- [Announcer] On behalf of the motion picture industry,
welcome to the world of home video entertainment.
[reel rattling]
[dark synthesizer music]
- [Narrator] A video nasty is a colloquial term
used in the United Kingdom and Europe
to describe a number of films which are distributed
on VHS video in the early 1980s, which were heavily
criticized by the press, Parliament
and various religious organizations
for their content which contained
strong use of violence and graphic nudity.
No legislation was in place to regulate home video content.
This meant that any films on the market
and available for video rental stores had no certification.
Although the act did not govern home video at the time,
at this time the British Board of Film Censorship
was established in 1912 only governed theatrical
cinematic releases and was not
enforced to censor home video.
This is due to a loophole within
the film classification laws at the time.
Because of this, in the early 1980s,
the market was flooded with low budget horror films
featuring gore, violence and graphic nudity.
Due to the video nasty debate in both Parliament
and in the courts, this resulted in a number of films
being prosecuted in the early 80s
by the director of public prosecutions.
Following this, the government passed
the Video Recordings Act 1984,
which meant in Britain all video releases
had to appear before the BBFC.
The so-called video nasties caused
an outright media frenzy during the early 1980s.
- [Announcer] To avoid fainting, keep repeating, it's--
- [Crowd] Only a movie, only a movie, only a movie.
- [Narrator] In 1982, Vidco placed an advertisement
for the Driller Killer in a VHS magazine.
This advertisement served to bring the awareness
of these types of films to the attention of the masses.
What happens next was--
- Censorship, censorship.
- [Announcer] Cannibalism.
- Censorship.
- I think it's important for us to define
what we're talking about here at the start.
This isn't the small type of censorship,
say an adult trying to restrict the access of a small child
to pornography, something you could argue
is in the best interest of someone who is not capable
of deciding for themselves what's best for them
or what is possibly bad for them.
This is something different.
This is something larger.
This is something insidious.
This is a small group of people,
a governing body of some type
restricting the access of the body,
of the masses to something that they want.
These are people who can decide for themselves
what's good for them or possibly bad for them,
but you have this overreaching governing agency
or government enforcing their own
ideals, morals on the masses.
This is where things get wrong.
And this is what we're talking about
when we talk about censorship within this context,
the video nasties, the PRMC, the Satanic Panic,
this whole era of restriction of music and film and art
in general from the masses.
- So if you were lucky enough to own a video player
in the early 80s, you had unrestricted access
to a number of violent horror gore films
full of blood full of gore full of splinters going in eyes,
full of drills going in heads, full of nudity,
full of Nazis, full of everything.
The video nasties are bloody amazing.
They're very important for film, for film history.
I don't think there isn't a film maker
a horror film maker alive today
who doesn't owe a debt to a video nasty.
They were such a big part of our British culture
and worldwide, they're a worldwide phenomenon.
- Even the word nasty, what does it mean?
At the time when that phrase was coined,
it was considered an incredibly nasty, vicious film
with a lot of violence, usually sexualized violence.
Women were the main target and victims in these films.
And certainly American films I even find distasteful
the early Wes Craven, Last House on the Left,
I Spit On Your Grave, for example another film from that genre
which seemed to revel in sexual violence
and it's something that I've never felt comfortable with.
But whether those films should be banned
or whether they should just have a warning on them
is a controversial subject.
Because if you talk about banning things
then you get into that area where
if you know Fahrenheit 451 essentially
is the temperature of which paper erupts into flame
and that was kind of exemplified as an example
in that great film of the same name.
- Pretty much everything on this list is known for its brutality,
movies like House on the Edge of the Park.
It's got a lot of rape scenes,
but they're also very violent in nature.
The same thing with Last House on the Left.
I think that's sort of what in a lot of ways
what makes these videos video nasty,
it's just the nastiness of it all.
- I know the actual New York repo
and they actually escorted that film out of the country
because they didn't want anyone even making bootleg copies
or any distributor getting hold of that film.
So the New York repo was actually escorted out the country,
which is really crazy.
- But here's the problem censorship inevitably runs into
is that any time an art form, music, film whatever
is censored that inevitably creates an underground movement,
a collective of creative people that are inspired by
the restrictions that have been placed upon them
and seek to circumvent that
and find new ways, new forms of expression,
more extreme forms of expression
as a direct response to the unfairness of the censorship.
That whether it's hip hop, whether it's punk rock,
whether it's horror films,
that underground movement eventually
because of that extremity
because of the interest in the rebelliousness
of what they're trying to do
that outside group inevitably takes over the mainstream
down the road and becomes the mainstream.
The real hilarious thing about censorship
is if you think about things that have been
censored from The Wolf Man in 1931 to Friday the 13th
to Where the Wild Things Are it doesn't work.
I mean in the end over the long term,
censorship does not work, because eventually
these things you're trying suppress always
get out there, always.
That's the irony of censorship.
- Censorship.
- [Lloyd] There should be no censorship in films whatsoever
except for children, protect the children, that's it.
It was a disaster to ban the movies in the 80s,
like Mother's Day, Toxic Avenger
because what you got a 40-minute version
of the Toxic Avenger.
It wasted people's money, it wasted their time
and wasted very good art.
There's no reason for any kind of censorship.
This is idiotic.
- So it means that what we're in danger of
is throwing all of these films into a great conflagration
and destroying them forever
and then a very valid part of our movie history is lost.
So I think that's what the British government at the time
had in mind when the list of video nasties emerged,
where they decided that any film that had any kind
of graphic violence was considered beyond the taste
of the British taste makers and because of that
they decided that the public should not have access to them.
They became an illegal list whereby if you wanted them
and they still were available, you literally
had to get them in a brown paper bag under the counter
and take them home and bring them back in the same manner.
- The story I heard is that they had a Go Video
once try to drum up some publicity for his film
so he sent a copy to Mary Whitehouse
pretending to be an angry member of the public
who had come across it in a video store
and he was hoping that she'd complain about it
and that would get people going out and buying it.
But instead it had a bit of a catastrophic effect
on the video industry as a whole at the time
because then it kickstarted
the whole Department of Public Prosecutions
raids and making a list and police raids.
So I think that was the kind of catalyst for the whole thing
but most of the time you would have video magazines
that would have full page ads
for stuff like The Dreaded Cutter, Essex Experiment Camp
and things like that and the video industry
didn't help themselves at the time.
- But as you can see from the list of video nasties
a lot of the films are great Italian classics.
You're looking at Suspiria, one of the great art movies
of the late 20th century.
Looking at Tenebrae another really beautiful,
but extremely violent film, which also had humor
and some of the most dramatic camera movements
ever recorded in cinema history.
You had the films from Lucio Fulci,
which again are extremely violent zombie films,
but they're zombie films.
They're not to be taken that seriously.
Zombies are fantasy.
As we can see now in the 21st century,
one of the biggest shows on the planet
is The Walking Dead.
Now nobody is trying to ban that show
and it's far more violent and aggressive
than anything that came out in the 70s and the 80s.
Again I think video nasties were a product of their time
and a kind of ethos of the time
of political correctness where people felt that
we need to safeguard the moral life of the viewer.
It is fascinating when you look at the films on the list now
you're looking at The Evil Dead and you think well
why was that film on the list of video nasties?
Probably because there was penetration with a tree branch
basically a women was raped by a tree
and then you also had a lot of scenes of aggressive violence
but again that sort of thing was I think when
sexualized violence was included with
the more mainstream horror violence,
then became a tricky area for the taste makers in Britain.
- Police and forces were going around
removing these video tapes from video shops
and burning them, it's totally crazy.
You think it wasn't that long ago that this was happening.
I mean where would these bloody people be now?
What would Mary Whitehouse do with the Internet?
Would she sit there going around every webcam
sex fucking website trying to censor that?
What would she be doing now?
- They wanted to get people to buy their products
and they tried it in the most sensationalist way possible
and I think at the time they could have been more like if they hadn't done
maybe we wouldn't have had censorship
or censorship wouldn't have been so tough as it was.
But they really kind of in their need
to try and get people buying their videos
they really went overboard
because at the time when videos first came out
there wasn't any categorization.
It was classed as a publishing medium alongside
books and music and I don't know,
it would be interesting to see what would have happened
with home video and watching films at home
if the home video nasty scandal hadn't happened.
I mean would it have gone down the same path as
publishing mediums like books and music and stuff
or would the classification system be inevitable?
- Well my views on censorship as a whole,
it's a tricky one isn't it?
