Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship & Videotape

I remember back in the early 80's when I was at school, in our lunch hour me and my friends would often visit the local video rental shop which adjoined a Texaco garage. This was so exciting and to think that all we actually ever did was *look* at the video covers! We were too young to actually rent anything out. It's probably very hard for younger people to understand the excitement caused by the video boom of the early 80's, especially the influx of horror titles that saturated the market back then. The covers of these videos were garish and unsettling. They promised so much excess. They were a forbidden fruit. Some ironically were given eternal fame by being banned. I genuinely think that back in those days the authorities were so naive that they didn't foresee this. I distinctly remember seeing the list of the banned titles for the first time in a magazine of the time called 'Halls of Horror'. The list contained all of the films that would achieve infamy as video nasties plus several others that were patently absurd such as the war movie The Big Red One. This latter film made the list because the authorities assumed it must be a pornographic film going by its title! Its details like this that shows how absurd the whole thing was in many ways and how amateurishly it was handled.

In the last few years or so, I have caught up with most of the infamous video nasties and on an alarmingly common basis wondered how in hell they were ever considered obscene in the first place. Of course, I don't refer to all of them when I say this; movies such as Cannibal Holocaust and The House on the Edge of the Park remain deeply troubling movies, while Faces of Death is guaranteed lasting infamy for its real death footage. But when viewing films such as Funhouse or Visiting Hours, amongst many others I just couldn't get to grips with how they could have fallen foul of the law to such a massive extent. As it turned out the 72 nasties were eventually whittled down to 39 'true' video nasties that were considered the extreme of the extreme Although when you consider that this final list included the innocuous The Werewolf and the Yeti you are still left wondering about the thought process that produced this final list.

This documentary looks at the thinking behind the panic and the way the authorities acted. It was driven by politicians, puritans and Mary Whitehouse. The tabloid press were possibly the most influential of all though, informing the public that the sadistic videos were not only pernicious but that some were even genuine snuff movies. All of this was eaten up of course and titles with tabloid friendly, memorable names such as The Driller Killer became poster boys for all that was wrong with the new home video entertainment. Although most of us never actually thought about it at the time but the reason the market was flooded with low budget horror titles in the first place was that when the home video format first emerged, the big American studios refused to release their movies onto it seeing it as a competitor to their cinematic offerings. Consequently, lots of small traders emerged and bought up packages of cheap films, often very obscure and with a large percentage being horror flicks. And with this historical context, the early 80's home video horror boom was born.

In fairness, it isn't very surprising that the Video Recording Act happened. It does seem insane that these films weren't age certificated in some way. It's also not hard to understand why a lot of folks were uncomfortable when they were presented with lurid promotional posters for the likes of S.S. Experiment Camp. We have been desensitised these days to film violence and you really have to take into account the historical context to understand the genuine shock that these films engendered. So the documentary looks at why the furore happened and it allows both sides of the argument fair air time to present their case. It would only be fair to say that the film is clearly on the side of the defenders but I did think that it allowed the other side of the argument a fair hearing and didn't make them look silly with cheap editing or anything. We get to see short clips of all the 72 films but in the final analysis, this is not about the films themselves. It's about what caused the Video Recordings Act of 1983 to come into place. If you have knowledge of the subject there probably won't be too much new here although I am certain you will learn a few new nuggets of information. If, on the other hand, you have no, or limited knowledge, of the whole video nasty phenomenon then this is as good a place to start as any.

Everything you wanted to know about the video nasties, but was afraid to ask!

First of all, as an American reviewing this, I was not "there" when this all happened. Maybe that makes it even more enjoyable today. And it also makes watching what happened even more unbelievable and shocking, so let's get to it.

This set seems to be the be all, end all of what you need to know about video nasties all packed into a three-disc set running over thirteen hours in total. If you were a lucky person (and I wasn't) some of the early copies were sold with replica lobby cards advertising some of the nasties talked about in the film.

