Natural Born Killers Was the Most Controversial Film of 1994 and Every

Vintage clothing

Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers came out in August 1994. It was rated R for "extreme violence and graphic carnage, for shocking images, and for strong language and sexuality." Warner Bros. released it anyway. It made $50 million domestically on a $34 million budget. And then the arguments started.

The script was Quentin Tarantino's, originally — a road-movie-as-satire about two mass murderers who become celebrities. Stone rewrote it substantially, turning the satire up to a volume that made Tarantino uncomfortable enough to disown the finished film. The result is something that doesn't work as a normal movie because it's not trying to be a normal movie. It's trying to be a sensory assault that makes you implicated in the violence by watching it. Whether it succeeds depends on whether you think a film can criticize media spectacle while being a media spectacle. Stone clearly believed it could.

The controversy was immediate and extensive. John Grisham wrote a magazine piece arguing that Stone should be held liable for copycat violence. Lawsuits were filed. Several countries banned the film outright. Walmart refused to carry the unrated director's cut. The conversation around NBK consumed more cultural energy than most Oscar winners manage in a decade, which was, depending on your reading, either proof that the film's critique of media was correct or proof that Stone was a hypocrite. Possibly both.

Promo tees from the original 1994 release exist in the narrow space between the film-as-object and the film-as-controversy. They're artifacts of the marketing campaign, produced before anyone knew what the movie would become in the culture. The design is just Mickey and Mallory — Harrelson and Lewis — which is the simplest possible version of the movie's message: these two people are beautiful and they kill people and you're looking at them.

This one is vintage. There's one.

Natural Born Killers Was the Most Controversial Film of 1994 and Everybody Saw It Anyway

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