Scandalous films not of their time

Mildred Pierce. Her daughter commits MURDER!

The Unknown (1927), an early Todd Browning film:

[quote]Alonzo is an armless knife thrower and gun shooter for a circus---or so he appears. He is actually a criminal with his arms intact. He and his accomplice, Cojo (a little person), are hiding from the police. Alonzo views his disguise as perfect, especially since it keeps from view an unusual deformity of his left hand that would immediately give him away as the criminal the police are searching for. Nanon, the daughter of Zanzi, the circus owner, is the target in his act. Although Alonzo is in love with her, Nanon's father despises him. Malabar, the circus strong man, is attracted to Nanon but she is repulsed by his uninhibited sexual advances and desire to touch and hold her. Her phobia extends to the touch of any man's hand. Alonzo feeds her fears in the hopes that Nanon will fall in love with him since he is "armless." Because Zanzi discovers Alonzo really has arms, Alonzo kills him, but Nanon witnesses the killing without seeing Alonzo's face; however, she does see the telltale ...

My favorite is The Story of Temple Drake with the fantastic Miriam Hopkins, arch-nemesis of Bette Davis - even more so than our Faye. It's a pre-code rape and revenge saga that is truly salacious and shocking.

Enjoy!

Psycho. An unmarried woman is seen in a hotel with her lover in just her bra. Gasp! Later, she flushes a...wait for it...TOILET! And we see it! And that's not even including her brutal murder and mother-murdering transvestite serial killer.

I saw this recently and it has a vague gay undertone, as one guy seems to not want a woman to come between him and another guy. Tragedy ensues.

R2 is really good, too.

The "bloodless" horror films of Val Lewton:

The Seventh Victim and Curse of The Cat People are especially delicious.

FREAKS...MIDGETS , LOBSTER PEOPLE , FAT PEOPLE...THE WORKS .

Teeny eyed Norma Shearer's other good film (besides The Women), 1931's A Free Soul:

A Free Soul is a 1931 American pre-Code drama film that tells the story of an alcoholic San Francisco defense attorney who must defend his daughter's ex-boyfriend on a charge of murdering the mobster she had started a relationship with, a mobster whom her father had previously got an acquittal for on a murder charge. A Free Soul stars Norma Shearer, Leslie Howard, Lionel Barrymore, and Clark Gable.[3][4][5][6][7]

A Free Soul became famous for Barrymore's climactic courtroom monologue that is said to be the main reason he won the Academy Award for Best Actor at the 4th Academy Awards that year.[8] Gable made such an impression in the role of a gangster who pushes Shearer around that he was catapulted from supporting player to leading man, a position he held for the rest of his career.[1]

Baby Face, where Barbara Stanwyck shamelessly and literally fucks her way to the top.

Great suggestions so far, thanks! The raunchier and more debauched the better.

Another Todd Browning/Lon Chaney collaboration: 'The Unholy Three' (1925):

[quote]Three sideshow performers leave their lives of captivity and become "The Unholy Three." Echo the ventriloquist assumes the role of a kindly old grandmother who runs a bird shop. Tweedledee, the "twenty inch man," becomes her grandbaby, and Hercules is their assistant. Soon an incredible crime wave is launched from their little store.

Pink Flamingos

If you have Kanopy streaming, there’s a collection of old full-on hardcore silent short films on there called “The Good Old Naughty Days”. Most of them are from the twenties and very early thirties and a couple of them feature gay sex.

More than anything, you see how primal the desire to make and consume porn is to the development of technology and society. And yes, your great-great grandma knew what a blowjob was.

Priscilla, Queen of the Desert was ahead of its time. Freaked people out.

The Mark (1961) - a sympathetic portrayal of a pedo - you'd never get that now.

Here's a link to scandalous movies. Some were held up in the courts for decades. America has always been nice/nasty.

The Woodsman -- Kevin Bacon plays a sympathetic pedophile

R16, I’m surprised that Pretty Baby didn’t make the list.

The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932) starring Myrna Loy as Fu Manchu's sadistic daughter. Maybe it's more correctly "of its time" because it was Pre-Code.

R16 Great link. Lots of great suggestions. I forgot about Last Tango in Paris and have to watch again.

"Notes on a Scandal" ---A Gold Star Day!

Last Tango in Paris, although tame by today's standards, Marlon Brando asking Maria Schneider to butter up her finger and stick it up his ass was so scandalous it made the film an international hit.

I loathed "Last Tango", but then it wasn't meant for me. It's a straight man's fantasy.

Check out the 1944 Preston Sturges comedy, [bold]The Miracle of Morgan's Creek[/bold], starring Betty Hutton as Trudy Kockenlocker. After partying all night with departing GIs, she discovers that she got both married and pregnant -- but cannot recall the supposed husband's name.

