I fall in and out of love with film genres as time goes by and the latest one was horror. A spate of torture films and assorted z-list and zero budget pieces of shit put me right off them for the last few years but an article about the infamous video nasties I read recently revved up my interest in everything cinematic and scary again.
Video nasty was the term given by British tabloid newspapers to the spate of gory horror movies that arrived on the scene just as VHS and Betamax players brought film watching away from cinemas and into people's homes. Sex and violence in film has always been popular but seeing as in the early 80's pornography was illegal people went the other way to get their kicks. Distributors, seeing their customers appetite for bloody horror flicks went out of their way to get their hands on the goriest movies they could find and people went wild for them. Some of these films had already gotten cinema releases, after being butchered by the British Board of film censorship (BBFC) but because the video market was as yet unregulated, the full uncut versions could be rented in shops. Others like the Italian movies on the list below were first time releases and blew peoples minds with their excesses.
All was good until the distributors started releasing films with video covers depicting the violence inside and one in particular, Driller Killer caught the eye of advertising standards agency and started the controversy. Then a company called Go Video, in an effort to stir up publicity for it's latest release, Cannibal Holocaust (The king of the nasties without a doubt) contacted a conversative activist called Mary Whitehouse and shit kicked off big style. She whipped up a ridiculous media frenzy about children viewing these films that was soon noticed by the House Of Commons and before you knew it the video recordings act was created with the help of an MP called Graham Bright who was out to create a name for himself. This act ensured that the BBFC had to classify every video released in the UK alongside every cinema film while the director of public prosecutions went to town on the movies that had made it through the legal loopholes. Simply put (there's a bit more to this but i can't be arsed) 72 films were seized during shop raids and 39 of them were successfully found to be obscene. The 39 are below.
- Absurd
- Anthropophagous: The Beast
- Axe
- A Bay of Blood
- The Beast in Heat
- Blood Feast
- Blood Rites
- Bloody Moon
- The Burning
- Cannibal Apocalypse
- Cannibal Ferox
- Cannibal Holocaust
- The Cannibal Man
- Devil Hunter
- Don't Go in the Woods
- The Driller Killer
- Evilspeak
- Exposé
- Faces of Death
- Fight for Your Life
- Flesh for Frankenstein
- Forest of Fear
- Gestapo's Last Orgy
- The House by the Cemetery
- The House on the Edge of the Park
- I Spit on Your Grave
- Island of Death
- The Last House on the Left
- Love Camp 7
- Madhouse
- Mardi Gras Massacre
- Nightmares in a Damaged Brain
- Night of the Bloody Apes
- Night of the Demon
- Snuff
- SS Experiment Camp
- Tenebrae
- The Werewolf and the Yeti
- Zombie Flesh Eaters
Over the years I've seen them all but now with all this COVID-19 related time on my hands it's as good a time as any to visit them. Some have aged well (Zombie Flesh Eaters) and others terribly (Night Of The Bloody Apes). Some are honest to god well made films that are seriously offensive (Cannibal Holocaust) and others are amateurish and ridiculous (The Cannibal Man). But all 39 hold a place in the hearts of horror movie fans.
Best of all, most of them are available to watch for free on youtube.
This is going to be fun.
I hope.
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