Parents Guide for
Titus (1999) More at IMDbPro »

Several men are seen fully nude, though somewhat obscured by shadows and water, in a public bath.

A woman's armored breastplate has a very realistic bosom.

The party room in the palace is adorned with sexually explicit murals in the style of ancient Greece.

An adulterous couple are shown making out in the woods.

A rapist taunts his victim by waving his bare butt at her.

We see a naked baby being wrapped in a blanket.

There is an orgy sequence in which many people, including major characters, of both sexes are seen totally nude and at various angles. Many appear to be performing various sex acts. There is a huge inflatable raft in the shape of a very buxom mermaid in the pool.

The personification of murder is seen smoking from a hose connected to the breast of the goddess of revenge.

Two men are seen from behind hanging naked upside down awaiting execution.

Titus is at least as bloody as most other revenge tragedies.

An explosive blows out a window where a little boy is playing.

A number of men killed in the war are shown wrapped for burial.

A prisoner of war is selected for sacrifice. His chest is cut; then he is taken off to be sacrificed; his entrails are brought back in a bowl and burned.

A man in anger runs a sword through his own son.

Tamora's sons are quite close whether in rivalry or in merriment. The former leads to knife fights and other threatening acts. The latter leads to bawdy rough-housing.

A man is stabbed to death in front of his new wife. The corpse is thrown into a pit, and the woman is hauled off to be raped. Another man falls into the pit and is horrified by the bloody corpse. When his brother tries to get him out, he also ends up falling into the pit.

We see the rape victim with her hands lopped off and her tongue cut out. Sticks have been wrapped onto the stumps where her hands were. Blood pours from her mouth staining her white dress.

A man has his own hand chopped off with a meat cleaver as a ransom for his sons. The hand is put in a zip-lock bag so we can see it several more times. The hand is returned with the severed heads of his sons--each in its own glass jar with blood sloshing in the bottom. When he and his family take these body parts away, the rape victim carries the hand in her mouth.

A nurse takes a baby who is the fruit of adultery to his father to kill. Instead the father stabs the nurse with a broken pool cue. We see the corpse in the blood stained uniform.

The orgy is disrupted by arrows shot through the skylight. The mermaid raft is shot in the breast.

A man threatens a father with the murder of his baby. He then beats the father until his mouth bleeds. After a confession of crimes even more horrific than what we have already witnessed, the father is saved from hanging to await still worse punishment.

A man is seen drawing pictures with his own blood as he sits in his bathtub.

Two naked men are killed by being hanged upside down and having their throats cut. The spurting blood is caught in a bowl until their bodies go limp. The corpses are then served in pies at a banquet where the parents are present. A series of killings by various means ensues like dominoes toppling and almost as fast. One is killed by wringing the neck. Another is killed by a knife stabbed through the neck. Another is stabbed with the spikes of a candlestick. Yet another has a serving spoon jammed down his throat and is shot with a pistol. The bloody corpses are then shown being covered with sheets of clear plastic.

A baby is shown carried in a cage.

A man is buried to his shoulders and left to starve to death.

The rough language is limited to bawdy plays on words. Some of the wordplay may strike some audience members as racist.

The scenes of revelry show profligate drunkenness.

This production of Titus Andronicus pulls no punches when it comes to intense scenes. Most of the violent scenes should at least make the audience squirm, and the climactic bloodbath will leave many gasping. As if the action were not intense enough, the score reinforces the horrors. Further, the presence of a young boy as witness to most of these horrific scenes makes them even more disturbing.