Because I'm a libertarian, I believe in freedom of speech.
We fought two world wars, even English civil war
was partly about the freedom of speech.
John Milton actually wrote a famous pamphlet
speaking about censorship which I've read.
That's even now regarded as a classic.
So even then back in the 1640s, 50s
people were against censorship.
The only thing, where do you cut the line?
Where you have that point where you think this is too much?
- I think censorship it needs to be in place.
I mean there were definitely movies
that I was watching when I was young
that I really question how I even got to do that.
I really believe some things just shouldn't
be sent to young persons you know.
You need to be mature and you need to have life experience
to be able to digest what it is that you're seeing
so it doesn't affect you in a negative way.
Still baffled that a lot of the stuff in America is unrated.
I would die if one of my kids grabbed a hold
of Cannibal Holocaust and they were 10 years old
or something it's kind of scary.
I think it's good in this country,
in Australia that we have pretty strict laws
on the classifications because it is appropriate
that some stuff that kids shouldn't see
until their minds are formed.
- I think you've got to have some boundaries
with censorship because I don't want to see
inappropriate material that children are being put
in films and that.
Because you can't have a free-for-all I don't believe.
So there's certain things which
I don't think you should show.
Stuff like kids, but other things
like people being killed on camera,
not for real of course, I mean I'm totally against that
because some people even want to legalize
so-called snuff movies where people are actually
being killed for real and that should never be allowed
to happen in any civilized society
that those films should be made freely available
if they even exist because some people say it's just a myth.
So censorship some things are inappropriate,
which I just said, but on the whole,
you can't censorship with films like this to be honest
because at the end of the day
it's just actors, they're acting
even if they weren't that good some of them.
It's just fiction.
People who want to ban all these films
should get over it in my humble opinion.
- The idea of singling out films in my opinion,
it's just absurd the whole idea of censorship
in this day and age as well, particular the Internet and--
- Censorship.
- The idea that you can get, you can buy these things
and the fact that you know you had films
that were banned for years and years
and then they've all been released
and there's been no discernible affect on society.
There's not been a sudden uprise in violence and crimes
and this is all the sort of things
that Mary Whitehouse and Margaret Thatcher
was trying these films were responsible for
when in fact it was her way diverting attention away
from how badly she's running the country and stuff.
With Mary Whitehouse, I think she just wanted
to make people follow the kind of Christian viewpoint
of what she believed in and horror films
didn't really fit in with that.
- I've got a big thing about censorship.
It's really not endorsed by anybody but myself,
really my views on censorship
we're at an age now where films are so accessible,
the imagery is so accessible to everybody,
so easy to get ahold of
and we're also at an age where people
know what is fake and what is real.
They know how films are made.
They know how special effects are made.
It wasn't like back in the day
where you only had Fangoria to look at,
to look at behind the scenes,
you know through Blu-Ray releases
and special features, documentaries that we make
that things are fake, how to put together
and the crews are doing it.
So saying that censorship is needed
to protect people from imagery they shouldn't be watching
and also saying that by watching those films
people are affected and will do things
they shouldn't be doing is I think is wrong really.
Because I'm watched horror films all my life
and I'm not saying it's one example,
because I know people have issues,
but when people do have issues regards to horror
and do act out and do blame horror films
people who aren't exactly people who's side are you on.
The average Joe who watches a horror film
understands entertainment, understands how it's made
and enjoys it for what it is.
- Yeah yeah yeah, I kind of I agree.
I think that's why we've got certification of films.
- But but--
- No no I'm just saying that's why right,
it's how we interpret stuff okay.
We're one of the fortunate few who have rightly brought up
to see films we shouldn't have at a young age
against age restrictions right?
And yeah we are two living examples among many
who have seen these films and not one thing has happened.
If anything it's kind of huh exists.
- It wasn't a kid's movie.
- It actually inspired us.
It inspired us to do what we do now.
- We wouldn't have met. - We wouldn't have met
except for a love of horror.
- And there's a lot of people.
Look at horror fans who watch all these,
making also you meet all these people,
the actors, the talent behind these films
they always say what a wonderful crowd horror fans are,
how loyal there are and everything.
There's gonna be instances I have no doubt
where people are affected in different ways,
but you know what it's not just with films,
it's with anything.
It's that social backdrop, do you know what I mean?
It's how they were brought up, et cetera.
And also it's how the mind works.
- We're also in a culture where we blame people--
- Well they're scapegoats.
- We blame other-- - Child's Play 3,
Jamie Bulger. - Exactly.
We blame things to make our case stronger.
The guy who blamed the Scream movies,
the guy for the killings that he did
the guy who blamed Nightmare on Elm Street.
You said you know fortunately Jamie Bulger case in the UK, which was a big case.
It obviously affected a lot of people in this country.
And Child's Play 3 suddenly banned,
one and two isn't, but Child's Play 3 is.
- For one video. - Because the children
said they watched that movie
and you know there are similarities between
Jamie Bulger and Chucky.
But you can't then blame the film for the actions
of people who aren't completely there.
I knew as a 10-year-old when I was
watching those films they were pretend.
I knew when I was 15, those films were pretend.
The fact they are on the screen and are made to entertain.
Horror is one of the biggest entertainment genres around
because people love to be scared.
Horror sounds nasty and it can certainly be,
with your Blumhouses and you still have that--
- I think the two strongest emotions
the two biggest things you can react to
is horror and comedy. - Exactly.
- It's a rollercoaster.
It's just a movie.
[screams]
- [Announcer] Don't Look in the Basement.
The makers of Last House On The Left warn you again
to avoid fainting, keep repeating,
it's only a movie, only a movie, only a movie.
[screams]
- Well I think censorship thing just backfired.
It basically promoted to the curious
all it did was made everyone want to see these
and here it is 40 years later
and people are still talking about them
and wanting to see what's all the fuss.
Look where we are right now with all
re-releases on Blu-Ray and vinyl releases.
I mean the supply and demand is there.
I just wish a lot of the film makers could see
the popularity that it got
because they can finally get their due.
- No, I do not think that these movies should be banned
or be put on any sort of list like this.
I mean you don't ban paintings
and they really don't ban books anymore.
I think that no matter how extreme the film is
in it's nature, it's still art
and I don't believe that art should be censored.
- I don't agree that young children should be watching films
should be watching violence films.
I don't think a five-year-old should be watching
A Serbian Film or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
So in that way I do agree that there should be
some sort of classification system put in place
and young children shouldn't have access
to these sort of things.
But when you get to the 18s category,
I think that a lesser branch of the law,
unless there's actually something illegal
going on in the film then the whole idea
that any kind of censorship should exist is stupid.
- Censorship should video nasties be banned?
Well now I don't think they should.
Because it's part of a cinema history.
It's part of the genre.
If you ban them, people are
just gonna want to see them anyway, aren't they?
History has shown whenever's something's banned,
people are gonna try and find out why it's been banned
and watch it so no they shouldn't be banned.
People are gonna get them anyway, aren't they?
You've got the Internet and YouTube things like that
so no they definitely shouldn't be banned.
- I think some yes and some no.
Some of the movies were quite gross.
Others were probably more what I would consider an R rating,
which you could stomach.
Perhaps back in the 80s, it might have been
really gross and sort of barbaric for some people,
but I think definitely now you'll see some of the movies
that were an R rating then are now an MA rating.
So they've dropped as we've been able to digest
this material more and more over the years.
So I think at the time some yes and some no.
- Do I think they should have been banned?
It's hard to say that really
because you're looking back, you're looking back 30 years
and you're thinking well, these are just movies,
how could they have possibly have offended
so many people to think that they should be banned.
But they were in parts of the world
and they were done because there were fears
that these would affect kids and impressionable viewers.
And to a degree, you can sort of see
that that does make some sense.
You can imagine a little bit
well I'm sure there is a weird guy down the street
who watches this movie and he might get an idea.
If he knocks on my door, I can get beheaded, right?
- No, I don't think any of these films
should have been put on a list for the people
can't consume them, can't watch them.
They're made to be consumed by an audience.
They're made for adult entertainment.
If anything, I'd say try harder
to keep it out of the hands of children I guess,
but that doesn't fall back on really the film maker.
That falls on the parents and the people
that are letting them see the films, you know what I mean?
You have to be a certain age to drink and smoke
and watch porno you know what I mean?
It just throws something on that
and get a little more strict on that if you want,
but I wouldn't need to ban a film
so nobody can see it, unless people are actually
being killed in the film for the sake of the film.
