This is pretty tame, but I was amused by the sequence in The Little Mermaid where Ariel, just having been turned human, asks Scuttle if he notices anything different about her, and he says, “New… seashells?” and glances down at her cleavage.
(I could also swear, though, that, in the sequence in which Ariel gets her legs, there’s a single frame of full frontal nudity just as she flashes off the screen.)
The movies were effectively meant to be seen by anyone after they cracked down. It’s true that now people are putting PG ratings and otherwise on films, for reasons not at all clear to me. But the sense was that everything ought to be viewable by anyone (with occasional cautions on things like that shocking “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” in Gone With The Wind), but, for practical purposes, things were meant to be viewable by anyone – there were no restrictions on them, as there were in other countries, or as there would be after the introduction of the “GMRX” ratings.
I have a picture of a promotion for The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms when it first showed in Britain. You can clearly see that it has a “Certificate X” seal on it. That meant it could only be viewed by adults. It’s a film today shown at all hours on TV, and which I grew up on in the 1960s. The idea that it’s for adults only seems laughable now (and shows you that, at its inception, even the US version of “X” didn’t mean that the film only contained hardcore porn), and I suspect it was laughable in the US when the film first came out.
Cleavage, heck! She’s butt-nekkid from the brassiere down! He sees things that Playboy Magazine didn’t show for decades!
It’s small, remote, kind of abstract, and I don’t know if you see anything from the front. I remember it only being a side view. You can see her hips, and a little tuchis, but that’s it. It’s kind of monochromatic, indicating that the water is no longer crystal clear to her, now that the sea is not her home.
Per the British Board of Film Classification’s history of the 1950s here, also see wikipedia here, the X category excluded children under 16. X films included Rebel Without A Cause, 1955, and Blackboard Jungle, 1955: “A series of negotiations then began, resulting in substantial cuts for an X certificate.” I would guess that Beast was X for violence, or perhaps from a successful attempt of the exhibitors to imply inter-species involvement.
(Looking up at post #83 makes me think of Miranda. Alas, BBFC’s 1912-1949 section doesn’t mention her. But I’d like to be involved with even a U-rated Glynis Johns.)
Insanely filthy? Bum like the Japanese flag? Not in Britain, mate. Over here that is just a toned-down version of the “Arsehole like a cherry tomato” comment made about the after-effects of a really naff but hot curry.
But then that kind of humour is a Brit thing, I think. Like the {in}famous “Kiss my arrr… tichoke!” line in Curse of the Wererabbit.
You’re joking (I hope…), and the “violence” part undoubtedly covers it, but it’s still hard to believe – there’s no blood (except Rhedosaurus blood, and that’s essential to the plot.) . There are a lot of crushed buildings and cars. Aside from mpeople who are in danger of immedialty being crushed by falling stuff (and their demise is never shown), the only human injury you see is a New York cop who gets picked up by the torso and gulped down. Harryhausen himself couldn’t understand objections to that, saying that today “you’d see intestines hanging out”. This was less traumatic, everything considered, than the similar demise of the lawyer in Jurassic Park.
According to the British Film Institute here, http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/comment/obituaries/mighty-ray-harryhausen, in a 2014 article by Michael Brooke,
Very interesting. Harryhausen’s “Reality Sandwich” was what his advertising later called Dynamation or Dynarama. He did it originally because he didn’t have the staff or the money or the time to construct elaborate miniature sets with glass paintings and forced perspective (like they used in King Kong). With his technique – first used in Beast from 20,000 Fathomsd – he could use real-life locations and simply “drop” his creations into the middle o0f them. It was a revolution in special effects, and adopted eventually by others. But this is the first I’d heard that it was responsible for his British Certificate “X”.
Disney characters with no pants? Forget sneaking it in, they wrote a song about it.
You’re welcome. 
Flipping through the channels today I paused on Madagascar - the scene where they land on the beach. I’ve seen this at least five times before (and been in the room while it played about 30 times) but I never noticed before.
At about 1:10:
:eek:..:eek:..:eek:..:eek:..:eek:..:eek:..:eek:Holy Moly!!!
A beloved part of many a British childhood. Mr Boods has a Clangers Snakes/Chutes and Ladders board game. He brought it out on the second date.
Created by the same bod behind Bagpuss.
The hippo with the starfish and crab?
I think he meant the lion getting whacked in the balls.
Not a movie, but I still remember from my childhood the No Bikini Atoll.
No definitely the starfish and crab.
“Alrighty boys, fun’s over.”
Filth!
I think it’s that, and the fact that it’s specifically a crab in the nether regions. “You can catch crabs at the beach. Both kinds.”.
And from the series that inspired the term “wingboner”, we have an episode in which a unicorn has horn issues. Later in the same episode, a character who already shares a name with an alcoholic beverage–“Applejack”–gets stuck with another for a nickname, “Appleteeny” (pronounced, of course, like “appletini”).
Sounds like a ripoff of Crusader Rabbit’s earlier “Nothing Atoll”.
Of course! Seriously? They come out of the box attached to her breasts and genitals. She says “Ok boys, fun time is over!” and they pop off and scuttle back into the sea. Which part of this is confusing?
:dubious:
Oh, wait, you were interpreting the “OK boys” line to be addressed to the crab and starfishes? That honestly didn’t occur to me at all.