VHS Nasty
VHS Nasty delves deep into the cult classic satanic panic that is the video nasties, taking an in-depth look at censorship within horror films, specifically the video nasty scandal that shook not only Britain in the early '80s but shook the world into a frenzy of panic! Talking about cult video nasties such as Faces of Death, Cannibal Holocaust, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Driller Killer, and many more.
VHS Nasty
VHS Nasty is part 3 in the infamous cult VHS doc series VHS Lives. In the early 80's, VCR players were in every house, but a legendary cult following developed during the VHS era like no other, those that loved The Video Nasty! Yes kids, with video stores on every corner during the VHS boom, they were flooded with an array of exploitation and horror the likes of which we will never see again. The art on the VHS sleeves was awesome and these unregulated horror, gore and sexploitation films rocked before they were banned in the UK and the hysteria started to spread across the globe! VHS Nasty delves deep into the cult classic satanic panic that is the video nasties, taking an indepth look at censorship within horror films specifically the video nasty scandal that shook not only Britain in the early 80's, but shook the world into a frenzy of panic! Talking about cult video nasties such as Faces of Death, Cannibal Holocaust, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Driller Killer and many more.
Video nasty is a colloquial term popularised[1] by the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association (NVALA) in the United Kingdom to refer to a number of films, typically low-budget horror or exploitation films, distributed on video cassette that were criticised for their violent content by the press, social commentators and various religious organisations in the early 1980s. These video releases were not brought before the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) due to a loophole in film classification laws that allowed videos to bypass the review process. The resulting uncensored video releases led to public debate concerning the availability of these films to children due to the unregulated nature of the market.[2]
Public awareness of the availability of these videos began in early 1982, when Vipco (Video Instant Picture Company), the UK distributors of The Driller Killer, a 1979 splatter film, took out full-page advertisements in a number of specialist video magazines, depicting the video's explicit cover; an action which resulted in a large number of complaints to the Advertising Standards Agency.[5] A few months later Go Video, the distributors of the already-controversial 1980 Italian film Cannibal Holocaust, in an effort to boost publicity and generate sales that ultimately backfired, wrote anonymously to Mary Whitehouse of the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association complaining about their own film. Whitehouse sparked off a public campaign and coined the term "video nasty". Amid the growing concern, The Sunday Times brought the issue to a wider audience in May 1982 with an article entitled "How High Street Horror is Invading the Home". Soon the Daily Mail began their own campaign against the distribution of these films. The exposure of "nasties" to children began to be blamed for the increase in violent crime amongst youths. The growing media frenzy only served to increase the demand for such material among adolescents. At the suggestion of the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association, the Conservative MP Graham Bright introduced a Private Member's Bill to the House of Commons in 1983. This was passed as the Video Recordings Act 1984 which came into effect on 1 September 1985.
The supply of unclassified videos became a criminal offence, as did supplying 15 and 18 certificate videos to under-aged people. As well as the low-budget horror films the Act was originally intended to curb, a number of high-profile films which had passed cinema certification fell foul of the Act. In particular, The Exorcist, which was made available by Warner Home Video in December 1981, was not submitted for video certification by the BBFC and was withdrawn from shelves in 1986. Similarly Straw Dogs was denied video certification and removed from video stores. Popular culture backlash against the Video Recordings Act included the May 1984 release of "Nasty" by the punk-goth outfit The Damned, who celebrated the condemned genre with the lyrics "I fell in love with a video nasty".[7] 041b061a72