In all of cinematic history, no other genre has suffered as organized a campaign to ban, edit, and censor it as horror. I grew up in Britain’s “video nasty era,” a term coined to characterize the moral panic that was unleashed upon the genre with the passing of the 1984 Video Recordings Act, an attack on free expression now approaching its 40th anniversary. The story of how Britain came to censor horror is complicated, and it deserves a telling, and a reckoning.
When the British Board of Film Classification was set up in 1912, its initial purpose was to classify and censor films shown in cinemas. However, because of a legal loophole in the laws governing film classification, video certification remained unregulated, even as video home system technology became popular in the early 1980s.
However, this is not merely a story of legal technicality, but of fuzzier cultural pressures. The United Kingdom experienced significant economic turmoil during the 1970s. A recession struck the nation in the first half of the decade. In 1973, the gross domestic product fell by nearly 4% and inflation increased from 9.2% in September to 12.9% in March of the following year. As unemployment skyrocketed, fewer people were spending money. Cinema admissions in the U.K. fell by 43% by the end of the decade, from 193 million to 110 million by 1980. This steady decline in attendance had a detrimental effect on the motion picture industry. Because of the combination of low box office receipts and the fear of piracy, major film distributors were hesitant to embrace video. As a result, low-budget, unclassified horror video cassettes flooded the market.
Prior to the implementation of the VRA, directors, distributors, and retailers could all face legal action if the Director of Public Prosecutions thought that the videos violated the 1959 Obscene Publications Act. Police raided video stores all over the United Kingdom. It led to some peculiar seizures. In one well-known example, Slough police raided a video store on the pretense that a copy of Dolly Parton’s 1982 musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas was pornographic.
The Video Retailers Association requested that the DPP compile a list of titles that were most likely to be confiscated because they were afraid of random raids and seizures. Thus was born the list of “video nasties.” This was a list of 72 films that the DPP believed were too obscene for the public to see.
It coincided with the emergence of a new genre of horror: extreme cinema. The controversial 1980 film Cannibal Holocaust elevated horror to a new level. Taking inspiration from Umberto Lenzi’s 1972 film Man from Deep River, Ruggero Deodato built upon the tradition of classic Italian zombie films by concentrating on cannibalism and its practitioners, who are often found deep within the South American rainforests. The director was arrested upon the film’s release due to the shocking combination of graphic violence, such as rape and castration, and real footage of animal slaughter.
Cannibal Holocaust was released on video in the United Kingdom in 1982. In an attempt to generate publicity, Go Video, the film’s distributor, sent an anonymous letter criticizing their own movie to Mary Whitehouse, founder of the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association. It whipped up a media frenzy. In May 1982, an article titled “How High Street Horror is Invading the Home” appeared in the Sunday Times.
Whitehouse, wielding a growing influence on politicians in Margaret Thatcher’s government, led a campaign that resulted in the VRA. The act gave the BBFC statutory authority over home video, effectually making it illegal to distribute or sell any video that the board had not rated and classified.
A number of iconic horror films were taken off the shelves. Sam Raimi’s 1981 horror comedy The Evil Dead was later banned from video rental stores across the country. Of course, where a law prohibits something, it has to do so by punishing citizens. One thousand, six hundred and fifty-nine people were prosecuted under the act between 1995 and 2007.
In 2000, after a public consultation, the BBFC began to liberalize its approach to censorship. A number of previously banned movies were granted what is known as an 18 certificate. A quarter of a century after its theatrical debut, The Exorcist was finally approved uncut in 1999. Wes Craven’s 1974 revenge horror film The Last House on the Left endured the most prolonged humiliation; it wasn’t released in its original form until 2008, 34 years later.
Today, film studios rush to support the newest social justice cause in a landscape mired in progressive identity politics. In order to placate a vocal minority, politically correct corporations reject the views of the ordinary Brit. A few years ago, Flash Gordon, a harmless family-friendly adventure, received a 12A rating from the BBFC after just 27 complaints. This profound limitation on freedom is, of course, suffered not only by directors or owners of film IP, but mainly felt by the common viewer. Not only does editing, reclassifying, or censoring classic films deny their creators the right to free speech, but it also deprives viewers of the enjoyment that these works of art provide.
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The VRA had an unexpected and rather liberating side effect. When the video nasties list was published, horror fans were delighted. It was a treasure trove of hidden, blood-soaked gems, pointing the way to a taboo and illegal world of great horror film fun. As with every subculture, horror fans are nerds; they swap tapes and publish fanzines. Or rather, we are. By the time the VRA received royal assent, roughly 25% of homes owned a VCR, including our own. Through secret meetings and plastic bags slid under cafe tables where video nasties were kept in circulation in defiance of the law, I in a younger form stumbled upon an incredible universe of films, including The Driller Killer, The Beyond, and The Thing.
With the limitation on freedom to make and watch horror films ultimately removed, the argument over whether this censorship was necessary was settled by a real-world experiment. We horror nerds did not descend into some violent and deranged criminal underculture. We just enjoyed our beloved movies without fear of prosecution. So thank God that’s history.
Noel Yaxley’s work has appeared in the Critic, City Journal, and Compact.