Nobody Puts Ricky in a Corner

Hot diggity! Former head honcho of the BBFC, James Ferman, must be turning over in his grave right about now. With ex-BBC Breakfast presenter Natasha Kaplinsky taking over the reins as the current president of the BBFC, she put the kibosh on a lingering leftover from Ferman's dictatorship by finally passing uncut Ruggero Deodato's film The House on the Edge of the Park (1980) in the UK.

To my knowledge, the film was never actually banned, but it was butchered to an inch of its life. Once considered the most censored film in the UK, here's an extract from the highly recommendable book Shock! Horror! Astounding Artwork from the Video Nasty Era sharing some insight into just how draconian the BBFC were over Deodato's film:

"It's funnny to think that this truly outrageous Italian shocker, starring David Hess, the utterly convincing psycho from The Last House on the Left, was actually submitted to the BBFC... It would have been hilarious to see the examiners' faces when this film unspooled in their cosy Soho screening room.

Despite the film's fearsome reputation, it was still surprising to discover that, when re-submitted for video classification by VIPCO's Mike Lee in 2002, a whopping 11 minutes 43 seconds of cuts were ordered before a certificate would be granted." - Brewster, Fenton & Morris, Shock! Horror! Astounding Artwork from the Video Nasty Era, p 217, FAB Press, 2005.

I wonder if Natasha Kaplinsky passing this truly problematic film uncut might be attributed to Ricky and Gloria's dance scene? Perhaps it rekindled the time she was on Strictly Come Dancing and being crowned the series' first celebrity winner. Not watched a single episode since Darcey Bussell left, but I would definitely tune in again if Kaplinsky returned to the show to perform the dance scene with Italy's whipping boy, John Morghen AKA Giovanni Lombardo Radice.

The House on the Edge of the Park (Dance scene)

Ruggero Deodato, 1980