Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!

One of the films (along with Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989)) that was instrumental in bringing about the introduction of the NC-17 rating in the U.S., as the film's distributor, Miramax, took the MPAA to court over the X certification it had initially been designated. According to Pedro Almodóvar, the MPAA did not believe an R rating was appropriate, even after cuts, because they were afraid that the film would inspire young men to kidnap young women out of lust. Miramax argued that an X rating implicated pornography and would diminish the film's audience, but they lost the lawsuit and it was released unrated. In September 1990, the MPAA replaced the X rating with the then-newly created NC-17 rating in response to numerous appeals by other filmmakers who had released their films under similar circumstances in the past. Eventually, the film was re-rated NC-17 for its first two (of three) U.S. home video releases (it was re-released unrated the third time; see below), the reason being the explicit scene of a naked Marina taking a bath in her apartment and masturbating in the bathtub under the water with an activated swimming scuba diver wind-up toy.

When Ricky accepts the offer to take Marina out to search for painkillers for her toothache, she puts on a tiny white dress that only goes down to the tops of her thighs and only just barely conceals her crotch and buttocks in order to cover her completely naked body underneath it. When they both return to Marina's apartment, she takes off the dress, but now she is naked except for a pair of white panties that were not there before.

Featured in Siskel & Ebert: Short Time/Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!/Wild Orchid/Without You I'm Nothing/Santa Sangre (1990)