Most shocking video nasty

[dogstar]

I would love to have been a fly on the wall for the conversation in which Alec Baldwin's agent pitched him the idea of playing the Fat Controller - 'Alec baby it'll look great on your resume - just think of the new demographic you'll be appealing to"'.

To me the most unappealing aspect of the so-called video nasty era was not the more straighforward horror movies which when all said and done were just a little more lurid than what we'd been used to ( and let's not forget that the whole video nasty bruhaha was basically cooked up as a publicity exercise by a shamelessly ambitious Tory poilitician ). The truly nasty part was that it brought to light a whole sub-genre of exploitation film - the Nazi horror/porn film. These had titles like SS Experiment Camp and The Gestapo's Last Orgy and represent a level of unpleasantness in conception that is almost epic. I have to put my hand up and say I have never actually seen one - they apparently range from the ludicrous to the truly vile - but their very existence - and it seems, continuing popularity leaves a nasty taste no pun intended. Unlike other areas of exploitation film I imagine it would be very hard to watch these with an ironic, post-modern grin...

....Much like Thomas And The Magic Railroad perhaps :-)

[batman]

[dogstar]

That is a truly disturbing image! I shall refrain from exposing our in-house Thomas-lover to it for fear of doing him irrepairable psychological damage!

[Amethyst_Isle]

I can imagine most people's home movies would be classed as video nasties and probably unclassifiable by the BBFC even now.

[davidb]

i dont understand why expose is lumped in with video nasties ,its a dreary film really ,bit of a cash in on straw dogs [ was even called the house on straw hill internationally ] then again straw dogs was classed as a video nasty as well ? the whole genre of the video nasty does nothing for me anyway ,its the worst kind of film making in my book , hey ! weve got no budget ,no acting talent ,no ideas ... lets do something sadistic and throw as much blood on to the screen as poss ,some of them now look so dated theyve become funny ,in fact the nastiest thing about some of them is the dubbing

[Lord Brett]

Originally Posted by davidb i dont understand why expose is lumped in with video nasties

It's been a while since I researched this subject (I read like crazy about it for a college dissertation about 10 years ago and have been unable to look at another word about it since) but it appears that the video nasties list was compiled almost at random by people with knowledge of or interest in films in general, let alone the horror genre.

Almong with Section 28, the Video Nasties scale represented the high watermark of the censorious wing of Thatcher's Convervatives.

[D Cairns]

Yes, the police were randomly seizing stuff like APOCALYPSE NOW because it had the word "Apocalypse" in it. I guess the advantage of a ratings system is that we're protected from that kind of nonsense.

[GRAEME]

Originally Posted by davidb i dont understand why expose is lumped in with video nasties ,its a dreary film really ,bit of a cash in on straw dogs [ was even called the house on straw hill internationally ] then again straw dogs was classed as a video nasty as well ? the whole genre of the video nasty does nothing for me anyway ,its the worst kind of film making in my book , hey ! weve got no budget ,no acting talent ,no ideas ... lets do something sadistic and throw as much blood on to the screen as poss ,some of them now look so dated theyve become funny ,in fact the nastiest thing about some of them is the dubbing

Straw Dogs was never classed as a video nasty. It was denied a certificate for home release for a few years.

Video Nasty is not a concious "genre" - they were films - mainly but not all horror films - that were put onto a list by right-wing pig ignorant morons to appease another bunch of right-wing pig ignorant morons in the press and the Houses of Parliament.

[Mark O]

I can't recall his name off the top of head, and he died not so long ago, but I recall the head Film censor in Britain saying on TV that he wouldn't give a certificate for 'Straw Dogs' because of the "lengthy rape scene that looks as if the woman is enjoying it"

[davidb]

the whole video nasty craze of the early 80s left me baffled anyway ,why watch some dreadful italian dubbed into english gore fest anyway theres a great deal better films out there ,i remember one my friends rented called "mad foxes " ,just a series of sadistic tit for tat killings involving some motorbike gang ,what trash ,i never suggested straw dogs or expose were video nastys ,just the dumb authorities lumping them in with them ,when these kind of films are banned it just gives them notoriety and the oppertunity for some spivs to do a roaring under the counter trade ,

[Lord Brett]

Originally Posted by Mark O I can't recall his name off the top of head, and he died not so long ago, but I recall the head Film censor in Britain saying on TV that he wouldn't give a certificate for 'Straw Dogs' because of the "lengthy rape scene that looks as if the woman is enjoying it"

That would be James Ferman, though his immediate successor Andreas Whittam Smith, seems to have been of the opinion (judging by an archive interview I saw of him not long ago) that film-makers' sole raison d'etre was to try to slip more sex and violence past the censor.