The set starts off with the documentary, Video Nasties; Moral Panic, censorship and videotape. While being greatly informative and interesting, I felt it was too short as the run time for this was only about 72 minutes. This could have run at least another hour without me losing any interest whatsoever, because the subject is so fascinating. It includes snippets of interviews from both pro and con camps. Mary Whitehouse, Graham Bright and others make appearances in new and archival footage, and the history of what happened with the early 80's videotape scare is made very clear, even if you weren't from England. Archival news reports as well as new footage from reporters is used to illustrate how intense this issue was in the day, and how it seems to have never really gone away entirely as censorship can still be found in movies new and old to this day in England.

While I found the documentary fascinating and should have been the meat and potatoes of this package, it is not. Surprisingly, its the extras which makes this set a must own for all collectors of horror cinema.

The extras on disc one (including two Easter eggs) are as follows. You get almost an hours worth of pre-cert video company identifications. This could be boring for some, but I enjoyed looking at them, and recognizing a few of them myself (Thorn-EMI for one). This will be more nostalgic for VHS tape collectors, and for those across the pond who have seen these often. Last on Disc one is an image gallery showing artwork from the 80 titles on the DPP's section 3 list. These are all VHS covers and look wonderful on the screen.

Disc two starts the amazing reviews and trailers of the video nasties. all original trailers are filmed with new introductions from some of the people who appeared in the documentary. Kim Newman, Marc Morris, Neil Marshall and other experts do the honors to introduce the nasties and their trailers. This portion concentrates on the 39 nasties that were successfully prosecuted in the UK courts. Plus you get another image gallery for those 39 video releases.

Disc three continues along the same path, with the guests introducing the trailers for the 33 nasties that were initially banned, but then acquitted and removed from the DPP list. Plus you get to see the image gallery for those covers as well.

All of the trailers look to be in the correct aspect ratio and seem to have been cleaned up as much as possible considering the rarity of some of them. The introductions are concise, insightful and genuinely honest about the material and you can learn what nasties seem to be the most popular, the best to watch, and which ones to avoid. To the collector though, the DPP list is a dream list to be able to collect all the nasties, good or bad, to be able to proudly say you own them all.

As I said in the beginning, this is a must own for all horror collectors. It will take you back in time with its documentary, and it will give you something to enjoy and study with its commentary and nasties trailers. I believe that this might be the final word on the subject of the video nasties And if not, surely it will rank among the most enjoyable. Go out and get yourself a copy of this now.

Young people nowadays don't know they're born . They want to watch a newly released Hollywood movie ? All they have to do is log on to their parents computer , search around for certain pirate sites and they'll be able to find the latest Hollywood blockbusters . Not so in my day where Rothesay didn't have a cinema from 1976-91 . If you wanted to watch a movie you'd need to take a ferry trip to Wemyss Bay and then a bus to Greenock . Thank goodness for a thing called a video recorder where not only could you record TV shows on to very expensive video tape but could go to a retailer - usually a corner shop that also sold alcohol - and hire a movie to watch . Strangely enough major studios weren't too keen on bringing out major releases . That said no one I knew was interested in major studio pictures , what me and my peers wanted was gore , gore and more gore and the video market was born for this era . If you're middle aged you're still able to name off the top of your head all these legendary "video nasties" you remember from your youth . This documentary featuring film makers , critics , academics and law enforcers take us back to the good old bad days where every film you watched was both stomach churning and laughable at the same time

The documentary wastes no time in showing the audience what the films that gained so much notoriety were and we see an alphabetical countdown of the 72 films that made the banned list . I was somewhat surprised as to how many of these films I saw back in the day . Perhaps even more surprisingly is how many such as ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS , THE EVIL DEAD and DRILLER KILLER actually turned up on satellite or network television years later . There's also a great nod to nostalgia and director Jake West shows the audience by tweaking he picture just how bad these videos looked on a visual level , many of which were third or fourth generation copies with the video heads clogged up with dust and the picture and sound constantly breaking up . Of course it didn't seem so bad at the time , but it's a good nostalgia trip for those who remember these days before DVDs came on the market with their cinematic picture quality and shows the youngsters today that what they were missing wasn't much

