By JA Kerswell
Note: this is a reworking of a piece I wrote for the site in 1998.
A lot has changed since I wrote about the ‘video nasty’ panic over 25 years ago. If you told me at twelve years old that, in the future, you could see an eyeball lovingly skewered by a zombie or someone’s head being bisected in all its uncut gory glory by a grinning George Eastman—in 4K no less—I wouldn’t have believed you. Firstly, I’d ask, what golden-hewed utopia are you living in? Secondly, I’d ponder what the hell 4K is, and whether I still need to fiddle with the tracking.
As I mentioned, I was only twelve when the hysteria in the UK about horror movies on video really heated up in 1982. I have two memories that stand out from that time. First was passing these new-fangled video shops and gawking at their garish displays. It was like that old TV show TOMORROW’S WORLD (incidentally, the name of one of the video shops I later frequented) combined with a forbidden garden of dark, clamshell delights—it really did seem like the future. Perhaps it is hard to believe today, but video stores would proudly display posters or even standees for such soon-to-be-infamous titles as SS EXPERIMENT CAMP, and I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE. The gaping jaws of the Gates of Hell had opened wide, and I was living for it. Unfortunately, there was one small problem …
I’d snatch furtive glances at the shelves. All those black chunky boxes with their scandalous covers, full of the promise of a deliciously horrid 90 minutes. Previously, I’d had to satisfy my curiosity as a morbid kid for all things scary with kid-friendly 70’s TV movies like SNOW BEAST (a film I admittedly still love). Or stolen moments with the remote control as the rest of the house slept, immersing myself in some dusty old Hammer nonsense or other. Barry Norman would tease terrors on his cinema review show FILM 81 (its name changed with the year), with intoxicating glimpses into the world of horror—his dismissal of most of them as garbage just made me want to see them more. I was lucky enough to see a BBC broadcast of Bob Clark's seminal proto-slasher BLACK CHRISTMAS some years later in the latter half of the 1980s. They accidentally broadcast the unedited version, and my mother choked on her Campari and soda when Billy uttered the word "cunt"—very probably the first time that word appeared on British TV.
Garish cinema posters for the likes of HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME and even ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS teased me from the school bus as I made the daily journey to and from school. Before a Disney movie at my local Odeon, I saw the trailer for the future nasty VISITING HOURS and knew what I’d rather be watching. One time, I recall, as a younger child, I even snuck into the living room one night while my parents watched TV and, commando-style, wiggled onto my belly behind the settee in the hope of catching a dreadful morsel—only to end up falling asleep to some polyester talk show. My plea to go and see SCANNERS instead—after a showing of the disaster flick METEOR had been cancelled because no one apart from me wanted to see it—fell on deaf ears. Quite understandably, I doubt I’d get into an ‘X-rated’ movie at the age of eleven! My efforts to become a fully fledged horror fan were constantly foiled. I had to comfort myself with the literary nasties: THE RATS, THE CHILDREN, THE CATS … THE WHATEVER I COULD GET MY HANDS ON. All from a book stall at an indoor market where they didn’t ask questions as long as you could stump up the 50p needed to get your fix (a bittersweet experience as it was next to a video stall carrying many horror films that would soon disappear into black bin bags and be carted off like they were infected with Ebola).
Seduced by the promise of forbidden fruit, I pleaded, cajoled, and practically begged my parents to drag our home entertainment unit into the modern age with VHS, Betamax, or VIDEO 2000 (preferably not the latter). They finally succumbed, but not until early 1984, when the video witch hunt was reaching its zenith and many films had disappeared from the shelves altogether. The hulking great silver monolith sat, wedged under the TV, fed, almost exclusively, on a diet of soaps, music videos and the likes of THE SOUND OF MUSIC. Oh, the horror indeed!
