A Warning from History

VIDEO NASTIES: MORAL PANIC, CENSORSHIP AND VIDEOTAPE (2010)

Italian Lucio Fulci could boast three titles on the DPP Video Nasties list: ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS (released in 1979 and on the list from October 1983 to December 1985), THE BEYOND (1981, November 1983 to April 1985) and THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY (1981, November 1983 to December 1985).

IN early 1980s Britain, Margaret Thatcher found an escape clause for broken public spirit in the twisted world of VHS horror. These often poorly made features - mostly from America and Italy - could hardly raise to the expectations of their own garish box art, but there was no censorship, classification or regulation for the home video market, and items could be bought or rented from almost anywhere: newsagents, garages, even butchers and barbers. The Daily Mail published comment headers with such lurid headlines as "Rape of our children's minds", and the Daily Mirror printed a report of sexual attacks on ponies where the Police stated that the acts "could have been caused by video nasties or a new moon." Not surprisingly, the country's social problems didn't disappear with the removal of these films, and the BBFC eventually allowed them to be presented either uncut or in more complete forms.

The hysteria over the Video Nasty scare was a melting pot of patronising lobbyists, tabloid sensationalism, clueless politicians and an out-of-their-depths Scotland Yard (who seized by mistake titles like THE BIG RED ONE and THE BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN TEXAS). The mere act of selling or owning a suspected video on the infamous Director of Public Prosecutions banned list(s) became a dangerous business, and this convoluted debacle is expertly portrayed in Jake West's documentary, which was first shown at FrightFest 2010. In no way is this piece merely for horror fans; it is required viewing for every politician, policeman, lawyer, sociologist and media studies student in the land, and should act as both a lesson and a warning on the very nature of censorship and civil liberty. Especially revelatory here is that the Video Recordings Act 1984 was never officially presented to the European Commission, therefore it was not enforceable in law: a particular hard pill to swallow for the people who suffered jail sentences, fines, or had their collections or stock incinerated in an event that was the 1980s equivalent of a Nazi book burning.

The self-appointed Guardian of National Morals - Mary Whitehouse - was particularly thankful for the Video Nasties panic, as it gave her a topic which people knew even less about than she did. Whitehouse never felt the need to investigate material she deplored: "I have never seen a Video Nasty. I wouldn't ... I actually don't need to see visually what I know is in that film."

West may be better known as a director, but he also has a prolific concurrent career in promotional and featurette material, having been responsible for many of the extras on Region 2 DVDs. As such, he’s on familiar ground getting people talking about horror movies; contemporary directors like Neil Marshall and Christopher Smith alternate comments with genre critics such as Alan Jones, Kim Newman and Stephen Thrower. The most remarkable and powerful contribution, however, comes from lecturer and author Martin Barker, who recalls in moving detail the widespread condemnation he received for standing up to the charade, and even more notably, illustrates the magnitude of exaggerations and lies on which the campaign was built.

The documentary is not a loaded argument in favour of the nasties - it doesn't need to be. Peter Kruger - head of the Obscene Publications Squad at Scotland Yard between 1981-84 - and MP for Luton South Graham Bright - whose Private Members Bill directly lead to the VRA - are afforded equal screen time to showcase their ignorance. Bright is an absolute goldmine; not only does he condemn the movies as "evil" (at which point the documentary mutates into a wonderful faux Public Information Film where Emily Booth is bound, gagged and consumed by videotape), he acknowledges the whole snuff movie concept as fact, having "no doubt ... that was exactly what was happening." And in the jaw-dropping highlight, Bright is seen championing unfinished research that "will show that these films not only affect young people but I believe they affect dogs as well." 



One of the most notorious titles on the DPP's list, Ruggero Deodato's CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, was pre-cut by Go prior to its February 1982 video debut. The film still contained enough on-screen carnage (and marketing to match) to make sure this cover adorned most of the press outrage against the nasties. Go were not shy of promoting their release, even issuing free beer mats featuring this artwork to public houses.

As the documentary clearly shows, the early 1980s were not engulfed in the corporate mentality of today. The distribution of the nasties was viewed with suspicion by major studios, who rather than seeing the home market as an avenue for their product, instead treated the medium as a threat to their box office and TV revenue. Consequently, the majority of titles being released in the video explosion were low-budget exploitation, simply because they were the only titles most of the companies could afford to acquire. The intense competition was increased by the number of black market bootlegs, and the fight for shelf space equated to a blood-red marketing war: release your films under the most lurid packaging possible, regardless of accuracy to the film itself. Whatever happened with the whole video nasty phenomenon, it can be said that with such demented designs, the distributors should have seen it coming.

