Video Nasties And Me
Aug 18 '02
The Bottom Line Rarely have terrible movies seemed so utterly essential, and rarely have I devoted so much time to the pursuit of such dreck. But I sure had fun.
As regular readers of my reviews will no doubt have noticed, I am British.
Not a posh, foppish Hugh Grant-type or indeed a slang-spouting Cockney sparrow in the Lock Stock or Snatch vein.
No, I’m just a regular British bloke. I enjoy the debauched company of my lunatic mates and the warm, glowing company of attractive girls.
I enjoy the taste of good beer on my tongue and the sound of good music in my ears (The Smiths, The Beatles and, oddly, Van Halen will always float my boat).
And I enjoy playing in my quasi-successful band and driving around in my quasi-reliable (but satisfyingly red) British car.
Rather like my namesake Rob from Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity (a character so utterly ME that it’s kinda scary), I believe that people (us) have large chunks of their characters shaped by individual tastes in cultural outlets such as (and most significantly for yours truly) music and movies.
Growing up I loved to watch super-cool movies like Back To The Future, Caddyshack, RoboCop and Midnight Run (which is still my all time favourite flick).
I loved to smoke the occasional cigarette (but never inhale), practise my French-kissing technique on as many girls as possible and I loved to hang out with friends listening to Led Zeppelin and Motley Crue years after it was fashionable.
But one thing I couldn’t do, and one thing that had me feeling strangely incomplete, was watch horror videos.
Oh I could watch the odd classic like Halloween or A Nightmare On Elm Street and maybe even a cult favourite like Hellraiser or The Thing. But they weren’t hardcore enough back then.
The problem was, it wasn’t my mother that was stopping me; it was the Government.
If at any point I sound like a limey Oliver Stone, please forgive me.
In 1984 the British Government introduced the DPP List.
Up until then, video was a marvellously unregulated industry and future Nasties nestled on shelves alongside Midnight Express and Airplane!
But like all new technologies, video struck techno-fear into the hearts of the public and the garish, baiting covers for SS Experiment Camp and Cannibal Holocaust saw violent movies become natural scapegoats.
The tabloids didn’t help matters. Almost every day we were confronted with sensational stories of corruption inspired through the video medium. 'Video Nasties Made Me Do It' screamed the headlines accompanying every crime and with the public rallying, something had to give.
I remember my first visit to a video store. It was in 1984 and I was with my Dad. We were there to rent Time Bandits but looking at the tapes lining the shelves I knew I wanted to see them all.
So imagine my surprise when the Police burst in and began piling the videos (most of them from the top shelf) into large black bags.
The DPP List comprised of videos that the Government and the British Censors (the BBFC) deemed unsuitable for home viewing.
And that’s what the Police were there for; quite an image for a young, impressionable lad like me huh?
Unavailability has always prompted longing in me. If there was a girl that I couldn’t have, I would yearn for her endlessly (and harmlessly of course - I was no stalker) and ever since that day in the video store I have yearned for Video Nasties.
I made it my mission to track down and watch all of them.
My American friends must wonder what the big deal is. After all, you guys can wander into a store and rent Last House On The Left if you feel like it. I can’t. I’m not allowed. My government and moral guardians think that watching a film like The Mardi Gras Massacre or The Beyond is going to damage my psyche and see the walls of my reality come crashing down around me. They seriously think that I’ll then head to the shed and grab a screwdriver for MURDER!
Imagine being patronised like that? Imagine the Censors sitting and watching Cannibal Terror and deciding that it is unsuitable for public viewing. And if it would affect us, why wasn’t it affecting them? I mean, we never hear of the Censors firing up chainsaws and terrorising Picadilly Circus. Do you see the hypocrisy?
Since Blair came into office there has been a refreshing wave of leniency spreading throughout the BBFC; Straw Dogs is coming out uncut soon (for the first time since 1971) and The Exorcist, Maniac and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre are all now available.
But that isn’t the end of the story; many of the movies that are available (such as Zombie Flesh Eaters, The House On The Edge Of The Park and Cannibal Holocaust) are still missing violent sequences and exist only in cut form. If I want to watch these sequences I either have to turn to my dodgy old pirate copies on VHS or get online (where I can see these scenes on a loop and totally out of context - surely more damaging on a psychological level).
