Disney’s Buena Vista has decided not to release Saw VI in Spain after the Ministério de Cultura gave the film an X rating, effectively condemning it to a limited release in Spain’s porno movie theaters.

This brings up an important question facing Spanish society: do you not find it strange that in the age of Internet you still have porno movie theaters?

It also brings up another important question: do you really want to drive up the hype for this crapfest of a movie? Apart from the expected Internet indignation from genre film blogs and forums, a fan website has been set up in order to collect signatures for a petition to repeal the rating, and even El País ran a story about a film that normally it would (or should?) consider too low brow to acknowledge.

The Comisión de Calificación gives an X rating to films “of a pornographic nature or that make a justification (apología) of violence.” This is the first time a film has received an X rating in Spain for its violence rather than sexual content because, amazingly, never before has a film shown violence as justified.

In a country where hardcore pornographic scenes can be broadcast on public airwaves and all of the previous Saw films, Eli Roth’s two Hostel films, and old-school torture porn like Pasolini’s Salò are all freely available to check out from the public library, one must ask what meaning the X rating even has anymore, except maybe to get El País to promote your mediocre schlock.