Not so much in a Face of Death situation
where it's supposedly documented death
where it happened and it was caught on tape
so they'll make use of it that way.
For the most part, it's all art.
It's all entertainment.
It's not real.
There's stories being told that might be a little
more gorier than Gone With the Wind and stuff,
but that doesn't mean they need to be blacklisted
and cut out of the womb of society
so nobody could watch them.
- When it comes to do I think the film
should have been banned and put in the video nasty list,
I don't feel like they should have.
I feel like they should have warnings on the front cover
of the videotapes that says this movie should only
be viewed by people 18 and up.
They just should have really good warnings on the ones
that really were shocking.
Because the idea of banning a movie,
because honestly when you ban a movie,
all it really does is put more attention to the movie.
It's kind of like if your parent says
you can't watch that, you can't see that movie,
that's not something you should never see that,
it makes you want to watch it more.
Like I remember when I was in school,
I remember there was a sheriff that came into
when I was in middle school, I think I was in sixth grade
he came in and said, there's one movie
you should never watch and it's called Natural Born Killers.
It's shocking.
It's terrible.
It has bad depictions of police,
bad depictions of everybody, he was going on and on and on
about this list about it again and again and again,
continuously going on about Natural Born Killers.
You know what I did that night
when I got back home from school?
I immediately rented the movie.
- You know maybe you gotta out of your way a little more
to make sure that they don't go into the wrong hands
if that's what you're worried about,
but I don't think really I don't think
horror movies have ever really caused problems
in the sense that they're thinking of
in killing people and stuff.
I think that when somebody goes out
and they kill somebody
they're killing somebody because they want to kill them.
I feel like whether they grew up watching Pound Puppies
24/7 their entire life if it's in them to kill somebody,
then they'll kill somebody.
I don't think watching The Beyond or Blood Feast
is something that's gonna send them over the edge.
But I think yeah all censorship in a whole
is not a good thing.
People shouldn't be dictated to
on what they need to do or what they need to watch
and what they can and can't do.
Because I think people are they have free will
and they should be able to make their own decisions.
- Yes, so I think banning a movie,
all it really does is bringing more attention to the movies
so making it so people were like you're gonna ban,
I'm gonna find some way to watch it.
All it really was doing is making more and more people
have to go out and find any way they can to sort out
and find the movie with bootlegs or anything that they could
sending away from the copy from the US.
Anything that's all it really did.
So banning it, I really don't think
that was the way to do it.
And I also really hate the idea of banning something
and saying you can't watch that.
That's I don't know I just really
hate the concept of doing that to a movie
and censoring it and all that kind of stuff.
- Should there have been a ban?
You've got these movies being made,
they are produced they are funded by studios,
financed independently.
- I mean a lot of them were done quiet rough.
- Yeah, some of them were European,
they were being released in Europe,
released in America, banned here.
Now obviously we had a particular issue in the UK
in regards to these films.
Now obviously we had mentioned before was BBFC
was Mary Whitehouse, so should they have
been banned because of that?
No they shouldn't have been. - No.
- They were banned because of an agenda
from a particular political group
or a particular organization
who deemed those films to be inappropriate.
They weren't banned because
there was an uproar from the community in the public,
far from it, actually the public were drawn towards
these films even more so because they were banned.
- That's the thing ultimately,
I'm talking about all this in retrospect--
- Of course yeah. - We weren't there at the time
in the sense of knowing-- - I've done my research
and watching, so talk about me maybe on this,
on this our kind of experiences.
So for me, I got into horror films from a very early age
and in fact, doing the story part now
my first encounter with a video nasty,
albeit I didn't realize it at the time
was the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
My old man I had actually seen Part 2 first
on a pirate Dutch video, my dad had it
and the reason I think we got on to watching that
was because I think I was helping him organized his vinyls
and he had the original soundtrack Chainsaw Massacre 2.
The cover threw me straight away.
It was the breakfast club shot,
which now it's absolutely hilarious.
When you're a little kid and you see this hideous face
with a chainsaw and nubbins, corpse, it was terrifying.
We watched it.
I was entertained.
I was terrified.
But you know it was a memorable experience.
Then not long afterwards he dug out
his original Iver Film Services VHS box of Chainsaw Massacre
the original like it was just the silhouette
Leatherface waving the chainsaw around.
Thrown all over the box is uncut, uncensored, it happened,
completely sensationalizing the product.
And he popped it on and I think I only watched
a segment first it was when Kirk runs into the house
and Pam does as well and they both met their demises.
So I'd experienced horror, but never on that level
and unfortunately the bar was set then
and not much in the year since
has the had same impact on me.
- I don't really believe in censorship.
I don't really see the point behind it,
particularly in this day and age.
But the BBFC's viewpoint has always
that they will ban something if they feel that
it can cause harm through to an individual
or to society for the actions of an individual,
which I think is just something that's just
never been proved, it's just illogical.
It's like saying you know for example
if you take something like a gun, a gun is harmful.
It's been proved to cause harm, so therefore we ban it.
But when it comes to films, to say that some people
might watch a film and go out and cause harm or whatever,
while other people might not is pretty much
kind of proves that films don't cause harm.
The way that people act in society
comes back the whole kind of nature, nurture debate.
It's all about how someone was brought up,
their kind of how they learn about ethics and morality
and how they understand their actions cause harm to others
or it can be through the nature side of things.
If someone has some sort of mental problems in their brain,
if it's like caused through genetics
or it's caused through in psychology I learned about
how someone's frontal lobe gets damaged
and that relates to their theory of mind
and how their understanding of their
actions causes harm to other people.
These are the sort of things
that make people go out and kill.
If you've been brought up as a normal person,
you're brought up, you understand the difference
between right and wrong.
You understand that your actions have consequences
and you understand the feelings of other people,
you're not gonna watch a film
and then have all of those beliefs changed.
If I spent the weekend watching the film Reservoir Dogs,
I'm not gonna go out on Monday
and start cutting policemen's ears off.
That's just not how human beings work.
I think if a film doesn't break the law,
if it's not like child pornography
or a real life snuff film or doesn't have animal cruelty in,
then I don't think that anything should be banned.
I think it's absurd as well,
the fact that we still have stuff like
A Serbian Film is banned.
The full, uncut version is still being cut.
Yet, you can go onto Amazon now
and buy the full uncut Swedish release
next to the BBFC-approved version.
I don't understand what these people are doing
in their little SoHo office.
It just seems a bit crazy idea that they still sit there
and they still agonize over which bits to cut
and which bits to leave in.
Oh should we is this okay, should we have this shot here?
As if any of that really matters.
Like I said, going back to the and the other thing as well
you get films which were banned once
and then have now been released.
Their logic has always been that
well society's changed and what was once harmful
is now not harmful and going back to my example of the gun.
If I shot someone with a gun now,
if we waited 20 years and then I shot someone,
the fact that society has changed
or the world has changed, it's still harmful.
Whereas the idea of a film being harmful
and then not being harmful is just illogical.
We've got access to 24 hours a day hardcore pornography.
We haven't got a society full of rapists and sex offenders
as a result of it.
- I'll tell you what is actually
the silver bullet is technology.
Technology will always advance faster
than oppression can keep it down.
You put warning labels on tapes, on music,
on heavy metal, on hip hop and rap
and people copy the tapes and distribute them.
You ban videos, you ban horror movies
from being sold from video stores
from being sold in the market place and people copy them.
You ban videos now, they get up on the Internet.
Technology is the silver bullet.
Technology is the thing
that always triumphs over censorship.
- It's about the constant fear of what if.
I think especially when you become a parent,
that comes into play a lot, because you're always
what if something were to happen?
What if something was to happen to my child
or yours or anybody else's,
the people in society that need more protection than others?
And there's a feeling that you want to take over
and control or at least make safe and make safe
is an interesting term, because you say make safe
and yet making safe is not it may be safe for you,
but that's not safe for everybody else.
In fact, that's just straight out controlling.
That's where I think a lot of the mindset
was coming from within the idea to ban these films.
You gotta keep in mind that
these were not just typical horror films with the violence
you would have already seen or expected to see.
Blood that was in color and red and gore,
I mean that was sort of already there.
People were expecting some of that
that was there, but this was balls out.
This was the stuff where you would just figure
if somebody was dying by a knife or a machete
that's bad enough, but to have them chopped into pieces
or guts pulled out or somebody's eating the guts
and then you turn around you cut off the head
next person who's watching this happen.
I mean that's just going for broke.