Well as I mentioned earlier, I made it my mission to watch these movies and watch them I did. What follows is the ultimate guide to Video Nasties from a British perspective. The point is to give an overview for prosperity and hopefully point out where and why the Censors chose to cut or ban them.
For future reference I’ll be reviewing these movies in depth later.....Imagine my disappointment when I discovered that most of them were just terrible.
How To Identify Whether The Movie You’re Watching Is In Fact A Video Nasty
1) It’s Italian
Although there were plenty of American and Greek movies banished to the DPP List, the majority of Video Nasties were financed and made by Italians. Auteur Dario Argento was the arguably the finest director to make the list (with Tenebrae and Inferno) but Lucio Fulci was by far the most prolific; the late spaghetti-horror meister had virtually all of his movies (five in all) banned in this country. His 1982 effort The New York Ripper was deemed so nasty that prints were forced out of the country accompanied by an armed Police escort. In a word, unprecedented.
2) It’s Lame
I define lameness thus; any movie that utilises stock footage or cultural fads to create or enhance a sense of environment. For example, did the director of Absurd really think that by placing fake fire hydrants on every corner of town that he could fool us into mistaking Greece for America? And did the makers of Demons 2 think that by dressing their cast in tacky Hawaiian shirts we would honestly believe they were real Americans?
Biggest offender is Bruno Mattei who directed the awful Zombie Creeping Flesh; every time that a character looks off camera, Mattei pastes in stock wildlife or travelogue footage that he has plundered from the local library. It feels as though only 50% of the movie was shot by the director himself. Now that’s lame.
3) It’s Him
Chances are, if Italian actor Giovanni Lombardo Radice turns up, you are indeed watching a Video Nasty and you can definitely tick the box if his character is killed of in the most stomach churning way imaginable.
The prolific Radice tried to hide his ubiquity by adopting the non-Italian sounding pseudonym John Morghan but he’s fooling no one. He is now a respected luvvie treading the boards in Italian theatre so just for the record, that’s him having a hole drilled through his head in City Of The Living Dead, that’s him having a hole blown through his abdomen in Cannibal Apocalypse, that’s him being sliced up in The House On The Edge Of The Park and that’s him having his hand/skull/genitals hacked off in Cannibal Ferox. No doubt the theatrical term 'break a leg' sounds like small fry to Radice.
4) It’s Misogynistic
Here I’m talking about the torture, humiliation and rape of women.
Always a contentious issue for the censors, any film that featured unflinching depictions of the above was deemed wholly unacceptable and banned outright.
The most notorious was rape revenge rubbish I Spit On Your Grave (which featured no fewer than four horrendously detailed and drawn-out rape scenes), but the BBFC also had issues with The House On The Edge Of The Park and Last House On The Left (both featuring low-budget ultra villain David Hess wielding a knife) and better known titles such as Straw Dogs and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (the latter posed no sexual threat but depicted mental torture of quite unparalleled intensity).
5) It’s Tasteless
Most horror movies are violent and gory, but Video Nasties were considered downright tasteless. The BBFC had a big problem with ocular violence (ie: sharp things being rammed into eye sockets) so Zombie Flesh Eaters, The Beyond, and Dead And Buried had to go. They objected to graphic mutilation of breasts so goodbye Cannibal Apocalypse, The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue and The House By The Cemetery and they would not tolerate actual animal cruelty, so adios Cannibal Holocaust and SS Experiment Camp.
(Considering that the odious Cannibal Ferox featured all of the above, it’s a wonder the original print wasn’t blasted into space).
6) It’s Got Cannibals, Zombies or Nazis In It
Torture? Racism? Graphic gut-munching? Nuff said
7) It’s Dubbed...Badly
There is something inherently ludicrous about lips that don’t correspond with voices and almost every movie that languished on the DPP List was dubbed. Only The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue managed to get the mixture right; the rest comprised of good actors dubbed by bad actors (and vice versa) and had their credibility seriously damaged as a result.
