Video Nasties

What are your favourites, if indeed you do like them?
Been watching the Boxes Of The Banned recently and only a couple are really shocking, I Spit On Your Grave and The Last House On The Left
What do people make of these? Is ISOYG a feminist revenge fantasy or simply brutal and offensive exploitative crap?

Nobody likes them. Ho hum.

I remember when I was about 10 my mate got hold of Driller Killer somehow. We all went over and said we were gonna watch something else then switched the tapes when his parents went upstairs for some well needed sex (probably) - that was .

I've not seen any of those , is Hostel a video nasty?

oddworld said:

I've not seen any of those , is Hostel a video nasty?

Click to expand...

Not really, but of course they're similar. The term 'video nasty' specifically refers to horror films from the late 70s and 80s which caused a moral panic in the press and led to many of them being banned. Films like the above mentioned, Driller Killer and The Evil Dead

I keep meaning to try to watch Cannibal Holocaust, but it never seems to be on.

Re: The Evil Dead
Technically, The Evil Dead was not banned, despite the excesses of the tabloid press at the time, & a court case.....

i remember Straw Dogs getting caught up in all that, too. ridiculous.

There was a video store near my nan's house where they kept all the banned movies under the counter, I watched pretty much the lot. About the only thing that united most of them - apart from being banned - was that they were shit

Evil dead wasnt banned but it was pretty heavily cut ircc.

Straw Dogs was banned?

Shit, that movie was formative of my opinion of people from the english countryside, along with American Werewolf in London.

You've not seen Far From The Madding Crowd?

yep. till not that long ago. It's a difficult film, but it's also a serious film, not some kind of gorefest

eta: @ JC2

Dubversion said:

yep. till not that long ago. It's a difficult film, but it's also a serious film, not some kind of gorefest

eta: @ JC2

Click to expand...

It's not a schlock horror movie by any means, but it was a product of its time, which included films like the Wild Bunch, Prime Cut, etc.

I'm just surprised to hear that it was banned, since I saw it as a first run movie, uncut, when it was released.

Cid said:

I remember when I was about 10 my mate got hold of Driller Killer somehow. We all went over and said we were gonna watch something else then switched the tapes when his parents went upstairs for some well needed sex (probably) - that was .

Click to expand...

Was in fits of laughter when I saw driller killer. Was totally stoned though. That was over 20 years ago

Re: Straw Dogs
The video of Straw Dogs was effectively banned, until 2 years ago, mainly due to the excesses of the tabloid press at the time, when it was submitted for video certification, although it was still able to be shown at the cinema, abeit in a cut form....
Ironically, one of the cuts made to the film at the time, made it in some senses more horrific, than the uncut version....

My favourite film on the Video Nasty list is Possession, an intense, surreal black comedy about the breakup of a marriage starring Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neil. It won several awards at film festivals around the world and is proof positive of what a bunch of idiots made the decisions of what to ban. Next up are Inferno, Dario Argento's typically incoherent if visually stunning sequel to his horror classic Suspiria and Mario Bava's ultra stylish proto-slasher Twitch of the Death Nerve. Each of these are genuinely great films.

I'm also rather fond of Argento's Tenebrae, the three films by Lucio Fulci, especially The Beyond and Paul Morrissey's Flesh for Frankenstein.

Visiting Hours, Dead and Buried and Funhouse were rather tame mainstream studio releases, all of them watchable early 80's horror films. I have no idea what got them banned as opposed to many similar films that did get released.

There is another handful of interesting films on the list like Shogun Assassin and The Burning. Most of the rest is unwatchable dross, but none of them should have been banned of course. Cannibal Holocaust is considered a classic by some, but I find its message hypocritical and its sadistic killing of real animals genuinely upsetting and the same goes for its sequel Cannibal Ferox. Last House on the Left, Driller Killer and I Spit on Your Grave are probably the most famous titles on there, but they are rather poor films IMO. I suppose they genuinely pushed buttons at the time and two of them are still famous because their directors went on to bigger things.

For anybody who is in doubt, these are the films that were on the Video Nasty list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_nasties

Orang Utan said:

What are your favourites, if indeed you do like them?
Been watching the Boxes Of The Banned recently and only a couple are really shocking, I Spit On Your Grave and The Last House On The Left
What do people make of these? Is ISOYG a feminist revenge fantasy or simply brutal and offensive exploitative crap?

Click to expand...

Meh, I found neither of them particularly shocking/disturbing (or entertaining for that matter). Ditto Cannibal Holocaust and the Guineau Pig movies.

Prefer something like The Devils Rejects for gratuitous and unrepentant gore, and something like Videodrome for the creepy surrealism.

Catch Catch the horror taxi
I fell in love with a video nasty

Jambooboo said:

Guineau Pig movies.

Click to expand...

Yeah they were pretty shit and a big let down, they'd been built up so much, maybe if i were around in the 80's to see it then it might have been more shocking. I justfound myself bored.


August Undergound i guess is a modern day equivelant, i have to ask what i really get out of watching these, it's not like you get any enjoyment out of the films, they can be pretty hard to sit through.

The deputy headmaster of my high school was on telly a lot in the 80's going on about video nasties. He was a right twat.