sake.
The censors could literally cut this one in two and still have time to spare. And, hell, without the sex scenes, this one is practically educational.
120 Days Of Sodom (1975)
The 18: Dark and disturbing children into a castle to torture and derogate them. Evil.
The 15: This is a complex one, as Sodom features hardly any nudity or gore. It’s the subject matter than makes this one of the most unpleasant films ever made.
To downgrade, the censors would have to completely remake it. Maybe call it 120 Days Of Summer and make it a gross out comedy about nine college students who get trapped in a castle during spring break. They could probably keep the poo scenes, but, you know, with added jokes.
Kids (1995)
The 18 : Underage teenagers drink, swear and smoke their way through what appears to be way too much free time. Don’t they have schools to go to?
The 15: We get them out of the skate gear and put them in school uniforms, we hand them pints of milk instead of booze fiddies, and bob’s your uncle, we’ve got St Trinians!
Which is also a film in which children drink, smoke and swear.
Hang on a minute...
