The world has changed a lot over the decades, including the type of things that multinational entertainment conglomerates would allow to be released (let alone produced) in today’s politically correct world.
Here are five examples of classics that would never be made today.
The Bad New Bears (1976)
An alcoholic pool cleaner (Walter Matthau) coaches a little league team of 3rd graders that are racists, smoke cigarettes and drink beer. This is a PG movie made for little kids.
Silver Streak (1976)
A PG comedy starring Gene Wilder as guy that gets mixed up in a murder on train and teams up with a criminal played by Richard Pryor to catch the killers. The big scene in this one that would draw outrage is where Wilder wears shoe polish as blackface and Pryor has to teach him how to “be black”.
Marnie (1964)
When Alfred Hitchcock decide to make Marnie he did so for one reason; a rape scene. He had read the novel of the same name and was struck by a plot point where the main male character, Mark (Sean Connery), who blackmails Marnie (Tippi Hedren), a thief, into marrying him rapes her due to frustration that she can’t stand to be “touched by a man”.
Hitchcock decided that this would be a good test to an idea he had. His theory was that if you cast a bonafide star as the lead in a movie the audience would let this character get away with any act — no matter how despicable — because they were a movie star.
Screenwriter Evan Hunter objected to the inclusion of the scene and pleaded with Hitchcock not to film it but to change the entire story instead. He was subsequently fired.
The movie was a box office success and Hitchcock’s theory was correct.
High Plains Drifter (1973)
Take Marnie, make it a western and replace Hitchcock and Sean Connery with Clint Eastwood and add a midget sidekick for good measure.
Taxi Driver (1976)
Martin Scorcese’s 1970s masterpiece is like a banana split made of things that wouldn’t fly in today’s entertainment industry.
It has a teenage, female prostitute (Jodie Foster), a psycho war veteran (Robert DeNiro) who takes a first date (Cybil Shepard) to a porno movie and plans to assassinate a politician that she works for.
The movie culminates in his killing the pimp (Harvey Keitel) of the prostitute and a couple of other low class denizens and becomes a hero of vigilante justice for his actions.
