Show Business: Rating the Rating System

This story is rated GP; general readership permitted, parental guidance advised.

Since 1968, a four-letter alphabet has symbolized a loose moral order imposed by the American film industry on the moviemakers. The rating code is a self-defense mechanism designed to forestall Government interference. The letters Americans see affixed to their movies are really The Word according to Chairman Dougherty—Eugene ("Doc") Dougherty, 52, who has been snipping scenes since 1941 and now heads the Code and Rating Administration. Although Dougherty and the ten board members who serve with him have generally won the praise of exhibitors and the gratitude of parents, there has been increasingly vehement criticism that the categories G-GP-R-X are just so much alphabet soup.

MGM has announced it is quitting the Motion Picture Association of America, under whose aegis the rating board operates. MGM President James Aubrey describes the code as "confusing and impractical." New York Theater Owner Walter Reade calls it "our Volstead Act" and wishes it the same end. There are even defectors from the censors' ranks. Stephen Farber, 27, a film critic who quit the board after a stormy six months, says, "Pubic hair and breasts, that's what they're worried about."

It sometimes seems that way. Not only Farber but other critics in and out of the industry are often mystified by the board's assessments of the relative immorality of sex and violence. Last week the Film Commission of the National Council of Churches and the Catholic Office for Motion Pictures announced withdrawal of their backing because they found the ratings unreliable. They cited several films, including the recently released 10 Rillington Place—a clinical examination of the career of a mass murderer—that had been rated GP (general admission, parental guidance advised). Other examples of the raters' art:

¶ A sleazy horror film called Count Yorga, Vampire contained even more than the usual quota of gore, including a sequence in which a pliant young woman has an orgasm while a vampire sucks blood from her neck. The board wanted to rate the film either R (anyone under 17 restricted unless accompanied by parent or guardian) or X (forbidden entirely to those under 17 or, in some places, 18). The studio agreed to cut some of the bloodier footage and finally won a GP rating. What remained under the GP label included a shortened version of the jugular orgasm and one character eating a cat.

¶ A recently completed movie on the hard-drug scene called Clay Pigeons got a fast X, largely for using a four-letter word and several scenes of full female frontal nudity. Novice Director Tom Stern removed most, but not all, of the nudity and obscenity. The rating was changed to R. Stern tried for a GP, but the board balked at a bloody ax murder.

¶ Woodstock received an R, presumably for some scenes of nudity and scattered obscenities. The result was that some kids who went to the festival by themselves needed their parents to get into the movie. Gimme Shelter, a documentary about the Rolling Stones, also received an R originally, but was given a GP after the distributor excised a few familiar expletives from the sound track.