My second vivid memory: perhaps it was a fever dream, but I recall watching a news report showing ‘nasties’ on tape being crushed by colossal digger trucks by the hundreds. Shovelled across a wasteland, they presumably ended in some mass burial. On one hand, I was appalled—what a waste! But on the other hand, it just made them more appealing—those films must be so dangerous, so horrific, so deliciously frightening! The NSPCC was declaring in the tabloids: “Save kids from video nasties”—I thought they didn’t speak for me! I was both terrified and like a moth drawn to a rubbery-looking axe wound.
I recall listening, in stunned awe, to the stories of older kids who had seen some of these fabled movies—either at the movies or in front of their flickering TVs at home. Word of mouth became Chinese whispers of epic proportions, creating legends reverberating in playgrounds nationwide. Wild stories of gory mayhem were told to an eager and awestruck pubescent audience. Boasting having seen at least one of these horror movies was a badge of honour—even if you were making it all up (which was often the case, as I later found out). I remember one girl telling me—and me lapping it up—that 1980’s FRIDAY THE 13TH was about a series of accidents that occurred on an ‘unlucky’ Friday the 13th. One of which allegedly involved a man driving along the freeway, his car filling up with water and him drowning! The following year I saw the film and realised she was talking absolute bollocks.
So, I eventually got to see some horror videos. My first was the 1981 sequel HALLOWEEN II on a friend’s giant Betamax in around 1982 (his Mum made us beans and chips whilst we watched it). Quickly followed by other dodgers of the list, such as FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980) and ROSEMARY’S KILLER (1981) (a highly pre-censored version of THE PROWLER). The likes of SUPERSTITION (1982) and AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981) followed and were eagerly consumed on stolen afternoons, bunking off from school. Despite the virulent crackdown on all things deemed liable to corrupt, several local shops still had the odd unsavoury item tucked away on a dusty shelf. They would pay no heed to a trembling fourteen-year-old with his parents’ video card. However, I nearly lost access to that card after I rented a relatively tame Lucio Fulci movie for family film night. Grandma didn’t appreciate seeing a topless teenage girl being smothered by a hundred snails. Who knew?
As the years passed, some of the films on the list were rereleased with the mandatory 18 certificate. More often than not, it meant that they were highly truncated. Tom Savini had nothing on the British censor when it came to butchery. I recall watching a copy of THE LIVING DEAD AT MANCHESTER MORGUE and wondering what all the fuss was about. It wasn’t until later that I found out that this re-release had removed almost every drop of blood from the movie— presumably on the off chance that me and my friends would try and cannibalise patients and staff at a local hospital.
The unintended consequence of drawing up a list of banned videos was that they gained an allure they didn’t really warrant. I made it my mission to watch as many as I could. Today, you can nip down to your local HMV or browse Amazon for your ‘nasty’ needs, but back then, even owning one of these films put you in dodgy legal waters—and dealing them to other fans could land you a hefty fine or worse. Film fairs were often the place to pick up bootleg VHS of films such as Lucio Fulci’s THE NEW YORK RIPPER (a film so beyond the pale that it was refused a certificate and the only copy was escorted out of the country). Often, these copies were unwatchable after being transferred from one VCR to another, with every iteration being fuzzier than the last. They would also often be ugly pan-and-scan versions, which did no favours to Italian directors with a penchant for the zoom lens. If you were lucky, old pre-cert horror videos would turn up at boot fairs on a Sunday morning. And, if I’m honest, there was a thrill in the chase.
Today, the BBFC will pass a film, TERRIFIER 3, uncut with an 18 certificate. How times have changed! However, it is easy to forget how feared and reviled these films were back then. Politicians, moral guardians, and many in the press genuinely believed they had the power to corrupt and damage society. While some can still offend (especially those depicting unsimulated animal suffering), time has primarily dulled their ability to shock.
Whilst we may never see another moral panic about horror movies from the '70s and '80s, history has taught us never to become too complacent about our freedoms. Whilst I love that almost every film ever made is now at our fingertips with the click of a mouse. It's progress, of course—but nothing ever quite replicates the delicious anxiety of being fourteen years old trying to hire a nasty from your location video shop.
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The A-Z of Video Nasties
