When the popularity of home video recorders took off in the early 1980's, following the introduction of affordable machines, video rental shops started opening up soon afterwards, cashing in on the popularity of this new medium by hiring out pre-recorded tapes of various low budget films.

However, whilst the demand for these video films was proving to be overwhelming, the amount of choice available for hire during these early days was most certainly not. The larger studios were, at first, reluctant to release their mainstream blockbusters onto tape and so the only titles really available where a few old westerns, B-movies, kids' cartoons and a few cheap porno and horror titles.

But distribution companies were quick to realise that they could get away with putting out a lot of stuff that you couldn't have normally seen elsewhere. There was nothing on the statute books governing the release of films in this format, or any requirement for them to be certified by the film censors. So with this in mind, they quickly snapped up the rights to a lot of low budget exploitation films and began circulating them to the newly opening video shops and market stalls.

This meant that cult classics like “I Spit on your Grave”, “The Driller Killer”, and “Last House on the Left” could finally be seen in the UK, and in the privacy of your own home. Despite the fact that many of them had been rejected by the BBFC for a cinema release. Films like “Zombie Flesh-Eaters”, which had been heavily cut for the cinema and had exhausted their financial appeal, also had a new lease of life being issued uncut on video.

Unfortunately though, the down side of video works being unregulated meant that they fell under the remit of “The Obscene Publications Act”, which prevents the distribution of materials liable to “Deprave & Corrupt”, and so it was only a matter of time before the authorities decided to sit up and take notice.

The problems first started in early 1982 when distributers Vipco (Video Instant Picture Company) took out several full page adverts in various video magazines of the graphic box art to “The Driller Killer”. Another culprit was GO video, advertising full page spreads for their films “SS Experiment Camp” and “Cannibal Holocaust”, which lead to numerous complaints being made to the Advertising Standards Authority.

This attracted a lot of undue attention, and at this point the ever vigilant gutter press, most notably the Sunday Times and Daily Mail, started to speak out against the availability of some of the titles and how easy it was for children to access them. Calling on comments from morality groups, church leaders, and self appointed media watchdogs like the obnoxious National Viewers and Listeners Ascociation (now called Mediawatch UK) to back up their outrageous articles about the “evils” of home video.

This was the catalyst that set the authorities' wheels in motion, and the police subsequently started raiding distributers and video shops up and down the country looking for contentious material that they could prosecute under the OPA. The Governments Department of Public Prosecutions subsequently drew up a list of films that they felt where likely to be judged obscene by the courts for the police to concentrate their efforts on when carrying out raids. The press referred to these films as “video nasties”.

Whilst there where many horror films at the time being branded as so-called nasties by the media, not all of these made the DPP's official hit list. Altogether there where 74 different titles that appeared on the list at one time or another. The original list contained 52 titles, but many more where added soon after and others dropped, leaving a final total of just 39 which were successfully prosecuted.

This “Purge” by the DPP went on until the Government finally introduced the “Video recordings Act” in 1984, which outlawed the trade in uncertified tapes and required that all video films be submitted to the “British Board of Film Classifications” for certification prior to release. This ended the availability of the more infamous titles, the nasties furore by the media, and of course the need for any further prosecutions by the DPP.

There was a 12 month period of grace given to clear all uncertified tapes out of the system, and so some titles were still around for a while, but inevitably, it was the end of a much too short lived era.

So with that, let us take a stroll down memory lane, back to those days in the early 80's when video was the latest thing, recap over all that media hysteria that changed the face of the UK video market forever, and take a look at all those titles that earned a feel of the collar by the local constabulary.

The information on the following pages has been gathered from various sources, mostly from “Dark Side Magazine” , Dave Taylor's “Melon Farmers Video Hits” website, the “BBFC” website and the “Internet Movie Database”, With additional info on the more recent sections taken from the book “See No Evil” by David Kerekes and David Slater.


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http://members.lycos.co.uk/realmofhorror/nasties1.htm