Seemingly a two part tv documentary sewn together to a feature length experience for streaming. The first part looks at how the video nasty controversy came into being in the UK and the reaction to the sadistic violence and explicit sex that came with this being made available in the high street without any form of censorship. The second part looks at how this issue continued once laws were changed and the British Board of Film Censors / Classification approached their responsibilities.
Actually quite informative for any film fan and demonstrates what a complete pig's breakfast the country made of the matter. The videos were distributed with no controls by a thriving new industry with morally upstanding and seemingly ignorant MPs seeking voter kudos by slamming just about anything that wasn't family entertainment and with the populist press using it to create alarmist headlines around unsubstantiated claims that everyone from naughty children to mass murderers did what they did because they watched violent films. Clearly there was a need to protect children and the government did nothing about this until it fell into the public conscience and get the attention of the press. Thereafter innocent people were arrested, films banned and then not banned endlessly with the police having no idea what they were doing, seizing or arresting.
Then James Ferman took on the BBFC as a leader who was in no way hampered by false modesty and doubt and cut and banned all over the place.
As a country, the UK looked ridiculous with a confused mess from government, our dreadful populist press over reacting with little or no evidence to back up their claims resulting in the greatest amount of film censorship in Europe. The 2 key things I took away from this were, surely the distributors didn't seriously expect this to go unchallenged but secondly how little challenge there was from liberals challenging why grown adults can't see what they want to see. Nanny state at its most appalling with the UK looking idiotic - makes you proud to be British.
