March 24, 1973: Appeal expected after A Clockwork Orange banned
When the Alberta Censorship Board banned the Academy-Award-nominated A Clockwork Orange in 1972, it sparked a great debate about liberalizing censorship laws.
The board was guided by the Amusements Act of 1912, which hadn’t changed much in 60 years, when it decided the film was too violent for Albertans to see. Clockwork was one of 22 films banned that year along with Myra Breckinridge and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.
The controversy surrounding the ban prompted the appointment of a special legislative committee to examine all aspects of censorship. Horst A. Schmid, minister of culture, youth and recreation, said the guidelines used by the board would most likely be changed.
That fall, nine of 15 submissions presented on the first day of public hearings on censorship opposed the abolition of the three-member censorship board and its powers to ban or cut films.
Other briefs supported a classification system categorizing films from “general” to “restricted adult X” rather than censorship, which is what the special legislative committee eventually recommended. It explained that the ultimate decision on obscenity should be left to the courts and put the onus on film producers, distributors and exhibitors to comply with the obscenity laws of the Criminal Code of Canada.
Only 11 films were banned in 1973, reflecting the increasing leniency of the late 1970s and early 1980s, but A Clockwork Orange remained banned prompting the expectation of an appeal a year later (on this date.) When the movie reappeared in theatres in 1999 it was reclassified and given an R, or restricted, rating in Alberta.
The Alberta Censor Board was rebranded as the Alberta Film Classification Services in 2000. But the provincial government didn’t ban censorship itself until 2009 with the passing of the Film and Video Classification Act.
Besides A Clockwork Orange, some other films banned in Alberta include: the gangster film Little Caesar (1931); the biker film The Wild One (1954); the bawdy British Tom Jones (1963) — although that decision was reversed two years later; the animated Heavy Traffic (1973); and the Penthouse-magazine financed Caligula (1980).
The last movie banned in Alberta was the R-rated slasher film, Silent Night, Deadly Night in 1987.