Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship & Videotape

The "video nasty" era of Great Britain fell right in my lifetime arc, I was still at senior school and therefore apparently at risk of being corrupted by the sickening filth that was being trundled out on VHS. Watching this quite wonderful documentary now just confirms how bizarre, bogus and utterly ridiculous the whole thing was.

That's not to say I, or any right minded parent, would purposely seek out the likes of I Spit On Your Grave, Driller Killer et al, and then sit down our six year olds in front of the TV, "hey kids, watch this, it's really cool", but the moral panic whipped up by the press and politicians not fit to actually run the country, was at the time like some sort of hysteria. It was like The Sex Pistols saying a rude word on the television was seen as the starting point for the break down of civilised society!

Jake Wests' documentary could quite easily have been a loaded piece just arguing about freedom of choice, artistic integrity etc, in fact when you see that respected purveyors of British Horror like Chris Smith, Neil Marshall, Kim Newman and Andy Nyman are lined up for comments, it lends one to think that might be the case. However, and of course they have their own opinions and spleen venting towards the whole thing, West deals in facts, deconstructing the figures and viability of supposed research into what our youngsters were watching back then. And if you believe Tory MP Graham Bright, our dogs as well!

Led by the key player, Martin Baker who still to this day is happily awaiting for the government to try and sue him for exposing the truth, this documentary lays it down true. Complete with old footage, stills and newspaper reports, the time period is brought vividly to life (remember those top loading video recorders!), so yes there's obviously a big nostalgia factor for myself and my luminaries; Messrs Marshall etc. This shouldn't detract from the core issue of censorship and the abuse of such, making this an essential viewing for any horror film fan.

Hey! Don't get me wrong, in truth 90% of the films that made the infamous banned list were, and still are, pretty naff, where quite often the cover of the VHS was far more scary than anything in the film! But that's not the point is it? 9/10

This was a documentary that was on my list of ones that I wanted to see for a while. I picked this up on DVD during a sale. The problem then became trying to find time to work it in. What I ended up figuring out was that I have a program where I could rip this into an MP4, to then treat it like a podcast and watch it at work. I still want to find the time to delve into all the special features as this has 2 additional discs of information.

Now something interesting here is that thanks to my good friend Duncan from the Podcast Under the Stairs, I knew most of the information. I've listened to most of his shows from the TPUTS Collective of Doing the Nasty where they were covering the films from all three lists. The introduction pulls soundbites and this theme song from this documentary. That still didn't diminish my enjoyment of this. I was born in the 1980s and in the United States, so when this was going on, I had no idea. It is quite interesting.

What I like most about this documentary is that it tells both sides of the story. We are getting great film critics like Alan Jones, Kim Newman, Julian Petley and Stephen Thrower telling their side. What is interesting then to go along with them is hearing from British filmmakers like Christopher Smith and Neil Marshall. Then on the other side of this, we hear from people who were in favor of the ban like Graham Bright, who introduced the Video Recordings Act 1984. The best documentaries try not to be completely biased so I give credit here.

This is also a well-made documentary. There is a funny part in the beginning when they talk to people who used to seek these films out. They talk about how you could tell when a gory part or nudity was coming because the quality would dip. Having grown up with VHS tapes, I do remember that. What is fun is that the quality of what we're watching mimics that. This does well in editing in footage to help show things they were talking about. I'm glad I finally sought this out. This definitely gives an interesting introduction to this period of British history and to this list of wild films, which were added for a variety of reasons.

My Rating: 8 out of 10.

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.

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.