Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship & Videotape

Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship & Videotape (2010)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

The second documentary after the BAN THE SADIST VIDEOS! series that takes a look at the "video nasties" and the BBFC's attempt to ban horror movies that they felt would ruin the minds of young people and turn them into killers. We get interviews with people involved with the banning or fight against the banning as well as historians like Marc Morris and Kim Newman.

If you watched BAN THE SADIST VIDEOS! then you're not going to see anything here that you don't already know but this is still very much worth viewing simply because the subject matter is so interesting. It's amazing to watch the archival interviews as well as the newspaper headlines, which were pretty much brainwashing people into thinking that if you watched ZOMBIE or MANIAC then you'd turn into a murderer or if you saw I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE you'd turn into a rapist.

If you're unfamiliar with this era then you're certainly going to be in for a treat as a great number of films are discussed as well as clips from the various battles that happened on television as those against these movies would sometimes go up against those for them. We even get to see clips of all the movies as this documentary starts off, which was fun.

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

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 !

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.

Video Nasties, eh?

Anyone here remember the luridly awesome looking covers at your local fleapit video shop, the type of shop where you just knew the owner was kinda dodgy? They were gonna corrupt us, deprave us, and turn us all into thrill killing time bombs. Or so the powers that be apparently thought at the time, and decided that enough was enough as they certainly knew what was best for us all.

This documentary explores this mindset, its consequences, how it affected people and its possible effects in regards to today.

Jake West lets each camp equally give their opinion, and is more than happy to give advocates of the Video Recording Act enough rope to hang themselves by coming out with patently ludicrous views. West also highlights the unscrupulous and fraudulent methods used by advocates of the ban and Video Recordings Act, in regards to statistical data to back their claims of films being able to morally corrupt, and how said data was gotten.

The doc also features insightful comments from the likes of Neil Marshall, Christopher Smith, Kim Newman, Alan Jones and Stephen Thrower and is well worth checking out for any self respecting horror fan, particularly UK fans and particularly fans who were around at the time of the era.

It's nothing especially new- the topic has been covered in the also excellent Ban The Sadist Videos documentaries- but it's a cracking and often amusing documentary all the same.

Not much else to say really, except that it's great and is well recommended for any horror fan. 9/10, an absolute treat.