You cut off the genitals and eat that penis,
because everybody in cannibal land
seems to want to eat the genitals, I don't know why.
Anyway, there's this idea that it's not just a horror movie,
it's not just what you might expect to see
down in the cinema, it's no restrictions.
It's balls out in your face.
Whatever you could imagine what would happen
would happen in these movies.
- [Announcer] To avoid fainting, keep repeating--
- [Crowd] It's only a movie, it's only a movie,
it's only a movie.
- What's great about video nasties I think
is it's something that doesn't exist at all anymore.
Don't get me wrong, there's still censorship,
but what we have now these days
is ease of access to all these films.
You can download them.
You can buy them in shops.
Half of them are now available in Poundland.
- Yeah and I also think the audience's perception
of what is gory and what is horrific
and also censorship itself has completely changed now.
Whereas you look back in the video nasties of the day
and actually in today's comparison,
they're kind of tame, we said when we we're talking
about our own that these films,
some of them aren't the greatest of films.
But they have become cult classics
because they were labeled as video nasties.
- I don't really think these films should have been banned.
I mean okay they've got a rating,
so you've got a rating for a film that's fine.
But they shouldn't have been outright banned.
It wasn't just children who were seeing these films.
It was adults who were being told
they couldn't watch the video nasties.
So these were being banned from everybody.
The major thing was children
might see these at home or whatever.
But what about the adults?
Can't they make their own mind up?
That's what I really didn't get is how
they didn't even put a rating on it or anything like that.
[dramatic music] [screaming]
Adults couldn't even make a decision
to watch these films or not.
So I really don't think these films
should have been banned at all.
- Perhaps they were seeing the title alone
and they were imagining in their mind
what was happening in this movie,
what could possibly be in this movie.
And of course you've got to give it to the people
making the box covers because you look at something
like Driller Killer and you see the drill
going into the guy's head.
It's puncturing the skull and it's drilling away
and all the blood is coming down.
The guy is screaming and it's probably in his brain already.
And you gotta imagine if that's on the box cover,
my God, what else could be in this movie?
- The Last House on the Left,
this film was on the banned nasties list.
It was rejected until 2000, I think,
I think they submitted it again in 2000
and then it was rejected and then in 2003,
they allowed a cut version to be released.
And then in 2007, it was submitted again
and they allowed it through uncut.
I'm thinking when it was banned in 2000
and they said no, you can't release this film,
did they honestly believe that it was harmful then?
Then 10 years later, or less than 10 years
they'd allow it to be released fully uncut?
I mean are there admitting that they were wrong
and they're saying we were wrong,
it's not actually a harmful film.
It's illogical.
It doesn't make any sense.
I've seen all these films and I don't go out killing people.
Going back to video nasties,
the only thing which I do agree with being cut
or censored is the animal cruelty
which comes into a lot of the Italian cannibal films
unfortunately because that does, that breaks the law.
Animal cruelty is illegal.
We don't really want to watch it.
I agree like I said anything that breaks the law
shouldn't be allowed in the film,
but when it comes to made-up violence
and fake effects and things like that,
then there's no logical reason
to keep banning that sort of thing,
to keep censoring that sort of thing.
- Video nasties I always found
a very interesting subject matter
because over the years I think a lot of the films
that were considered video nasties are art films.
They're actually really beautiful examples
of how horror could be enter like the art mainstream.
I know in a way that sounds like a contradiction,
where a lot of people think art movies
are Ingmar Bergman and Antonioni
or people like that, and of course those films
are really artistic, but the reason is
the Italians always took a very blanket view
of making a film, whereas they actually thought
and rightfully so that the visual aspect
of making a film and the audio aspect
should marry as a really beautiful thing.
Even if the subject matter is dark and the Italians felt
that the overall package should be beautiful.
I totally agree with that.
I think that film is a visual medium
and so unless you are creating something
with a look that's meant to be deliberately grungy
because say it's like a mockumentary
or a fan film footage film,
then I think films should be beautiful,
no matter how dark the subject matter.
I suppose in a way that means when I talk about
video nasties I'm really thinking about
the Italian films that came out at the time.
Of course when I rented them as a boy on VHS,
I always remember going down to the VHS store
and you'd find out the latest horror movie
had come in from Italy or had come in from the USA.
And they weren't video nasties then.
They were just the latest horror movie
and so many in retrospect that these films
are considered video nasties.
- Horror films of the 1970s and the 80s
are notorious primarily for their gore.
I think it was a prime period for horror films.
The style had changed way before then
from the your gothic castles
to the real world, serial killers.
- You change to mass killer kind of films
compared to your Dracula films or your Hammer horrors.
- And then by the late 70s, you've got the odd zombie films.
So you're dealing with two kind of extremes.
On the the one hand, you've got you're gritty,
realistic films like Last House on the Left
and then on the other hand, you've got your
beyond fantastical films like Evil Dead.
- But this was an issue then for the censors
that when these films like Last House on the Left
came out they were so real in their terms,
they weren't monsters or vampires,
they're sort of real things happening.
- And then that's where you can probably
like easily that question then.
You know it's hard for me to discern
what should be and shouldn't be banned.
I think Gunner Hansen once said
he finds it outrageous a small group of people
like the BBFC were able,
all it has is a small group of people
who basically decide whether everyone else
can watch it or not.
- Well, that's true, you've got think about
the types of people, you're middle class people.
- Video nasty was a mass class divide, wasn't it?
- Well yeah, Mary Whitehouse this older lady,
who was probably in her 60s, 70s maybe--
- And she hadn't even seen-- - She hadn't seen
any of these horror films that she was dictating
to people-- - And then you had
James Furman say the-- - James Furman yeah.
- The impact of Texas Chainsaw Massacre
might not affect your everyday person,
but it might affect what was it, a working class
member from Birmingham like you.
[laughs]
And so going back on that you're super realistic
horror films because that's what it was, right?
It was either serial killers.
I mean you had your cannibal movies,
but then you had your zombie movies.
So if I was to say, if I was given the choice
one of these is more susceptible to being banned
than the other then in my eyes
because they're doing it because the effect
it might have on the audience.
And in this instance, their major worry is kids.
Then in all reality, the ones that should be looked at more
would be your Last House on the Left,
because you're literally I mean the thing is
Wes Craven and I'll say this as a fan of the film,
Wes Craven never set out to make Last House on the Left
to glorify violence, it was his--
- Or to be a banned film. - No, or to be a banned film,
but it was his reaction to the Vietnam War
and the fact that the TV was showing such violence.
All right, we know that as fans of the film
and a lot of people do, that that was his intent.
The BBFC's perception of it was
that it's glorifying violence.
So ultimately it's down the violence,
but Last House on the Left, you are kind of showing
what could be a very real situation,
which no doubt there has been situations like that.
If there are to make a decision on that or Evil Dead,
which was also on that same list and Zombie Flesh Eaters,
then that would be the one, at least I personally lean
more towards if there was ones to be banned.
Because-- - But why like you said,
why was a small group of people banning those films?
What was it about those particular films?
- One of my memories of renting was
when we got I Spit On Your Grave
and I watched it with two of my friends
probably around 12 or 13.
My dad walked in me, the scene right where
the rape was about to start
and he just sat down with us and started watching it.
We were like just laughing uncontrollably
because we were just basically embarrassed
we didn't know how to process it
and he just turned to us and said, this isn't funny.
We just felt so stupid,
but he ended up watching the whole thing with us.
- I think in a lot of ways the video rental store
was sort of a gateway to the video nasty.
I remember renting both Last House on the Left
and I Spit On Your Grave
for the first time at a video store.
I remember when I rented Last House on the Left,
I had to rent it on my dad's rental account
because of course I wasn't old enough at the time.
The movie actually got eaten in his VCR
and I remember he got really upset
and told me this is what happens
when you try watching old movies.
So I'll always have that memory
from watching Last House on the Left,
renting it at the store.
Then I also remember I Spit On Your Grave
from the time I was 15 I think
and so I had to have an older friend rent it for me
actually and he made a bootleg copy of it on video
with photocopy guard so
I could watch it in on my own any time.
Because at the time that movie hadn't really been available
here other than the Wizard release in America
and obviously it was a video nasty,
so it was practically impossible to find at the time.
So I always have those memories
and they definitely stick out for that reason.
- I've got so many favorite video nasties.
I love Cannibal Ferox.
That is one of my favorite ones,
really do love this film, Cannibal Ferox.
I think this is actually a bootleg copy as well.
I paid about 50 quid for this.