In a by-product to the VRA, the Video Packaging Review Committee was introduced in 1987. Formed as the result of another overblown reaction - Michael Ryan's gun spree in Hungerford - the VPRC's brief was to ensure that such gaudy video covers would never be seen in Britain again. Problems with such marketing had been alerted by a May 1982 report by The Advertising Standards Authority - who specifically cited Go Video's full-page ads for SS EXPERIMENT CAMP and CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST in Television and Video Retailer and Music & Video Week - and it is ironic that the eye-popping artwork that had been so detrimental in the success of the videos would prove to be the initiator of their downfall. 

If it Bleeds, It Leads

The Horror of Media Violence

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE has an abstract view of violence, creating an unreal loss of authenticity: even the rape scene has no feeling.

ON May 29th 2009 at Norwich Crown Court, a woman and two men were convicted of murdering a teenager who was tied to a tree, doused in petrol, and then burned alive in an alleged re-enactment of a scene from the spoof horror SEVERANCE. Literally fanning the flames to this horrid affair was a tangled love triangle, yet prosecutors and the media continue to blame film rather than society's increasing inability to deal with everyday emotion. Censorship cannot destroy an ideal; as Carl Sagan once said, "where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves."

In 1991, the press blamed CHILD’S PLAY 3, released the same year, for having inspired the killing of two-year-old Jamie Bulger in Liverpool. Some papers claimed that the two boy murderers had viewed the film only days prior to their attack; others went so far as to draw conclusions to which scenes inspired particular acts of torture. Neither of the two minors had seen the movie, nor did the police investigation find any evidence that could have encouraged such a crime. In fact, Inspector Ray Simpson stated that "…If you are going to link this murder to a film, you might as well link it to The Railway Children". Yet many people remain certain it was the cause. In reality, the two boys are now walking around as free young men, with new identities, and being carefully looked after by the taxpayer.

Claudie Blakley shortly to become toast at the hands of the Flamethrower Killer in Christopher Smith’s playful horror, SEVERANCE.

The human brain reacts to certain stimulations, i.e. the neurosis caused by THE EXORCIST's blend of quiet passages and grating sound. Likewise, it seems that the films which leave the most powerful impressions on the unbalanced are those which depict a sudden outbreak of random violence. Most brutality is frenzied and not dependant on any particular time, place or circumstance; rather it is an unpredictable, elemental urge. Robert Sartin - a twenty-three-year-old Civil Servant - shot seventeen people and killed one person in Whitley Bay in 1989 because he was following instructions given to him by the killer in John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN. Sartin was found unfit even to stand trial by virtue of mental illness, and yet the crime was still described as being caused by Carpenter's cult classic (HALLOWEEN, in particular, is considered to have a harmful effect on the unstable for its sudden slathings set in a familiar, suburban setting ("death has come to your little town."))

The debate if motion pictures can create real-life violence has been so tediously overworked as to be virtually redundant. Any attempt to blame art for human behaviour quickly falls down when one considers that The Bible has inspired more acts of bloodshed than any other piece of literature, but is still remains openly revered. Film - like all art - should provoke and inspire, but cinema has been singled out because it is arguably the most influential of all the arts, and is certainly the form of choice for the younger generation from which most killers are drawn.

Copycat violence and death threats lead Stanley Kubrick to pull A CLOCKWORK ORANGE from circulation in Britain, though it continued to play freely around the world.

It is amusing how the media can assimilate their cause. The press has always found a way to categorise society ills through money-making propaganda and sensationalism - from the birth of tabloid journalism creating Jack the Ripper, to the Video Nasty phenomenon of the early 1980s. The media now have a much more fertile ground to breed their fear. If we fear, we can continue to consume and be made to do anything. Disturbing images of violent crime dominate news broadcasting, and as news competes with other media for audiences, many producers have come to rely on the maxim "If it bleeds, it leads."

