Threatens an NC-17 rating
When a horror movie with a title like Autopsy enters the halls of the MPAA, it’s immediately walking in with a bullseye on its head.
Co-writer/director Adam Gierasch phoned in to Shock to tell us, sure enough, his feature debut recently ended a taxing dance with the censors to garner an appropriate rating. (Having seen the film, I’ll say there’s nothing “appropriate” about it, though.)
“It took five submissions to get an R rating for the movie,” he says like a proud father enthusing over his rebellious offspring. The scene that riled up up the MPAA board involved one of the leads in an unsettling predicament involving a drill and an oxygen tank. “We wound up having to cut almost forty seconds out of that scene. First we just did some trimming and they were like, ‘No.’ Then we cut a little bit more, and they said, ‘No.'”
This back and forth continued as the MPAA dangled the threat of slapping the film with an NC-17. “Finally, we were like, ‘Guys, what’s the problem here?’ And they told us we needed to make some real cuts. Shockingly enough, it was only that scene and it had to do with the intensity level and the fact that it was a good guy getting beaten up. They didn’t mind it when bad guys got killed. Five submissions later…we didn’t think we were going to make it!”
Gierasch assures us an unrated director’s cut of Autopsy will ultimately be released. Co-starring Michael Bowen and Jenette Goldstein, the film finds actress Jessica Lowndes in a hospital of horrors overseen by Robert Patrick.
Source: Ryan Rotten