The real miracle is how this movie ever got past the censors.

Helen Morgan in Applause. The story line is creaky and pure melodrama, but the fact that Helen Morgan was willing to look realistically bad as a blowsy over-the-hill burlesque dancer , and her painfully honest portrayal were too much for audience goers of the time. Also, the realistic portrayal of a tawdry burlesque house was about as far a US film could go,

See the Burlesque footage at 24:00 Her suicide at 109.24

Well I'm not going to watch it now knowing how it ends, R25.

Gone with the Wind ends with a curse word, and it features a harlot!

More than one if you asks me.

The Loved One, a hilarious film about the funeral business in California made in 1965, starring Liberace Tab Hunter and Rod Steiger

From imdb link;

[quote]The black humor was considered outrageous at the time, especially the mincing Joyboy and his beached-whale of a mom. In those days, "gay" still meant "joyously spirited" and Liberace's sudden appearance with the girls amounted to a new kind of "coming out".

R16, thank you for that link. I'm looking at getting a big new 4K TV, was wondering what DVD I should take into the store to test it with. Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom might be interesting on a 65in screen instore, that or Pink Flamingos. Might discount the set to get me out of the store, you never know. Nothing like a 300lb transvestite eating dogshit in glorious 4K to squeeze out a deal

Why would you use a DVD to test a 4K TV? Even with upscaling, many of them will end up looking poor. I'm sure the store will have 4K discs you can use instead.

I second "Baby" with Ruth Roman. 9 out of 20 DLers will like it.

The Sign of the Cross

Orgies, lesbians, and other titillating stuff.

Brief Pre-Code nudity, a couple of male bare bottoms in gym shower scene.

Whistle gaily!

Oh yeah, R32, "The Sign of the Cross". The one where there's a scene implying that a little boy is being buggered by his evil Roman captors, and where scantily clad girls are killed in entertaining ways in the coliseum!

That's the thing about DeMille, before he got completely sanctimonious in the fifties, he liked to sneak a lot of sex and perversity into his films... under his ever-present cloak of sanctimony. Because it was a Christian movie, he could put all that BDSM on the screen and still call it "moral".

r34 And Claudette Colbert takes a bubble bath, wandering to the water w/out bubbles.

The original King Kong included shots of Kong graphically trampling 'natives' and chewing them, and exposing Fay Wray's breasts. There was a whole missing 'Spider Pit' scene which was edited out, but recreated by Peter Jackson in his remake. I read on the defunct Scarlet Street forums that the model spiders were later discovered stored in the rafters of the DesiLu studios.

r34 And stuff like this, I imagine. Gorillas are not carnivorous, I think.

Here's another naked bound girl from that highly moralistic Christian epic, "Sign of the Cross".

DeMille knew what his good Christian viewers really liked to see!

The ultra-lurid SAFE IN HELL (1931):

"Gilda Karlson (Dorothy Mackaill) is a New Orleans prostitute. She is accused of murdering Piet Van Saal (Ralf Harolde), the man responsible for ending her former job as a secretary and leading her into prostitution. Her old boyfriend, sailor Carl Erickson (Donald Cook), smuggles her to safety to Tortuga, an island in the Caribbean from which she cannot be extradited. On the island, Gilda and Carl get "married" without a clergyman to officiate, and she swears to be faithful to him. After Carl leaves on his ship, Gilda finds herself to be the only white woman in a hotel full of international criminals, all of whom try to seduce her. Especially persistent is Mr. Bruno (Morgan Wallace), who describes himself as "the jailer and executioner of this island". He arranges to intercept letters Carl sends to her and steals the support money he includes. Bruno's intention is to make Gilda think Carl has abandoned her, hoping she will seek his assistance once she becomes desperate for cash....

R25 I love Applause! We watched it from the film class and we're studying sound. if you notice that the scenes where they're speaking they're always around the potted plant. That's where they hit the microphone.

Yes pure melodrama with a depressing ending but I still love it.

Alla Nazimova's "Salome" supposedly had an all gay cast, and the parts of th 'ladies in waiting' were definitely played by men in drag....

Night Nurse

Call Her Savage

Lubitch also has an understated frankness:

Trouble in Tahiti

Design for Living

Cluny Brown

Check out the Forbidden Hollywood dvds.

Just a few years out of OP's stated parameters, but in every other way perfectly qualified for this request.

Myra Breckinridge. In my life I can think of no film that created great scandal than "Myra Breckinridge." The public outrage about that film seemed to come from every quarter. No other big budget Hollywood film comes close. No other film has ever been so widely denounced.

And if you look at it today, you wonder why. It's just a hip little comedy that plays pretty well for a film of its period. No great distinction, but no great outrage to be found. But oh, when it opened.... That was something.