Stanley Kubrick's A CLOCKWORK ORANGE contains images that transcend the actual viewing experience. It functions on an almost operatic level; the director is pushing the boundaries for a hook that hits you somewhere between the heart and the head. Beginning with the hypnotic stare of Alex (Malcolm McDowell) straight to camera, the charming but appalling thug welcomes the viewer at an almost intimate level. Indeed, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE spoke to the people of 1970s Britain in a profound way, bringing an almost demonic portrayal of the day's civil unrests, Miner's Strikes, three-day weeks and blackouts. Reports of street gangs carrying out violence inspired by Kubrick's film was obviously welcomed with open arms by the press, but violence is a rite of passage for man, a pack mentality that rules in times of breakdown, in which sexual tensions are also sharpened. Despite the director's comments to the contrary, the film is a forecast - and we are edging closer to the abyss.

Comedy of Terrors

SEVERANCE (2006)
THE COTTAGE (2008)

If only former BROOKSIDE actress Jennifer Ellison had remained gagged for THE COTTAGE’s entire running time…

TWO jet-black humoured horrors set within the backwoods, and made by second-time directors, SEVERANCE and THE COTTAGE will never approach the finesse of SHAUN OF THE DEAD in the comedy stakes; both are grimmer, more shocking, and considerably less amiable. SEVERANCE tells of seven Palisade Defence employees on a team-building weekend in Hungary: there's Steve (Danny Dyer) the laid-back stoner-slacker, Harris (Toby Stephens) the golden-boy sales champ, Gordon (Andy Nyman) the overly enthusiastic corporate pawn, Richard (Tim McInnerny) the odious upper-management tyrant (“I can’t spell success without u…”), Maggie (Laura Harris) the sex-object, Jill (Claudie Blakley) the practical-minded girl with glasses, and Billy (Babou Ceesay) the token black PA. When Jill spots a masked figure outside their run-down bunker, it is only the start of a fight against a group who have more than axes to grind.

Christopher Smith - who previously made the London Underground chiller CREEP - adds underlying themes of dubious arms trading and exploitation of Eastern Europe, but any such commentary is overwhelmed by the gallows humour, including an encounter with a bear trap and a severed head rolling away still reacting in surprise. It is a thoroughly entertaining piece of work with one standout comedy moment - the accidental blowing up of a passing plane by Palisade’s American boss George (David Gilliam) - and the dwindling survivors are characters who are up a fight, even though the gun-toting call girls are more Russ Meyer than survival horror.

Claudie Blakley shortly to become toast at the hands of the Flamethrower Killer - one of the many denizens haunting the backdrop of SEVERANCE.

Contrastingly, THE COTTAGE feels like a cheap cash-in. Writer/director Paul Andrew Williams - whose debut was the critically acclaimed LONDON TO BRIGHTON - unleashes a unrelentingly violent and uneven sophomore effort. Two brothers - David (Andy Serkis) and Peter (Reece Shearsmith) - kidnap nightclub owner’s daughter Tracey (Jennifer Ellison) and hold her ransom in a secluded country cottage. When her dim-witted step-brother Andrew (Steven O’Donnell) - who is in on the scam - delivers the ransom, they find out that not only have they been tricked, but Andrew has been followed by his father's bloodthirsty Korean henchman. As the blackmail spirals out of control, Tracey manages to turn the tables on her kidnappers and escapes with Peter as her hostage, fleeing into the woods; it isn’t long before everyone faces a desperate battle against a disfigured local farmer (Dave Legeno in see-the-join make-up).

Williams claims THE COTTAGE explores the bond between brothers, but while early scenes of Serkis and Shearsmith show potential, this quickly gets lost amid the director’s insatiable appetite for humour and gore. The brothers spend too much time bickering to endear themselves, and Ellison’s expletive-heavy Liverpudlian is every bit as monstrous as the main killer himself, resulting in a priceless understanding glance between the farmer and Peter. In a role written especially for Shearsmith, the LEAGUE OF GENTLEMAN star shines brightest of all; the butt of continual violence, and permanently bloody-nosed, the deadpan Royston Vasey-stalwart completely understands this undiluted strain of Amicus-like weirdness.

Going Underground

DEATH LINE (1972)
CREEP (2004)

Franka Potente misses the last train in CREEP.

