MOVIES - July 23, 1990

Britain Bans Rushdie Film: British censors have banned a movie based on the controversy surrounding Salman Rushdie, the British author whose death was ordered by Iran for blaspheming Islam, the film’s distributor said Sunday. “International Guerrillas” portrays a character based on Rushdie as a drunken pro-Israeli playboy and foe of Islam. At the end of the film, he is killed by a bolt of lightning to punish him for his attacks on the prophet Mohammed. Britain’s Board of Film Classification had said the film could be criminally libelous. But Frances D’Souza of the Salman Rushdie Defense Committee, who spoke to the author Sunday, said Rushdie “felt the film should have a chance to be tested in court and to ban it without the public having had a chance to view it is . . . not acceptable.”