20 most controversial movies ever made: Exorcist, Clockwork Orange, more

This week sees the release of a pair of films that could both be considered controversial, for entirely different reasons.

Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, which follows a young drifter's involvement in a cult, has been the subject of frenzied discussion ever since it was announced. Widely believed to be a thinly-veiled study of Scientology and its founder L Ron Hubbard, the film supposedly incurred anger both from the Church's senior members and from Tom Cruise, although some of its cast maintain that it isn't about Scientology at all. Meanwhile, Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is released in its full-length form for the first time in the UK, having previously been cut down by almost 20 minutes. While it's undeniably on the more mild end of Kubrick's controversial scale (for more on that, look no further than our first entry above), The Shining isn't without its share of drama. Novel author Stephen King disowned the film and went on to make his own rubbish adaptation, while tales of Kubrick abusing lead actress Shelley Duvall are well documented.

In what just might be our most expansive list ever, spanning a near-century from 1915 onwards, Digital Spy counts down twenty of the most shocking and enduringly divisive films ever made.