Just when you thought crap like this would go away, along comes news that SAW III has been given the thumbs-down in France.
According to Yahoo!, French culture minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres announced in a statement today that he would prohibit minors under the age of 18 from seeing the film. The minister said the movie exhibited “violence and intolerable, incessant sadism.” The scenes explicitly showing “physical and moral torture” justified the decision, he said.
In case you were wondering (as I was), according to the ever-reliable IMDB, SAW received a ’16’ rating, as did SAW II. Now, cultural differences aside, considering I don’t know too much (read: next to nothing) about what classifies as an ‘under 18′ ban in France, I can’t speak on censorship in this case. If you’re also wondering what else has gotten the big ban on minors in France, Virginie Despentes’ sexually explicit 2000 film RAPE ME was the most recent one.