When the Motion Picture Association first moved away from the draconian Hays Code to the voluntary rating system still widely used today, the infamous X rating was reserved for films with obscene levels of bloodshed, erotic content, or coarse language. It was viewed by mainstream studios as a mark of doom for a film’s theatrical potential, both because material restricted to adult audiences limited commercial viability and because the non-trademarked nature of the X-rating led to it being used as a marketing tactic for pornography. But between the 1960s and the 1980s, when the X was replaced with NC-17, several well-regarded films were given the dreaded stamp, including Midnight Cowboy, A Clockwork Orange, and even The Evil Dead.
The X-rating often mired a film in controversy, harming its box office results. Sometimes, though, it induced a sort of Streisand effect, where the inflammatory nature of the material drew more attention to the film, creating a legacy that would ironically outlast the label itself. Perhaps the most iconic example is Ken Russell’s intensely volatile 1971 film The Devils, a movie whose reputation only helped it to achieve cult status, and one with a central message that remains incisive and dangerous to the institutions it critiques to this day.