BY the early 1970s, Hammer was stumbling toward an open grave. This decline was illustrated by DRACULA A.D. 1972, a misguided attempt to lure back some patronage by locating the Prince of Darkness among the groovy Chelsea set. Placed alongside the burgeoning new wave of American horrors - socially relevant releases such as Wes Craven's LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT – Hammer perished because of this inability to adapt to a world beyond Home Counties Transylvania. But British horrors also typically endured disastrous relations with everybody from their distributors downward. Two important UK releases – PEEPING TOM and WITCHFINDER GENERAL – were both badly mishandled on release, and vilified in the national press. 

Although labelled repellent by British critics, DEATH LINE nevertheless tapped into the new-style unpleasantness being perfected by the US independents. Directed by Chicago-born Gary Sherman - who would go on to helm DEAD & BURIED and POLTERGEIST III - the film is the tale of a lone cannibal stalking Russell Square tube station, as Inspector Calhoun (Donald Pleasence), Detective Rogers (Norman Rossington) and Inspector Richardson (Clive Swift) uncover a truth that the authorities would prefer remain buried. The Man (Hugh Armstrong, in a role for Marlon Brando before his son contracted pneumonia) – riven by septicaemic plague and given to biting the heads off rats - is a sorrowful survivor of a race who have incestuously bred and fed on each other and hapless Londoners. A dispossessed spectre from a Victorian past, the only vocabulary at his disposal – “mind the doors” – is typical of DEATH LINE’s uncomfortable blend of pathos and black humour. 

One of the partially consumed cadavers suspended from a wall in DEATH LINE (affectionately released as RAW MEAT in the United States).

DEATH LINE’s political themes - collapse of Empire, class exploitation and high level corruption - were particularly relevant in the early 1970s. The humanity of the film’s aboveground characters is questioned from the outset: backed with kitsch striptease music, bowler-hatted civil servant James Manfred OBE (James Cossins) tours Soho and propositions women on platforms; we later learn that his luxurious home has closed-circuit TV to view any bedroom action. Pleasence is typically superb as the teabag-hating Calhoun, who initially dismisses the input from students Alex (David Ladd) and girlfriend Patricia (Sharon Gurney), and Christopher Lee’s cameo as Stratton-Villiers MI5 - complete with furled umbrella and Old Etonian tie - sneers at the proletarians. Conditions belowground are explored in the virtuoso 360-degree long, leisurely malingering pan of The Man’s den, culminating in his moaning over a dying companion (June Turner); the skeletal sets and fetid atmosphere clearly acted as a key inspiration behind Robert Burns’ design for THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.

Christopher Smith’s modestly budgeted CREEP also held its own against the US independent releases of the early noughties. The eponymous Creep (Sean Harris) has played an involuntary part in a programme within a covert surgical unit beneath Charing Cross station. The Creep becomes a surprisingly complex character: the absence of light, language, and love has turned this pale boy into a feral freak. More animal than man, his speech consists mostly of inhuman screeching as he hunts, snares and tortures anything in his path. But he also retains an unusual curiosity - at times almost sportive, as if playing hide and seek with his quarry. When Creep straps a homeless female (Kelly Scott) to an obstetrician’s chair, he prepares to operate as would a child playing doctor; donning a gown and surgical gloves, he pretends to anaesthetise before one of the most unmitigated acts of violence ever committed to celluloid. Regrettably there are plot holes large enough to drive a train through, but CREEP is fast-moving fare which benefits greatly from its haunting perspectives of the tube's otherworldly look, focusing on ominous low arches, ambiguous sewage tunnels and oppressive crawlspaces.

Beast and beauty: Hugh Armstrong and Sharon Gurney in DEATH LINE.

DEATH LINE and CREEP both successfully adapt a particular legend to the screen. The subterranean tunnels of London are rich in urban myths - ghosts searching platforms for loved-ones, killer rats of phenomenal size, and walled-up trains with cargoes of skeletons - but its most famous story remains that of a race of Troglodyte dwellers. Viewing these films, we can appreciate the sensitive process that eventually manifests as local legends. By means of these myths, we maintain a sense of what we are worth and who we are, a romantic response to our perception of the London Underground that manifests a certain fear in contrast to what we can see and touch. As cinematic experiences, they are cannibal films with a conscience. Analogies between man and monster – and how far a man can degenerate and remain human – are not difficult to draw. Yet society is the real villain, the kind of capitalist state that abandons its disenfranchised children, and denying them their essence.