But some went a step further; for example, in Lucio Fulci’s The House By The Cemetery a cute blonde moppet is voiced by what sounds like a man impersonating a child.
The Devil Hunter went two steps further, with all the characters seemingly dubbed by the same guy. He manfully attempts to adopt a number of regional accents to hilarious effect. He tries Texan ("Ahl whup yo azz boy!"), he tries Indian ("oh goodness me!"), and he tries British (imagine someone trying to talk with plums in his mouth and you're close). As you guessed, he fails resoundingly at every one.
8) It's Funky
Innapropriate music can kill a horror movie faster than bad dubbing. So if you can keep a straight face as a man bashes another man's face in with a polystyrene rock to the strains some ludicrous Euro disco boogie in The Devil Hunter, you're a better man than I.
Other notably poor scores feature in Cannibal Apocalypse (happy saxophone), Madman (which has a song called that - honestly) and Night Of The Demon (hip-shaking flute tunes).
9) It's DIY - But Not As We Know It
The Toolbox Murders, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1, 2 & 3), Axe, The Driller Killer; everyday DIY items such as the ones mentioned in these titles were a problem for the Censors. Guns are virtually impossible to obtain in the UK but any store sells power drills, hammers and hatchets.
The scene where the pencil is driven into a girl's ankle in The Evil Dead was cut for years (until only recently) on the same basis.
Funny, computers are everyday objects yet not many get smashed over people's heads.
10) It’s Awful
Only a handful of the Nasties were really any good; The Evil Dead, Last House On The Left, Zombie Flesh Eaters, The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue, Blood Bath, Cannibal Holocaust and Tenebrae were great (in my humble opinion).
The others all displayed varying degrees of ineptitude but the worst were undoubtedly the works of crud-auteur Jesus Franco (Bloody Moon, The Devil Hunter, Women Behind Bars and Cannibal Terror - Iron Age cannibals with coiffure hairdos and sideburns? - were all majestically bad), Herschell Gordon Lewis’ deplorably amateurish Blood Feast and worst of all, tacky Bigfoot lo-jinks in Night Of The Demon (imagine Chewbacca running around a small patch of grainy woodland complete with Monty Python gore).
Well this seems like a sensible place to conclude. So here they are; the full list of contentious videos that came under the scrutiny of the BBFC.
And in case you're wondering whether they affected me in any way, I'll say yes.
I was mad! I was psychotic! I was ready to kill!
Told you most of them were bad.
The Original Video Nasties (The DPP List)
+ denotes a decent movie
- denotes a film so bad that you HAVE to see it
The rest aren’t bothering with on any level (unless you have trouble sleeping).
Absurd
Anthropophagous The Beast +
Axe
The Beast In Heat -
The Beyond +
Blood Bath +
Blood Feast
Blood Rites
Bloody Moon
The Burning
Cannibal Apocalypse +
Cannibal Ferox
Cannibal Holocaust +
The Cannibal Man
Cannibal Terror -
Contamination
The Devil Hunter -
Don’t Go In The House
Don’t Go In The Woods -
Don’t Go Near The Park
The Driller Killer
The Evil Dead +
Evilspeak
Faces Of Death
Fight For Your Life
Forest Of Fear
The Gestapo’s Last Orgy
The House By The Cemetery
The House On The Edge Of The Park
Inferno +
I Spit On Your Grave
Island Of Death
The Last House On The Left +
The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue +
Madhouse
Mardi Gras Massacre
Nightmares In A Damaged Brain
Night Of The Demon -
The Slayer
Snuff
SS Experiment Camp
Tenebrae +
The Toolbox Murders
Women Behind Bars
Zombie Creeping Flesh
Zombie Flesh Eaters +
Movies Refused Video Certificates
The Bogey Man
City Of The Living Dead
Dead And Buried +
Demons 2
The Exorcist +
Leatherface: Texas Chain Saw Massacre III
Madman
Maniac +
The New York Ripper +
Straw Dogs +
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre +
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 2 +
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Epinions.com ID:
brodieman
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Location: England
Reviews written: 67
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