Things really have improved since the dark days of the 1980s, a decade I realy can't summon up much nostalgia for.

[GRAEME]

Originally Posted by davidb the whole video nasty craze of the early 80s left me baffled anyway ,why watch some dreadful italian dubbed into english gore fest anyway theres a great deal better films out there ,i remember one my friends rented called "mad foxes " ,just a series of sadistic tit for tat killings involving some motorbike gang ,what trash ,i never suggested straw dogs or expose were video nastys ,just the dumb authorities lumping them in with them ,when these kind of films are banned it just gives them notoriety and the oppertunity for some spivs to do a roaring under the counter trade ,

What I was pointing out was that "Straw Dogs" was not included on the video nasty list. Yes, it was kinda lumped in due to its noteriety.

As you say most, not all, of the VNs were crap. That's why there wasn't much outcry at their banning. But IMHO that's why they had to be defended - these movies were banned for political reasons not because of content and it was too easy for them to get away with it - because most respectable souls wouldn't want to be seen defending "I Spit on your Grave", for example. But once they start banning films, books, plays etc. it is a slippery path. Just because they start with the dross shouldn't mean we sit on our hands.

If a serious work by an acclaimed director - like Straw Dogs - had been on the list, it would have been a much more hotly contested battle. And one the censors would have lost, I hope.

[Amethyst_Isle]

The whole point of the Video Nasties in the first place was to be controversial anyway,add more gore and rape n sex etc. 9 times out of ten it is a winning formula as it works for them,ban something and automatically people want to see it,the likes of Ken Russell and others deliberately go out their way to be controversial in the first place imo as you only have to look at their work they have done.

[dogstar]

Originally Posted by Amethyst_Isle The whole point of the Video Nasties in the first place was to be controversial anyway,add more gore and rape n sex etc. 9 times out of ten it is a winning formula as it works for them,ban something and automatically people want to see it,the likes of Ken Russell and others deliberately go out their way to be controversial in the first place imo as you only have to look at their work they have done.

You seem to be confusing the films that got labellled as 'video nasties' i.e. those that were included on the infamous 'banned' list and the content of these films and others like them. The majority were simply exploitation films made for the reasons exploitation films are always made and however upleasant some of them may be they were not made in order to cash in on any 'video nasty' controversy ( in any case some of those on the list were already quite old ).

The timing of the Bright Bill coincided with the rise of the home video market when for first time people could access material through the video store that they would not come across on TV or at the cinema and many of the titles paraded for our revulsion by the Bright lobby were simply exploitation movies that were more lurid in content or perhaps in their marketing than we had been used to. Ergo they could be presented as a pernicious new trend in filmic flith from which we needed protection, especially as via the VHS/Betamax players so many of us were acquiring it was now so very easy to watch this material at home. There were appalled tabloid headlines about kids watching video nasties with their breakfast or unsupervised by irresponsible adults which to me at any rate smacked less of concern as to what people were watching as alarm that the home entertainment revolution was giving people a degree of personal choice as to what they actually wanted to watch. Censorship is at best a necessary evil but when as with the 'video nasty' furore it is tied in with moral hysteria and political point-scoring it becomes depsicable. Let's hope we never see its like again.

[davidb]

as for banning these films for political reasons ,i believe in free speech ,however some of these films were of questionable content as in nazi experiment camps etc ,its certainly a difficult question about how you have free expression etc on one hand and a tasteless sadistic gore fest on the other ,but wasnt the main fuss about these films that there was no certification at all on the home video market and some were being watched by children ?