Takashi Miike's Imprint

On April 7th, the UK Bravo channel will be showing Takashi Miike's Imprint. They're already showing a ridiculously icky scene on their website.

An adaptation of the Japanese horror novel Bokee Kyotee (or "Really Scary"), Imprint is the thirteenth, final and most controversial episode in the first Masters of Horror series, and the only one to be "banned" from US screens. It's set in a brothel, it features foetuses and it's probably quite gory throughout - so little surprise that Showtime threw their hands up screaming, leaving the film's US premiere to be on DVD.

Different story in blighty, of course. Stiff upper lips, the lot of us. We can take anything. Those yanks - they must be a bunch of pussycats. I saw a feature in Entertainment Weekly recently that recoiled in horror from Footballers' Wives, and not for the same reasons UK TV viewers did. Their journalists were absolutely stunned that those kinds of shenanigans get broadcast on UK network TV, where the kids could be watching. Of course, I once saw Silence of the Lambs on American Network TV, largely uncut (the face/mask was certainly there) at 3pm on a Sunday afternoon. I think you have to get sex, religion or suicide bombing in the mix to really upset the US censors - violence is fair game.

Don't expect too much from Imprint, but tune in anyway, if you're in the UK, just to rub it in.