People are quick to look for scapegoats . Usually it's Jews who get the blame for everything but in Britain in the early 1980s it was video nasties . There never seemed to be a criminal case appearing in a daily tabloid involving a violent murder that wasn't solely blamed on a video nasty . Very soon the usual suspects of Mary Whitehouse and her acolytes backed up by right wing Tory MPs and the Daily Mail were running around the countryside with pitchforks and flaming torches looking for not only videotapes to burn but the obscene , subhuman degenerates who were selling them . If you're wondering why the police weren't bothered about arresting paedophile BBC personalities or members of parliament in the early 1980s that's because they were down the station getting overtime to slurp coffee while watching a video to see if it matched the criteria as an obscene film . Not only were those films on the banned list being confiscated from video stores but also any title that had a dodgy title like THE BIG RED ONE and APOCALYPSE NOW . Stop laughing at the back because in those days video retailers were being jailed or heavily fined for hiring out films on the banned list . As it turned out due to an oversight the video recordings act of 1983 wasn't actually enshrined in law so it turned out the retailers were jailed or fined illegally

This is a really interesting documentary and a warning what happens when politicians get caught up in hysteria being driven the small but noisy clique in pressure groups and the media . It also gives a window on to the world of the early 1980s . It's also probably the only documentary you will see where QUATERMASS AND THE PIT and video nasty gets mentioned in the same breath !

Living in the US, I would read the term "Video Nasty" when it would come to collecting horror films such as the Beyond or Island of Death. I never looked into the term and then I'd come across it more and more. It would always be there when a movie like Horrible would hit DVD and you would see people say things like "finally a Video Nasty gets a DVD release!" Finally, after getting an all region DVD player, I decided to look into this whole "Video Nasty" list and see what I had and needed.

This documentary was the big step as it details the Video Recordings Act from 83 and it tells the story of how the powers that be in the UK would have police raid video stores to seize the "Video Nasties" that would morally corrupt society. I already have this fascination with how people react to horror films and how the genre is so different with people compared to other genres. But to see a whole country be affected by a list of horror films? Wow! It takes you through the events and how the legal battles went and everything. Truly fascinating stuff for any horror fan.

The extras on the DVD feature every trailer for every film on the list. I can proudly say this documentary was one of the greatest purchases I have made as a horror fan as it made me go after the remaining 33 movies listed on the Video Nasties list. I wish the documentary would get a region 1 release so people here in the States can appreciate a piece of horror history.

Not all movies on the list are available on DVD. However, if you look hard enough like I did, you will find them.

Everyone should see this. If you are a true horror fan, do yourself a favor and get this documentary. If you are a horror collector, get this documentary and start one of the funnest horror hunts you will ever have as a collector.

This documentary is part of the 3-DVD box set "Video Nasties: The Definitive Guide", the other 2 DVDs feature the trailers for all 72 video nasties.

It starts by evoking the feeling of how it was to get and see those gruesome horror movies when VHS first came out in the late 70s. It also repeatedly degrades the picture quality to a crummy low-fi picture that is very authentically VHS-like. Then it goes down to business and we get a history lesson about how the video nasties list came to be, the censorship and VHS burnings in the UK,... People from both sides are interviewed, those who fought against the censorship but also those who wanted to enforce it, everything for the sake of recreating those events. For some good measurement some British young horror filmmakers and Kim Newman are thrown into the mix talking about how they perceived it and how those films even influenced their movie making. It's not about the individual video nasty movies, though, although you get to see some bits and pieces from them throughout. Balanced, well-made and works well as a time capsule bringing you back to your childhood. The 3-DVD-box set is available now...in a VHS case.