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Video Nasties: Hip Or Hype ?

New box-set from Nucleus films...

Video Nasties: The Definitive Guide Part 2, a three-disc collector’s edition box set, is being released on DVD on July 14th 2014, to tie in with the 30th Anniversary of the Video Recordings Act 1984

For the first time ever on DVD, all 82 films that fell foul of the Director of Public Prosecutions “Section 3” list are trailer-featured with specially filmed intros for each title, alongside a brand new documentary - VIDEO NASTIES: DRACONIAN DAYS, directed by Jake West.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTA1cMSp6M8
 
New movie "Censor" debuted at Sundance-

Censor review – disturbing descent into video nastiness
4 out of 5 stars.
Sundance film festival
A woman working as a film censor in the 80s is shocked to discover a horror movie that recreates a traumatic incident from her childhood

Censor returns us to an era when dodgy material that was under the counter could stay hidden. Explicit movies could exist in a shadowy world, where they were just a rumour, a culture that existed below the stratum of respectability, and even finding out about mainstream movies was difficult. Now digital technology and searchable databases have rendered the counter transparent and almost everything can be seen.

Bailey-Bond reconstructs the uncanny, almost occult world of film itself, and, using her budget cleverly, projects the 80s from claustrophobic closeups on period detail. With production designer Paulina Rzeszowska and cinematographer Annika Summerson, Bailey-Bond creates something almost unbearably close and oppressive, like the bottom of a murky fish tank. It’s a very elegant and disquieting debut. I wonder what certificate it’s going to get?
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/jan/29/censor-review-horror-films-drama
 
The new Sight and Sound magazine is a video nasties special to tie in with the movie Censor. The whole thing's worth reading, but Kim Newman's article is now online, and well worth a look:
Article

His observation: "It’s a low-cost moral stand to condemn something you have no interest in" is one of the most perfect summings up of the way internet culture developed I've ever read, and it seems it originated with the nasties panic back in the 1980s. Mary Whitehouse's spectre revives yet again...
 
We got our first VCR in December 1980 and by sheer luck, we managed to get through most of the video nasties before the ban came into force...also got through some Pirate videos too (ET, The Thing etc)

Has "Nightmares in a damaged brain" been mentioned before? I think that was banned.
 
Has "Nightmares in a damaged brain" been mentioned before? I think that was banned.

...yep, and put the distributer in prison--

The owners of the aforementioned World of Video 2000, a company by the name of April Electronics managed by David Hamilton-Grant, Malcolm Fancey and Roger Morley, were placed on trial for distributing this and other titles. Eventually, Hamilton-Grant would be sentenced to eighteen months in prison for distributing the film, later reduced to twelve months with six suspended.
https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/courting-controversy-nightmare/
 
Ahhh...The days of pirate video, flicking between grainy black and white and grainy colour, with the picture going dark and light.. I was 10 when we got our first video recorder back in 1982*.

My 2nd cousin was our supplier of pirate videos. We had Tron, ET, The Blues Brothers and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The latter two my cousin assured my Dad were definitely appropriate for a 10 and 7 year old. The bollocking Terry must have got the following day at work when my dad next saw him (He worked for my Dad in the same office).

I still put my distaste of ET down to watching that incredibly poor copy back in the day.

My wife has a great story about The Blues Brothers. Rather than have his kids miss out on the movie because of the swearing, her dad worked his way through the film and every time there was a swear, he recorded the tennis over it. I dearly wish that I could have watched that version, as it makes me laugh every time I think about it.

My wife also gets confused when the words ORACLE 888 don’t appear over the opening crawl of Star Wars.

*the first thing we recorded was Rentaghost.
 
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