Though hailed as one of those impeccably liberal and enlightened Scandinavian democracies, Norway was for many years actually something of a hotbed of censorship, with more then 300 feature films from around the world being banned, until a reversal ruling by the national board of censors in late 2003. Some of these prohibitions were predictable: Italian exploitation flick Cannibal Holocaust, for example, or Nagisa Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses (the latter, cited for its 'intimate depiction of sexual acts and sadomasochism'). But a number of the bans seemed more perverse. What's so bad about the Coen Brothers' Miller's Crossing, one of their most elegant and popular movies? Or forgotten 80s B-movie Cobra—unless the pairing of Sylvester Stallone and Brigitte Neilsen was considered just too gruesome for general consumption? As for the final work banned—Steven Seagal's On Deadly Ground—the charge of 'excessive violence' should have been overturned, in favour of 'potentially disturbing cosmetic surgery'.