I actually remember years ago,
these did have a small box like this,
but this one does look like a bootleg version.
I think this actual label is far too shiny,
if you can see that one there.
So I actually think this is a bootleg.
Cannibal Ferox is one of my favorite all time video nasties.
I love the actual soundtrack, the score.
It was so shocking.
When you actually watch this film,
I remember seeing this as a bootleg copy
and it scared the shit out of me, this film.
It's bloody brilliant.
That haunting score, you hear this music,
this synth kind of prog rock music come up,
the same part all throughout
and you know there's gonna be a death scene
or a killing scene, so I think one of my
all time favorites is Cannibal Ferox.
[creepy rock music]
[screams]
- My favorite video nasty is probably
it's a tough call but I'd probably say
either The Evil Dead or Cannibal Holocaust
because those movies are really balls to the wall
and really intense and you take the Evil Dead
that's a little more cartoony
than Cannibal Holocaust would be.
Because Cannibal Holocaust was pretty much
just a documentary, but it's a fake documentary,
but it's shot entirely like a documentary
so you're supposed to believe that these things are real.
And then The Evil Dead you're not supposed
to believe these things are real.
It's a very kind of far out there tale
of just gore and madness.
Cannibal Holocaust is more along the lines
is this is what happens on
the other side of the world type deal,
which is scary, because it's that unknown.
You'll probably never find yourself in a situation
where you'd have to deal with that group of people,
but it's still scary to know that they're out there.
- I think for me definitely Flesh For Frankenstein
as I had been watching all these horror movies,
when I finally discovered that one,
actually there was two films, there was Blood for Dracula,
which were both Andy Warhol films.
But they're both borderline pornographic
and I think being a teenager, a pubescent teenager
starting to get really interested in the other sex.
And finding these movies
were sort of borderline pornographic,
but had the horror and the gore that I really loved,
so definitely Flesh For Frankenstein,
that would be my favorite.
- I would have to say my favorite is Absurd
and it's actually one of the latest entries
from my findings, I first heard of it
from the soundtrack and was immediately blown away by it.
And as a film, it checks every box for video nasties,
and of course it's got the great score,
but the story is good.
It's intriguing, it's actually one of the few
that you don't have to check your watch
and you don't have to fast forward it.
The story is entertaining and it keeps you entertained.
It definitely takes a lot from Halloween,
but that's cool and George Eastman rules.
It delivers on very, checks every box.
- I guess maybe around here we called them
bootleg the old VHSes back in the day,
you'd see guys selling out of a trunk of a car.
Some people because they rip people off
and in some cases because they were too violent
and sexually explicit.
Now this stuff was very sought after when I was a kid,
because there was no video on demand.
There was no Amazon Prime or Vimeo
so people couldn't find these things.
They had to exchange them.
It's kind of creepy if you think about it,
it's like a dark web of inappropriate VHS movies,
but I think that it really built up independent film-making
in a big way and I personally feel
without some of the video nasties
and how they were exchanged almost illegally
or illegally in some countries, some states.
I think without that you wouldn't have seen
such a surge of independent film makers
who later did move on to the Hollywood level in the 90s.
You saw a lot of people get their start
working on these movies
that it was so shocking everybody wanted to see it.
It had either the insane gore effects
or a sex scene that was crazy for its time.
You know very low budget stuff
and personally the last couple of movies I've done
such as Witchhunt and Parts Unknown,
I think I've modeled a lot of what I've done
as a director around some of these so-called video nasties.
Because they were shot on much smaller budgets.
I think the budget wasn't what was important.
It was what was accomplished.
And what was accomplished was creating almost this
taboo situation where you can go
and watch one of these things.
You weren't seeing in a theater.
They were hard to find, hard to track down
and you had something that somebody didn't.
It wasn't just because it was hard-to-get movie either.
It was because it actually had
the sex scene and violence in it
and the good stuff that I think
sometimes we don't get to see anymore.
As our society changes and becomes a little bit more PC
and we're not allowed to show stuff in film,
I think there's gonna be a big someday a big resurgence
in this underground film making.
And a way to bring this back for fans of this genre,
I'd say anyone watching his is probably
a fan of this genre,
is to go and support the local horror conventions
and some of the local people that set up shop
at these small events.
Because they're the ones selling the stuff now.
The Amazon Primes and all that stuff, that's cool,
but what you're gonna see on there
and Netflix and all that is probably
more of what you've already seen.
So hopefully someday we get to back to this,
it might not be VHS, it might be on Blu-Ray
or even digital, but someday I hope there's a way
to kind of trade these movies again.
I think it got a lot of people their start.
It found a lot of fans.
That's kind of my feeling about the importance
of the so-called video nasties
and what they did for people like me
who make low budget material.
- I got into video nasties
as around it might be around '98, '99 time
when they were still banned, but it was right before
James Furman left the BBFC.
All these films started to become unbanned
and were starting to get certificates and stuff.
So I got into the video nasties at a time
when they were still banned and then I saw
the point when they started to get re-released.
When they were still banned I remember
my other school and a friend of mine
I'd always had an interest in horror films
and extreme films so the video nasties
were something that always fascinated me.
That idea these films that you shouldn't watch,
that they've been banned somehow dangerous or whatever,
if you watched them they could be disturbing to you
and say that when you were at school,
that just makes you want to find all these films.
At that time a friend of mine he came across an advert
on the back Darling Free Ads newspaper magazine,
if anybody remembers that.
Someone was sending copies of The Exorcist.
Then he asked about nasties, if he had any other tapes
and he had a whole list, he had pretty much
the whole video nasties.
He had loads of obscure, cult hard-to-find films.
That's where I basically started seeing these things.
We would spend I think he used to do two for 10 quid
or two for 15 pounds, he'd put two films into one tape
I used to start buying those,
I think all of them from laser discs or pre-seller copies.
My first experience to the video nasties
was just all through bootleg copies.
But his ones were really good quality.
I remember a friend who also had another guy selling them.
And they were fifth, sixth, seventh generation copies
and they were almost unwatchable,
but this guy from the Darling Free Ads magazine,
his stuff was always like amazing quality.
I think they were all from laser discs he got them.
Then around that time I actually started
making bootlegs as well to sell on eBay.
Like I said at the time this is when they were
still banned and you couldn't get them
so I used to make copies.
Used to get four-hour tapes and put two films
that were kind of connected one tape
and stick them on eBay and send them for like 10 pound,
15 pound a pop each time.
Stuff like Cannibal Holocaust and Cannibal Ferox would go onto one tape.
I Spit On Your Grave and Last House on the Left
would go on another tape.
Occasionally you'd get bootlegs from people
saying they didn't realize they were buying bootlegs
and your account would be closed down.
- So did I ever own any bootlegs of the video nasties?
God yes, I tell you, this is a really great story.
In about '96, '97, this is before the Internet
was really big, e-mail might have been used
by some people that I knew.
But in '96 to '97 I started doing mail trading
of movies on VHS where we would send dupes.
Through e-mail you would make contacts with people.
I guess they did have websites up which is really
how you would find people, but they were into trades,
so somebody would have their list
of what movies they had
and you would have a list of what movies you had and we would swap lists.
And of course we'd make a deal.
You say well geez, I would really love
to get this, this and this
and then the guy on the other end
would pick same amount of movies from your list.
You would make the copies if you were a reputable trader,
you would buy brand new video tapes
and make the copies onto those.
I guess some people might have used previously used
blank tapes, which was the
shittiest thing to do for somebody.
But anyway you're buy blank tapes,
copy the movie you had, so you're making
your third or fourth generation movie
onto a fifth or sixth generation movie
because everybody is trading a dupe of a dupe of a dupe
and then you mail them in the mail.
Well this went on for me for a few years
and I got so many movies through the mail trading.
Cannibal Holocaust, Cannibal Ferox,
Beyond the Darkness, I got that one.
I got everything you see, uncut Friday the 13th Part One.
These were all the movies that were not on DVD at all yet.
They were not being re-released and remastered.
They were still on very ropey old tapes.
Another company I'm aware of was of course Midnight Video.
They were selling it at the time.
A lot of people I knew had that movie
or Midnight movie tapes
and they were making dupes of that to trade.
So I got Anthropothigast and stuff
and the Midnight Video Anthropothigast
was made up of different sources.
So when it came to see George Eastman
reach into the woman and pull out the fetus to eat her
that particular piece of footage
was coming in this very, very washed out
blurry piece of video and then would cut out
sort of washed out video where you saw
the rest of the movie.
