The Video Nasties Thread

I recently watched a documentary called Video Nasties - The Definitive guide which was pretty fucking fascinating. As you all know I've always had a soft spot for horror/sleaze/exploitation films.



Bit of info about the video Nasties Era
"Video nasty" was a term coined in the United Kingdom in the 1980s that originally applied to a number of films distributed on video cassette that were criticized for their violent content by various religious organizations, in the press and by commentators such as Mary Whitehouse. While violence in cinema had been subject of censorship for many years, the lack of a regulatory system for video sales combined with the claim that any film could fall into children's hands led to new levels of concern. Many of these "video nasties" were low-budget horror films produced in Italy and the United States. The furore created by the moral crusade against video nasties led to the introduction of the UK's Video Recordings Act 1984 which imposed a stricter code of censorship on videos than was required for cinema release. Several major studio productions ended up being banned on video, falling afoul of legislation that was designed to control the distribution of video nasties.



I've been interested in this for years, there was a really good season on channel 4 about 10 years ago which showed alot of cut versions of films or films that had been re-classified with a documentary about the whole era which really got me interested. This documentary that come out really went into detail with the political side of the whole argument & was just insane.
The tory government ran tests on 'children.. & dogs' with these so called nasty films & found that it corrupted their minds. The Tory government spent our money on making dogs watch the Evil Dead
Even more so quotes from tory politicians at the time along the lines of 'What if a construction worker from Birmingham gets his hands on this filth?' whilst talking about The Toolbox murders insinuating that the majority of construction workers are so easy to corrupt & so unbelievably thick that they will pick up their tools & start sawing people to pieces because they watched the wrong film.

Still to this day government & legislation is deciding what we should see with A Serbian Film receiving over four minutes of cuts for it's release in the UK. I know this is less important these days when you can pop onto a torrent site & download any film made by anyone ever in a few minutes completely uncut but I honestly think in ten/fifteen years we will be unable to do such a thing. It's just bits & bobs you read about internet legleslation now but the government will eventually completely control what we can & cannot see on the internet. They didn't like the fact originally when VHS came out it was mostly working class shop keepers that were making money through renting out tapes so they made it as hard as possible for them to trade so huge chains like Blockbuster could eventually kill off any competition.
Also, people can still be prosecuted for importing banned films to the uk even when Amazon US will willingly ship those films out to us for a few bucks.



Over the course of the next year or so I'm going to go back & watch uncut versions of the 39 films that were successfully prosecuted in UK courts & deemed liable to deprave & corrupt. Should I got through that lot I will move onto the 33 that were initially banned but eventually removed though many of those are still heavily cut in DVD form in the uk to this day.

I've seen a number of these but am going to revisit the lot, I am fully prepared to watch some god awful pieces of trash here but luckily not only do I like trash but it should be interesting from a historic point of view to see what caused such outrage back in the early 80's.

On a side note I'm interested in challenging my own moral beliefs on a few issues.
A few of these films contain animals being butchered for arts sake, I am completely against this & don't feel it's morally right. Last time I saw Cannibal Holocaust it left a sickening feeling in my stomach, having to witness these killings made me feel like those scenes should not exist, be cut or be banned. This makes me a complete hypocrite in relation to what I said earlier about films never being banned & leaving it up to the viewer to decide what they can & cannot see.



Here's a list of the 39 I'll be watching: (most of these have various alternate titles around the globe)

ABSURD
THE ANTHROPOPHAGOUS BEAST
AXE
THE BEAST IN HEAT
BLOOD BATH
BLOOD RITES
BLOOD FEAST
BLOODY MOON
THE BURNING
THE CANNIBAL MAN
CANNIBAL FEROX
CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST
CANNIBAL APOCALYPSE
THE DEVIL HUNTER
DONT GO IN THE WOODS ALONE
DRILLER KILLER
EVIL SPEAK
EXPOSE
FACES OF DEATH
FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE
FOREST OF FEAR
ANDY WARHOLS FLESH FOR FRANKENSTIEN
GESTAPOS LAST ORGY
HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY
HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE PARK
I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE
ISLAND OF DEATH
LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT
LOVE CAMP 7
MARDI GRAS MASSACRE
MADHOUSE
NIGHT OF THE BLOODY APES
NIGHT OF THE DEMON
NIGHTMARES IN A DAMAGED BRAIN
SNUFF
SS EXPERIMENT CAMP
THE WEREWOLF AND THE YETI
TENEBRAE
ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS.

I'll do a little review on each film giving my thoughts on if I liked it or not, the reasons it was banned, if it's still completely banned (or cut on dvd) & can I understand why certain scenes are still banned to this day.

I will finish this project
I will finish this project
it won't die like my 227 blogs i started
I will finish this project