Guest Author - Andy Boxall
The horror film can be scary, violent, sexy, gory, offensive or a combination of all. When a horror film pushes the boundaries of taste and decency by visually increasing these areas, it will invariably become a victim of a censorship board somewhere in the world. Horror is probably the most censored film genre after pornography and the more notorious entrants can often carry the same social stigma.
Today’s horror fans often do not realise how lucky they are. Today when a horror is theatrically released, it is rarely heavily censored and if it is cut, you can bet that an ‘unrated’ DVD release will be waiting in the wings. Even the horror Holy Grail’s like Cannibal Holocaust and The Evil Dead are available, uncut, as special edition DVD’s. But 15 to 20 years ago it was a very different story.
Rewind to the early 80s and place yourself in London, England. VHS had taken off in a big way and video rental stores were on every corner. Inside these stores you would find huge carousels filled with chunky boxes containing such delights as The Exorcist, Zombie Holocaust, Cannibal Apocalypse and Driller Killer. The lurid cover designs were there to catch the eye of the casual renter in search of some new thrills, but they also caught the attention of other, more influential people.
A well known pro-censorship campaigner by the name of Mary Whitehouse coined the phrase ‘Video Nasty’ and soon this was splashed across newspaper pages along with variations of ‘Ban the Sick Filth’ as the headline. The worst of the bunch was grouped together in a list by the DPP (Director of Public Prosecutions) as candidates for prosecution under the Obscene Publications Act. Rental stores were raided, videos seized, even distributors were threatened with legal action and even prison if they didn’t stop peddling their wares.
There were 75 movies on this list, varying in quality from the excellent (Tenebrae) to the bearable (Evilspeak) to the downright awful (The Beast in Heat). Only 39 movies were successfully prosecuted. These films retired underground and did the rounds as an ever increasing generation of bootleg. The list stayed around and became a pre-written shopping list for the horror fan and Amsterdam became the must-visit destination due to the ease in which these movies could be purchased. The DPP had unwittingly created an army of dedicated horror fans.
The Video Nasty era ultimately gave birth to the Video Recordings Act of 1984, which stated that every videotape had to receive a certificate from the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification). Up until that point it had been a free-for-all for the less salubrious distributors to release exactly what they liked, with no intervention from the censor. Although censorship has relaxed over the last 4 or 5 years, for the rest of the 80s and most of the 90s, censorship reigned, telling us what and more importantly, how much we could watch.
See the full list of movies on the DPP list elsewhere in the Censorship and Horror section and look out for forthcoming articles that continue the history of film censorship.