So you had different composites put together.
- So yeah, I remember when I was a kid,
the one in the United States everybody wanted to see
Faces of Death, that was the big thing.
If you had a VHS of Faces of Death, you were like a king.
You'd go into a party and be like hey,
I bought this off of some dude on the street
and everybody would gather around the TV and watch this
I have no idea if that's actually real or not.
I feel like it's mixed.
It was just that suspense I think
really paved the way for things like The Blair Witch,
the found footage films that excitement of
I'm seeing something that's nobody supposed to see.
I think it really captured what independent film
is supposed to be and not a system of Hollywood B
which is what we tend to get on a lot of the video-on-demand services.
- One of the next things that I have here
is actually bootleg copy of Tenebrae.
This was a copy of the Video Media release as you can see,
but it's a totally photocopied cover art.
And also something interesting about it,
you can see here maybe is that it's got
the British rating on it instead of the American one.
It's sort of all over the place here,
but this is the way I first saw the film.
It's what interested me to not only Dario Argento's movies,
but Italian movies as well.
That seen at the end with the girl
that gets her arm chopped off
and sprays blood all over the wall
was sort of life changing for me
because that's the moment I realized horror was art.
This movie will always stand out to me for that reason.
Even though this is a bootleg copy
and I of course have better versions of this to watch
I'm always gonna hold onto this,
because this is what started my love for Italian horror,
this very bootleg release of Tenebrae.
- I did own one banned film.
I remember in Melbourne, Victoria,
there weren't a lot of films banned.
I mean the Driller Killer was.
I think Silent Night, Deadly Night perhaps.
Some of these films you could into state.
I remember a friend of mine came to me knowing how much I adored horror
and he'd been to the States and he picked me up
a copy of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2,
and I remember that was banned.
I was the only guy I knew that had this video tape,
and so attracted a lot of friends to come and watch it.
And that was a banned film,
so that was probably one of the only ones
that I really owned at the time that did have the stigma.
- I did own a lot of bootleg because I was on a quest
to try and own all of the video nasties,
so I literally did own, I still do now
so I've got a lot of bootleg copies of stuff like that.
I had these tapes and it was stuck on the side,
hand written Driller Killer and stuff like that on there.
- Yes, I owned several bootlegs actually of these movies.
Growing up back then, they weren't that accessible.
You couldn't just walk into a Best Buy
if you wanted to buy a movie like this.
You had to track them down.
You had to do your research.
Usually, they were second, third, fourth generation copies.
They were squiggly and grainy and looked like crap
and you could barely tell what was happening sometimes.
It was in a lot of ways really cool
because you knew that this
was the only way to see the movie.
You were seeing something that not everybody else saw.
- So they were a bit thing, the bootleg copies,
because they were just going around.
I mean when I was a kid in teenage years,
it was bootleg copies.
You never saw a real copy of a video nasty.
So from about '85 to about 2000 or even 2001,
you had these bootleg VHS copies
and bootleg DVD copies in circulation.
So you're watching these, sometimes it was like
a fifth generation bootleg
of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre you were watching
or something like that.
- It's funny because it's given me a really high tolerance
for low-quality transfers
because I just grew up watching
a whole lot of bootleg movies.
Nowadays it doesn't bother me.
I can watch really horrible stuff on YouTube and I don't blink an eye.
It's part of growing up watching those bootlegs
and it's still sort of exciting if I'm at a flea market now
or garage sale and I find a bootleg of an old horror movie,
I definitely snatch it up.
It's nostalgic.
It's really cool and unique
and it's exciting to watch a movie like that sometimes.
It adds a lot to the mystique of the movie.
- [Announcer] See Abel Ferrera as Reno Miller,
a man driven to the very edge.
[moaning]
And then beyond.
[drill rattling] [screaming]
The Driller Killer is coming.
- The Driller Killer when it came out
I remember was a very controversial film
because they had all this rumor going on at the time
that when Abel Ferrara made the film
and starred in it that he was actually killing down and outs.
Because the people in the film
really looked like down and outs.
Some of them probably were and they were paid
a few dollars to become part of this movie.
I always found that very disturbing
for years after seeing it and then experiencing again
over the years and the decades.
I've still found it a very troubling film.
I think because it's incredibly realistic on one aspect
and a little over the top in others
in terms of the performance.
The performance of Abel Ferrara himself
it's mixed, it's very strong at times.
And then it's so wild it's like do I quite believe that?
But it was shot in such a lurid style
that you couldn't help be sucked into
that grimy, horrible underworld.
And then when the murders you were like
oh my God, is this happening for real?
So in a way, even though it's not found footage,
it kind of feels like a mockumentary-style film,
which would have been one of the first of that kind.
Driller Killer is a film that's always stayed with me
for its level of violence, grungy atmosphere
and general feeling of dismay and overall horror.
- [Announcer] Faces of Death, now a major motion picture.
- Faces of Death, the mother of all Mondo movies.
Oh, where to start with this one.
In a nutshell, it's a documentary about dying.
It's pretty tame compared to what
a lot of people think about it.
A lot of people think it's a flat out snuff movie
where you see real people getting murdered on video
and that's not at all what it is.
It's got a narrator, he basically discusses
the whole cycle of life
and what really happens to us when we pass on.
They examine it throughout different cultures
and they look at the different traditions
that different people do around death in their own cultures.
It's got some pretty notorious scenes,
like a man that is caught on fire.
I think that the original movie
is the movie with the monkey brains.
There's quite a few scenes that really make this movie
stand out, but it's notorious for being mostly fake.
A lot of the stuff was staged.
It's come to light now throughout various documentaries
and information on the Internet
that the re-enacted a lot of the stuff.
I think that the scene that takes place
in the Middle East with the monkeys
was supposed to take place on
a tradition somewhere in Russia.
So they changed a lot of things
to not offend so many cultures when the movie came out,
but to me the movie's just a big spectacle.
The fear surrounding the movie with parents,
the fact that you couldn't find it anywhere,
you had to ask for it some places
or it was in a special section
with the other death movies or pornography even.
You had to be 18 to get it.
That always really appealed to me
and made the movie probably more exciting
than it is to watch, because like I said
it's a pretty by-the-number 70s documentary.
It's just focused on death.
I think that even today it's the type of thing
you could probably show to a high school class
and nobody would bat an eye.
Everybody would be on their phones
watching stuff more extreme on YouTube.
It's funny because those movies
will stick out and be the most extreme,
but by today's standards they're almost a joke.
I think that that whole series really stands out
against the other video nasties
just because it's sort of the real deal
and it was the first of its kind when it came out.
- I remember another series of video nasties
which was quite horrific at the time to be quite frank.
Faces of Death, do you remember those?
It was a series of films, video films
with apparently people actually dying.
Well I wouldn't want to watch them now
and it actually turns me stomach
to think I watched them back then.
But there was one that I remember
and it was a chap in a gas chamber
and you actually had the cameraman in the gas chamber.
Even as a kid I thought hold on, this can't be right.
Then it turned out most of them were faked.
Then there was one of a magician
and mostly goes round and he's trying to cut himself
out of something and these knives come down
and go into his head and he dies.
He's so obviously it was a rubber head or something
or plastic or wax head,
but then you still had some what still appears to me
genuine footage of people dying.
THere's one terrible scene where a chap
gets out of a car in Africa or somewhere
and he's filming this lioness.
They cut to actually him filming it on this teeny camera
and then this other lion comes up from behind him
and attacks him and kills him.
All the people are screaming
and they have the footage of him
being put in a car in a body bag.
So that was pretty horrific.
I wouldn't want to watch them again I didn't think.
- Some of the sickest video nasty,
I would say the craziest, goriest, sickest one
out of the whole lot would be Faces of Death.
[droning music]
- [Announcer] Now a motion picture dares
to take you beyond the threshold of the living
where you may discover your own face of death.
- I think that film is really sick.
I mean there's actually, is there real killings
in that film or not?
I don't know because I've never actually
got the whole way through it.
I've put it on before, but it actually turns my stomach.
There was that big thing in the 80s
where they were deemed to be eating monkey brains
and we've got prime ministers, MPs,
saying they're eating monkey brains for God sake in that.
They weren't.
It was all fake anyway, which was totally crazy.
But Faces of Death has to be the sickest, craziest film.
I think the film that you'd crown
the king of the video nasty would be I Spit On Your Grave.
That poster art, that whole cover is synonymous
of being the queen, king of the video nasty.
It's such an amazing film.
It's really brilliant.
