10 Infamously Banned "Video Nasties"

The brief period of the "Video Nasty" is an astonishing chapter in the history of British censorship and film distribution. By the turn of the 1980's, schlocky, low-budget, extreme-horror films had crept their way onto shelves in the UK, and soon became colloquially known as "Video Nasties" due to their outrageous content. The scratchy, low-resolution of these movies gave them an 'illegal' quality from the moment you pushed play, with the tinny sound providing an additionally unsettling edge. Indeed, the VHS's fuzzy grey strips that tore across the black screen took on ominous overtones in the Video Nasty phase, acting like warning stripes for the sinister acts about to happen on-screen. Many of the VHS covers even carried advice on how to digest the film without passing out - assuring viewers to tell themselves that it was "only a movie". In a fruitless attempt to dispel these "atrocities" from society, British police were sent out on store raids to confiscate these videos, and quite literally throw them into an incinerator to destroy them. Several distributors were thrown in jail, and anyone caught in possession of one of the 72 banned films risked severe prosecution. Incredibly, owning a Video Nasty at one time made you a criminal. It's easy to disregard any of the titles falling under the Video Nasty label as reprehensible trash. Their gleeful exploitation of human suffering in a low-budget framework hardly advertises them as feel-good Oscar material. Yet, a couple of the examples on this list actually clawed their way into mainstream distribution. Several (brave) critics admitted to the well-executed techniques of some of the Nasties. The majority argued that well made or not, the Nasties were exactly that - nasty. And in listing the most infamous examples of this eighties fad, the next few pages will inevitably contain descriptions of thoroughly graphic material.