Penelope Spheeris’s bleak crime film ran directly into the censorship machinery of the 1980s ratings system. According to Spheeris’s DVD commentary, The Boys Next Door had to be cut and resubmitted to the Motion Picture Association of America ten separate times before it could secure an R rating. The film’s premise—a pair of graduating teenagers who leave their dead-end hometown and descend into robbery, assault, vehicular violence, and murder—made it especially vulnerable to scrutiny, because its violence was not presented as conventional heroic action but as the ugly, impulsive behavior of ordinary young men. Scenes were cut or altered during the process, although the available account does not specify every change. The production also faced a less formal business problem: Maxwell Caulfield later said that New World Pictures was going under just as the film was completed, helping explain why the picture received only a limited theatrical release despite its ambitions and strong performances. The result was a heavily negotiated, comparatively obscure release that later acquired a cult reputation through home video, DVD commentary, and boutique Blu-ray editions.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1980s
The Ten MPAA Battles Behind The Boys Next Door’s Brutal R Rating
The Boys Next Door (1985) / 1980s
Penelope Spheeris’s bleak crime film ran directly into the censorship machinery of the 1980s ratings system. According to Spheeris’s DVD commentary, The Boys Next Door had to be cut and resubmitted to the Motion Picture Association of America ten separate times before it could secure an R rating. The film’s premise—a pair of graduating teenagers who leave their dead-end hometown and descend into robbery, assault, vehicular violence, and murder—made it especially vulnerable to scrutiny, because its violence was not presented as conventional heroic action but as the ugly, impulsive behavior of ordinary young men. Scenes were cut or altered during the process, although the available account does not specify every change. The production also faced a less formal business problem: Maxwell Caulfield later said that New World Pictures was going under just as the film was completed, helping explain why the picture received only a limited theatrical release despite its ambitions and strong performances. The result was a heavily negotiated, comparatively obscure release that later acquired a cult reputation through home video, DVD commentary, and boutique Blu-ray editions.
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