- Faces of Death was actually created
for the Japanese film market.
It was a movie called Junk.
It was released there that way.
They tested it with American audiences and it caught on,
so they dropped it on home video
and it ended up becoming a really popular American series
known as Faces of Death.
A lot of people also don't know
is that almost every installment of the film
was released in a different version in other countries.
Notoriously Faces of Death 3,
it's not actually on the list,
but it's a sequel to the original.
That was released as Fear in most parts of Europe
and it had a completely different narrator,
totally different scenes, it was edited completely different
and in some ways it's a lot better
than the American version that came out.
Of course there's several versions that were released
of Last House on the Left.
America first got the R-rated version
when it came out to theaters,
but then we did eventually get the uncut version
on home video even though it was missing
a lot of the gore that Wes Craven had shot.
It was still a little bit longer
than what the UK got for example.
- Definitely Faces of Death would have to be
the most sadistic I mean when I first heard the name,
it was almost like this taboo Fear Factor.
Someone would say Faces of Death, have you seen it?
And people would go no, don't watch that.
It's supposed to be terrifying.
I think because you know it's really a documentary.
And it was the first video footage
that came out in the 80s
where apparently you could see these real deaths.
Of course there was skepticism.
Some people thought they were staged and whatnot,
but Faces of Death at least where I was living,
that was supposed to be the most scariest
and the most taboo so just based on the reputation of those.
There was a whole spawn of documentaries that came out.
I remember there was Savage Man, Savage Beast,
Shocking Asia and there was Being Different.
There was The Killing of America, there was this whole range
Savage Man, Savage Beast.
So it was really appeared in the 80s
where I guess horror film became sort of popular.
Then they went into documentary stream.
It almost like trying to find the scariest
or trying to find the most impact with the gore factor.
That's what people were after.
It was almost those people that had an obsession
and they wanted to get as nasty as they could.
And of course now everything is reality TV.
So even documentaries back then
I think they were onto something.
- One of the most violent other than Faces of Death
in the video nasties would probably be Cannibal Holocaust.
I mean there's a lot of violent movies on the list,
but that's the one that really
pushed the envelope at the time
and was notorious for its graphic nature.
The impalement through the woman's anus and out of her mouth
is pretty iconic now as far as horror imagery goes.
I think that would probably have to go down
as probably the most sickest of the banned films,
followed closely by movies like Faces of Death.
- Every time I watch it it makes say
god damn this fucking movie goes all the way.
I mean Cryo House Releasing has the perfect tag line.
It's the one that goes all the way.
But it's a good piece of cinema.
It's a fucking good movie.
It deserves to be seen by a lot more people.
But I think a lot of people hear stories
and of course the animal torture stuff,
the animal killings, it's a tough movie,
but it deserves to be on that list.
It's one that deserved to be on that list
as far as being making sure that young kids don't see it.
The rape and all that it's a tough movie.
- Yeah, I gotta admit there are films
on the list of video nasties
that I really couldn't watch today.
- Oh good Lord!
It's unbelievable, it's horrible.
I can't understand the reason for such cruelty.
- Cannibal films I have no interest in watching those.
I don't like the idea of innocent people being tortured
and ripped apart and eaten alive.
It's just not something that appeals to me.
- I wouldn't say that there's any films I couldn't stomach,
but perhaps there's scenes I can't stomach.
I've noticed as I get older
it's just getting increasingly harder
for me to be able to keep my eyes on the screen
during the excessive gore.
In particular, the scene in Cannibal Holocaust
where it shows the woman impaled.
That's pretty hard to look at.
Obviously being a guy, the scene in
I Spit On Your Grave where she takes the guy's manhood.
It doesn't actually show anything,
but that's definitely something
that is very hard as a guy to watch.
And also in Zombie Flesh Eaters of course
the notorious scene with the eyeball,
this split in the eyeball.
I don't know how anybody can watch that scene
without covering their eyes,
because it's just it's torture
as her eye gets closer and closer and closer
to that splinter, it's like oh my God,
turn your head what are you doing?
It's very hard to watch.
And then it pierces and it's disgusting
and in typical Lucio Fulci fashion,
it doesn't cut away right away.
So it's very hard to watch,
but it's still an enjoyable movie.
All of these movies are really enjoyable,
even if I have to cover my eyes through parts of them.
- No, I wish there was.
I mentioned Cannibal Holocaust,
but I mean like I said I got desensitized to it.
But there's really nothing that does it to me anymore.
So no, I wish there was though.
I wish I was and I say it a lot
because I know some of these films I could mention
like having friends seeing I would envy that feeling again.
But I just don't get it anymore.
- I think a film I couldn't stand like
it has to be Faces of Death is one I couldn't stand,
but Cannibal Holocaust watching that film turned my stomach.
It's such a good horror film.
It's a great video nasty and a great horror film,
but it actually turns my stomach.
There's a scene in there where they're killing a turtle
and it just makes me even now I'll put that on,
I will retch, my stomach will turn
when it comes to that scene.
So yeah I think Cannibal Holocaust and Faces of Death
even now they make me feel queasy even thinking about them.
Both really amazing films, but really, really sick.
- I think Cannibal Holocaust,
a friend of mine had a re-release on DVD
and he put it on and I was like okay,
we'll go back there, we'll have a look.
But I really just felt sick.
I was kind of not really probably now
being a grown man, it wasn't scary.
It was a bit more sadistic.
I think that was a movie that was a little more disturbing.
It just didn't really have much of a clear narrative
that I like I mean for me film is definitely an escape.
I love fiction, so I think that one was almost
sort of borderline real
and it just kind of made me feel sick.
- So yeah, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one of
my all-time favorite video nasties.
The strange thing about that film was
I remember watching that and another bootleg version
for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and it was really fuzzy.
Before I watched that film, I felt scared
because I knew something really bad was gonna happen.
Everyone was talking about this film.
But the crazy thing is in the actual film,
there's hardly any blood, hardly any gore at all.
In fact, there's basically none.
Everything we see happens off screen.
All right, you see him grab Pam and stick her up on the hook
but you don't see anything else.
You don't see any incisions of hooks
and bloody heads coming off and guts or anything like that.
A lot of that film is what you don't see
that is actually scarier in that film.
And for me The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
is one of the all-time best not just video nasties,
but one of the best horror films of all time.
So for me, you get that kind of film
and you think why would you ban a piece of art?
Because that's what you're doing.
You're banning pieces of art with these films.
- So the The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
two siblings and three of their friends,
on route to visit their grandfather's grave in Texas
end up falling victim to
a family of cannibalistic psychopaths.
[laughs]
Yeah, when I saw Texas it was by a company called Film Waves
and I think the whole thing about it was that
it was based on a true story.
That was the biggest fear factor.
It's interesting now seeing film makers like
Nicolas Rining Refin he thinks
it's his favorite film as well.
I was very lucky and obviously McGunner
and also received a copy of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
signed by Tobe Hooper himself for my 30th birthday.
So the movie really resonated with me.
That was one of the films that was almost slash doco style.
It was very raw, very gritty
and kind of changed the face of cinema
as far as horror goes.
So definitely a big thumbs up for me.
It would be in my top four for sure.
- I think I've got this is the German copy this one.
So this is the German copy of the video nasty.
I actually really like this cover art.
You've got a chainsaw massacre
going through this woman, it's bloody brilliant.
[screams]
- Great film from that list to me
is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
and the hellish time Tobe Hooper had trying
to get that film made in one of the hottest summers ever
in the US with stinking, rotting meat on set.
I mean I'm sure the experience of making that film
was a video nasty in itself.
Because a lot of them are throwing up in the heat of the day
with the smell of the interiors
and all the rotting flesh that they had to keep filming.
In those days they weren't using digital.
They were actually shooting on 16 mil.
So they knew that if they wasted any film
or wasted any time,
then they may not get to finish their film.
The funders they leaned on them strongly
that they got the film made in time and on budget
and hopefully ended up with something
that they could sell or that they could exploit in cinemas.
And as we know it became a massive hit.
- [Announcer] After you stop screaming,
you'll start talking about it.
[droning music]
- I'm not sure it was ever considered
a video nasty in the USA,
but of course when it came out in Britain and Ireland,
it quickly became part of that list.
Which is more amusing about it, that film contains more
psychological violence than physical violence.
Even though there is physical violence in it,
a lot of it off screen and that is very interesting to me.
It goes to show that you don't need to show
the really nasty stuff, you just need to suggest it
and then the audience were deeply disturbed.
