Video Nasties | Horror Extreme

A Video Nasty refers to a movie banned from being distributed on video cassette in the UK in the early 1980s. All of the movies on the banned list were horror movies considered to be too violent or obscene to be viewed by anyone. The Obscene Publications act defined and obscene movie to be one which may "tend to deprave or corrupt persons who are likely, having regard to all relevant circumstances, to read, see or hear the matter contained or embodied in it".

If the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) considered that a certain video was in breach of the act then a prosecution could be brought against the movie's producers. To provide a guideline for video stockists, a list of movies that had already resulted in successful prosecutions was published and this became known as the DPP list of Video Nasties. The majority of these movies were low budget and either American or Italian horror movies.

The need for this list started to become apparent in early 1982 with the release of The Driller Killer which was fuelled by a marketing campaign using full page advertisements showing the movie's graphic cover. This resulted in a widespread hysteria with horror movies being blamed for the increase in violent crime amongst Britain’s youth, which eventually resulted in the Video Recordings Act 1984.

The passing of this act in September 1985 only increased the demand for these now black market movies and created a large amount of notoriety for certain movies which would probably have gone unnoticed without it.

The DPP list of Video Nasties was published in June 1983 and in its life time contained 72 separate movies. The list was modified monthly as prosecutions failed or were dropped. The list became obsolete when the Video Recordings act of 1984 was passed and since 2001 a number of these movies have been re-released uncut, the majority have been re-released with scenes containing excessive violence to women or animal cruelty cut, the rest of the movies remain banned in the UK either because they have been refused certificates or have not been resubmitted for classification.