Baby Doll

@r43 Loved the book. But I’ve never seen the film. Is it online somewhere

@r43 Loved the book. But I’ve never seen the film. Is it online somewhere

R45/R46, if you loved the book, please read the sequel, "Myron." Vidal creates a marvelous alternate world, and it's hilarious as well.

SHOWGIRLS

The pre-code Weismueller Tarzan movies were fairly risque. Jane was basically wearing a loin cloth that barely covered her naughty bits and one swimming scene was done nude. Post code Jane was much more covered.

"something for everyone" and "teorema"

who doesn't love dick? especially if they belong to michael york and terence stamp

Carmen Jones

There were always scandalous things going on. The recent generations aren't the ones to have discovered vices.

Censorship isn't always a terrible thing. This book written in 1928 would never be made into a movie. It's trash.

TITICUT FOLLIES, a 1967 documentary about the residents of a Massachusetts mental hospital. No one thought much about the filmmakers when they were filming, but the result was horrifying and the final movie banned in Massachusetts for years.

Parts of it look like David Lynch meets Fellini.

"Search for Beauty" (1934), a pre-Code film with Ida Lupino and the divine Buster Crabbe.

The Outlaw, Howard Hughes take on the story of the notorious Billy the Kid. It is obviously and blatently the gayest film I have ever seen. It was supposedly held back by the early 1940s censors for two years because of all the gratuitous shots of Jane Russell's very ample bosom but it had to be actually the gay story line of whether Doc Holliday or Sheriff Pat Garett is going to get to Billy's sugar daddy.

Even Wikipedia says:

[quote]Some film critics and historians believe that the film has homosexual overtones to it. Author Robert Lang writes that the true expression of sexuality in this film comes from the relationship between Doc Holliday and Billy the Kid. He further writes that the film is about "the complications that arise when Doc Holliday falls in love with Billy the Kid, and Pat Garett becomes jealous of the bond that develops between the two men."[10]

Desert Fury from the late 1940s. It's really a film noir but shot in lurid Technicolor. Wendell Corey follows his boss Burt Lancaster around in his underwear obviously totally in love and meanwhile Mary Astor gives Lizabeth Scott a deep French kiss. And Astor is playing Scott's mother!

Making Love

It's John Hodiak as the gangster boss in Desert Fury. Burt Lancaster is the local cop.

Thanks, r58. Always open to correction. But it's a great and fun film, right?

Thanks, r58. Always open to correction. But it's a great and fun film, right?

There's also some pre-code pre-Wwissmuler Tarzan film were the English explorer (not Tarzan) strips off completely and takes a bath and shows everything except the actual frontal bits. Sorry I can't remember the name.

Also, I'm an eldergay film aficionado and I guess I'm not embarrassed to admit I previously knew about every one of the fun films mentioned above. Check them out.

^ Er, Weissmuller .Sorry.

^ Er, Weissmuller .Sorry.

About 'The Outlaw', it's been reported by several writers that Billy the Kid (Jack Buetel) was one of Howard Hughes' many infatuations.

Oh, yes, r64, Jack Beutel was of course one of Howard Hughes bisexual conquests. Back when that just wasn't done.

The Outlaw was also originally cast with David Bacon in the lead but shortly before filming started, Hughes replaced him with Beutel. Not long later, B list star Bacon was found murdered on the street after a traffic accident and it's an unsolved case sometimes still posted about at Websleuths and Reddit.

Oh, yes, r64, Jack Beutel was of course one of Howard Hughes bisexual conquests. Back when that just wasn't done.

The Outlaw was also originally cast with David Bacon in the lead but shortly before filming started, Hughes replaced him with Beutel. Not long later, B list star Bacon was found murdered on the street after a traffic accident and it's an unsolved case sometimes still posted about at Websleuths and Reddit.

I wonder why Howard Hughes' Wikipedia page doesn't mention his bisexuality at all, when usually they're not so coy about posthumously categorizing famous people as "LGBT."

R28, you are right about The Loved Ones; it's a great film!

My suggestions for films way ahead of their times are:

The Killing of Sister George

What Do You Say To a Naked Lady

The Last Picture Show was somewhat scandalous when released. It had a teenager having an affair with the coach's wife, set-up sex with a prostitute for a mentally handicapped little brother, more teenage sex, and a millisecond of male nudity.

R69 The Last Picture Show is incredible. It reminds so much of this Texas town I went to high school in. Nothing much has changed there either!

Oh fuck. I just looked it up. That author is from Archer City. That's a town I heard about all the time on the local news sports report.

Fuck me. That whole area is shit and someone made a book about it and I know nothing about it because I never wanted anything to do with that place!

This is rather recent but I thought the British film Fish Tank (2009) with Michael Fassbender was not something that would usually have been made during the 2000s. It reminded me more of a gritty 60s or 70s film.