Because there's nothing, nothing, nothing more
powerful than the human mind and the human imagination.
If you pull away from what's happening
and then leave it up the audience member
to decide what it is that happened in that moment
and how it came about, then you find that they walk away
with their own idea of the worst possible scenario.
That's an example I think of cinema today,
where you don't need to show everything
in order to have that great effect.
- Another fairly obscure release of
a not-so obscure movie would be the Wizard Video release
of the The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
This was the first version of the movie I got.
This is the way that I saw the film
when it first came out.
It's a very murky dark grain print,
but a lot of people would argue
that's the only way to see this movie.
I know now that this tape is worth quite a bit.
It goes on eBay for a lot of money.
It's fully intact, you can see all the flaps there.
It's in really good condition still,
but it's definitely not something I'm gonna let go of.
I mean it's the very first release
of probably my all-time favorite movie,
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre so it's definitely one
that I cherish and will always have in my collection
of awesome VHS movies.
- Stop, stop.
[chainsaw rattling] [screaming]
- Craziest memory would have to be
I think I was like grade six, form one in school
I was quite young and I loved horror so much.
At school they used to call me the gore freak
because I had a fascination with the gore and the effects.
It was probably not so much the fear factor of these movies,
but I was really interested in how the makeup worked,
so I was really trying to find really gross makeup effects
like in your Xtro and a lot of these movies.
Sort of push it to the next limit,
I had a mate of mine at school,
we used to watch a lot of these horror films
and we'd got into the video store.
He knew because I was the gore freak
that I'd probably pick a good film.
So I introduced him to the Evil Dead
so I said to him if you really want to test your stamina
for this sort of stuff, we're gonna drink milk.
He said to me why am I drinking milk during this film?
I said just have a glass of milk there.
Then when the demon started to spurt blood,
which is white, I was trying to make him vomit,
so that was the test drinking milk
whilst watching Evil Dead trying to make
my friend vomit so it was a tough one we used to go.
[chainsaw buzzes]
- Stop it, help!
- Well it definitely affected me.
It's the core inspiration for my
Cinema Therapy Video Nasties Mix
Forbidden Horrors and Dirty Sin Scores.
It was me going down this rabbit hole
of finding these films that made me realize
the core connection was all this gore.
The music the tie-in was the music.
The 30 cents and the funky disco and the prog rock.
When I was looking for a new project to compile
for a VJ mix, it was perfect
because I didn't really know about the controversy
until I started putting together the pieces of these films
and what they meant to be.
Which was basically the music,
it was the music that drove me to find these films.
- Now I Spit On Your Grave definitely
had a high impact on me.
It was brutal.
It was a feared movie when it came out.
Highly inspired my movie Tomboys,
my film Tomboys, which is really five girls
that kidnap a serial rapist to seek revenge,
again loosely based on a true story.
The funny thing I found out afterwards
was that the director actually married
the lead in that movie, her name was Jennifer Hill,
which was also my mother's name.
So that was also kind of creepy and I had an affinity to it.
But definitely right up there in my top four.
- I think the video nasties had affected
a lot of my work down to Gransportation, VHS Lives,
Dance of Toxic Shlock, The Crazy Corny Horror.
It's really influenced a lot of my work.
- As far as censorship, I don't really agree
with censorship per say.
I'm more of a believer in having a good disclaimer
which lists come of the content that the viewer
will be watching when they put that film on.
Some nights for dinner you may be okay
with necrophilia but others you may not.
So sometimes the subject matter may not be what
even the most hardened horror fan
is ready for at that particular time.
So just having a good disclaimer
is really all that you need
so that the viewer is making the decision.
It's in our hands how far we want to watch,
how far we want to take it
and then there's no creative expression
that's taken away from the artist behind the film.
There's no watering down of the message
that they intended to put out there,
which was their reasoning for behind
making the film in the first place.
- Italy had a tradition of extreme movies,
especially in the 70s and 80s.
Most of them are big part of the list
of the video nasties, so titles like
100 Bottoms, Cannibal Holocaust, Cannibal Ferox
or How Many Cemetery just for some type of.
Those are some of the masterpiece that gets banned
and forbidden for many countries.
Also surprise me to find amazing titles like Driller Killer
or Flesh For Frankenstein.
I think censorship is something really
that doesn't have reason to exist
because yes it's good to protect child,
protect people that is not ready or able
to see and watch this kind of movies,
but people must have the freedom to choose what they watch
to enjoy what they want to enjoy
and discovery what needs to discovery.
Especially thinking that some titles now
are considered masterpiece,
we are able to watch in TV and internet
every kind of murder and accident and disaster.
But there is someone that believe that a movie
can be much more dangerous than watching
these kind of programs and news and TV.
- I mean the real question is how do you
actually legislate morality?
Where is there a line in the sand
that you can draw for a massive group of people
that applies to every single's person
own personal line where they decide
something is decent and something is not decent.
You can't do it, it's a subjective thing.
So to unnaturally enforce this line
where you say this is appropriate
you can watch The Crying Game,
but you can't watch The Hills Have Eyes, right I don't know.
It's a fallacy you can't do it
because everyone has their own tastes.
Everyone has to decide on their own
what is appropriate, what is over the line.
That's our right as people.
That's our right as consumers.
That's our right as patrons
of whatever art form we want to patronize.
To arbitrarily put this line here
where you're saying everything on this side of this
is forbidden from you, it doesn't work.
[screaming]
[droning music]
[screaming]
- Just wanted to talk.
- [Lloyd] Nothing should be censored
other than for children and that's up to the parents
to keep the children away.
- Censorship.
- The time of the video nasties is a weird time.
It's almost like if you had like what we thought
was a really cool cover to your movie
would instantly get put on this list.
So basically you had movies that were basically
art house films like Driller Killer,
which see that cover, that cover is awesome.
We think that's awesome.
But there's little of that actually in the film.
What you get is a character piece
of a man slowly going insane
for various reasons and all justifiable reasons.
They way he vents is kind of a little questionable.
Like he buys a drill with its own power pack
and just goes in the streets
and starts taking out homeless people with it.
But that's well into the movie.
Before that, you see fantastic scenes
like when he and his lesbian roommates
they order pizza, a large pizza,
you get to see him played by director
Abel Ferrara consume this entire pizza,
this entire large pizza by himself.
And you see many art house moments
like that in Driller Killer,
which was clearly labeled a video nasty
just for the cover alone.
- I think censorship will be moving in a good direction
in the future, which means it will be more lax.
There's going to be more avenues
just every day for the artist to get their art out there
to the fans directly going hand in hand
and having that connection and cutting out
the bigger companies and some of the other sources
that get in the middle and meddle in our entertainment
where they don't belong.
I think also the calling for having the ability
to watch a video nasty, take your aggression out
on entertainment, throw up, cry, scream,
but it's all at your screen.
We have the message, we know it's happening
in our neighborhoods or our towns.
But the ability to press pause and stop
and just come back to it, revisit,
you can still handle it as an entertainment level type thing
instead of just watching the news
and having that reality in your face.
It's having more control as a viewer.
It's having more control as a human being in general.
There's gonna be more calling for it
as we move forward and the mindset
that people are in these days.
We need those outlets and as long as we need them,
they're gonna get stronger
and they're gonna flow in the direction
of the voice of the people.
- I was watching those movies
before I even knew what video nasties even were,
like Friday the 13th, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
all those types of movies that were banned on that list.
They were banned over there, censored so you couldn't even get them over there.
We had a luckily we over here at the States,
we watched them over here and over there
you'd have to get them on bootleg and that kind of thing.
I'm not really sure I think it was over there,
possibly try to order them
through a merchandise video catalog probably.
Video nasties man, there's some probably good ones
like Cannibal Holocaust, I remember watching it way later
I was like 13 watching that.
I didn't even know it was a video nasty at the time.
I found out through research on Fangoria
what video nasties were.
I would see the term video nasties,
but I didn't really know what that term really was.
I did some research on them.
It was like this list of these movies
that were banned, but a pretty cool list.
Because it had movies on there that I would use
for research to find at video stores over here also,
like Don't Drip Blood and things like that
that were on that list.
Evil Speak and that kind of stuff,
I would use that as a list as a guideline
so I could find these movies at video shops.
But the ones I remember the most getting
was Cannibal Holocaust, crazy movie,
Xtro which is really weird, especially the part
where the dude's getting born.
He's kind of coming out of this weird alien birth.
It's really strange, it's all slimy coming out of there
it's like ew, but it's really cool.