Paramount
When the dirty-fun vampire horror film “ From Dusk Till Dawn ” starring Salma Hayek , George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino was released in 1996, there was a so-called federal testing agency for writings harmful to young people in Germany. In the meantime, the higher federal authority – which is dedicated to the protection of minors – has been renamed twice, and is now called the Federal Center for the Protection of Children and Young People in the Media. At the same time, the ideas about which films are so brutal that they are indexed and therefore not allowed to be publicly promoted have changed.
In 1997, the unabridged version of «From Dusk Till Dawn» was included in the index after being checked by the Federal Office for Writings Harmful to Young People. This made it more difficult to purchase the film in Germany – because the advertising ban that comes with indexing often means that a film is completely removed from the program by major retailers.
In 2017, however, the federal inspection agency removed «From Dusk Till Dawn» from the index and shortly thereafter the FSK re-examined the film, which now received an 18 release and can therefore also be shown on TV after 11 p.m., like on April 22nd at 11.40 p.m on ProSieben. You can now buy the film, which is now out of print, again on Blu-ray.
›› «From Dusk Till Dawn» at Amazon *
In From Dusk Till Dawn, bank robbers Seth (George Clooney) and Richard Gecko (Quentin Tarantino) are on the run from the law and clash with vampires of all people in Mexico. What follows is a funny, but undoubtedly very brutal carnage. But since the 1990s, standards of violence in films and series have changed.
More and more films are being removed from the index
Gradually, films are removed from the index that the authorities previously considered so bad that young people should be protected from this by an advertising ban. In some cases, even films that have been confiscated are freely available for sale today. Courts can issue a ban on the sale of media, called confiscation, if they are classified as violent or pornographic under the Criminal Code. For example, the films “ Return of the Undead ” that were once confiscated and the horror classic “ The Texas Chain Saw Massacre ” are now 18+.
The FSK procedure in the podcast
If you are interested in the topics of indexing and FSK, listen to the appropriate episode of our weekly cinema podcast on the screen love. Using the zombie shocker «The Sadness» as an example, we explain how the FSK examines films. Max Krumm from the Capelight rental company was a guest.
*The link to the Amazon offer is a so-called affiliate link. If you make a purchase through this link, we will receive a commission.
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