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It was not until Goldfinger (1964) that riveting images of the jeopardized male member could actually be used in film stills to advertise a movie. The famous scene in which a spread-eagled Sean Connery is threatened with penile bifurcation by an overhead laser beam is a pivotal moment in the history of film, because it was the first time that a motion picture had addressed, in a meaningful cinematic fashion, the most deep-seated male fear: The terrifying realization that if someone as resourceful, virile and cool as James Bond could have his nuts cut off, then anyone could have his nuts cut off. Meaning no more pussy galore.

Connery is perhaps the only movie star in history to have his genitals directly threatened in two different films (though Woody Harrelson is still young enough to eclipse this dubious record). Halfway through Never Say Never Again, the somewhat portly Connery is menaced by the hyperactive Barbara Carrera, who forces him to sit on the ground and spread his legs, then points a gun at his crotch and sneers, "Guess where you get the first one?"

Real tough question, Babs.

In discussing the subject of penis-threatening motion pictures, it is important to distinguish between films in which one or more penises play a major role in the thematic development of the motion picture, and films in which people get kicked in the balls or castrated purely for the sake of amusing the audience. In the first category are films as varied as Sudden Impact, In the Realm of the Senses, Stealing Heaven, The World According to Garp, Born on the Fourth of July and History of the World--Part I, a movie in which the penis plays such a large part (eight distinct scenes involve castration, circumcision, kicks in the balls, or urination) that it ought to get mentioned in the credits right below the words "Madeline Kahn."

The second category consists of films such as Last Rites, A Prayer for the Dying, The Evil That Men Do and The Dark Half, in which genital misfortune is merely one more revolting element thrown into an already revolting motion picture to make sure that the audience doesn't come away with the wrong idea. Thus, one can readily imagine the producer of Last Rites peeking at a rough cut of the film and telling the director, "Look, asshole, you've already got mob priests, incest, drug dealers and women who murder their own spouses, so the least you can do is have the bitch ice him with a bullet right in the cock. What kind of a picture do you think we're making here?"

For similar reasons, one has no difficulty visualizing the director of A Prayer for the Dying reading the riot act to the scriptwriter after looking at his shoddy first draft.

"We've got blind girls, bad Irish accents, affable child murderers, terrorists masquerading as priests, crucified funeral directors, a whore with a heart of gold, and Liam Neeson all in one film," the director would point out, "so I think that if you forget to include a scene where somebody gets his nuts menaced by a sawed-off shotgun, the audience is going to get a little antsy. As convicted Watergate conspirator Charles Colson once said: 'Once you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.'"

To which the scriptwriter would almost assuredly reply: "What's Watergate?"

On the other hand, it would be a mistake to argue that every movie containing gratuitous attacks on the crown jewels is automatically a worthless, mindless film. One of the most memorable kicks in the balls in the history of cinema occurs in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, an entertaining movie that is otherwise devoid of gonadal mayhem. And the mere fact that a jazz musician ends up with his penis stuffed into his mouth halfway through Angel Heart does not automatically ruin the movie; Lisa Bonet's acting does that. In fact, after forcing the audience to sit through a couple of scenes involving Robert De Niro with a ponytail and Charlotte Rampling trying to act, Alan Parker may have included the scene about the man with his penis stuffed into his mouth as some kind of black comic relief. Personally, the thing I most enjoyed about Angel Heart was the possibility that the fate of the jazz musician might eventually befall Mickey Rourke.

Turning away from movies which contain gratuitous assaults on the male privates, let us now turn our attention to films where a brooding element of gonadal peril dominates the proceedings from beginning to end. Here, it is possible to distinguish three basic types of nutcracking films: those where the male organs are tormented at the very beginning, those where they are subjected to immense physical pain at the end, and those where the damage to the penis or testicles continues pretty much throughout the film. In the first category are such films as The Evil That Men Do, a very bad Charles Bronson movie that opens with a journalist in a South American torture chamber having electrodes applied directly to his nuts. The clear intention of the director in kicking off his film with this nauseating scene is to first traumatize his audience, to shock them, to paralyze them with revulsion, and then to reassure them by letting them know that nothing they will witness throughout the remainder of the film will be anywhere near as disgusting as the opening scene, including Branson's acting.

In the second category can be found films such as Lipstick, The War of the Roses and The World According to Garp. In each of these movies, the big, climactic scene involving the mutilation or potential mutilation of the male organ is a payoff that the audience has been looking forward to from the get-go.

In Lipstick, Margaux Hemingway plugs Chris Sarandon right in the cock in retribution for his having raped her earlier in the film. In The War of the Roses, Kathleen Turner first lulls her schmuck hubby, convincingly played by Michael Douglas, into a false sense of security by agreeing to suck his cock (nicknamed "The Bold Adventure"), then takes a big bite out of it. Only then, two hours into the film, does he realize that Turner is no longer his friend. Finally, in The World According to Garp, Mary Beth Hurt accidentally bites off the cock of her overly aggressive young lover while giving him what proves to be the final blow job in their up-and-down relationship. The calamity wrought by the appropriately named actress is a sort of metaphor for Garp's entire existence, though I have no idea what that metaphor means. But it does inspire John Lithgow, convincingly cast as a transsexual who used to play tight end for the Philadelphia Eagles, to remark: "I had mine removed under general anesthetic. But to have it bitten off in a Buick--oh, it's a nightmare."

Salvador falls into a somewhat different category than these other motion pictures, in that it is the only film in recent memory in which an American actor almost gets his balls cut off in a foreign language. This near-disaster occurs toward the end of Oliver Stone's powerful 1986 film, when an uncharismatic El Salvadoran death squad leader wearing--what else?--an Oakland Raiders T-shirt and brandishing a sharp machete tells the unbelievably annoying James Woods, "Me gustan los huevos rancheros"-- which is Deathsquadese for "I'm going to cut off your balls." The man's failure to do so remains, for my money, the single most disappointing finale in any movie made in this country in the past 50 years. With the climax of Angel Heart a close second.

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