Video Nasties: An A-Z Guide

By Clare Simpson / January 30, 2013

J - Justice

A very important element of Video Nasties, because of the extreme material and perversions on our screen - the baddies must get their just desserts at the end of the movie. Justice must be done. Perhaps the most spectacular dolings out of Justice in the Nasties come from I Spit on Your Grave and Last House on the Left. In I Spit on Your Grave, Jennifer cleverly kills the four men who raped her by hanging, castration, axe wielding and mowing one of them down by a boat. Viewers are firmly on her side as she dispenses justice to these four perverted, redneck hicks. Things are more complicated in Last House. Krug and his gang are a despicable, hateful crew. What they do to those two beautiful young girls is an atrocity. Yet when the parents dispense justice, Craven does not make it triumphalistic justice, there is something hollow about it like an eye for an eye is a lie. Away from all that seriousness, Video Nasty bad guys cop it in spectacular ways for their heinous shenanigans. Christopher, the vile goat raping, sister shagging protagonist of Island of Death, gets his comeuppance lying trapped on a bed of quick lime, slowly melting to death as the rain comes down. The pervert maniac in The New York Ripper is finally revealed -stupid quacking voice and all - and has his face blasted off with a shotgun, ending his crotch stabbing reign of terror in a very bleak fashion. Fulci really loves a bleak ending, doesn't he?

K - King of the Nasties: Giovanni Lombardo Radice

There is one man who deserves a special mention for his services to the cult of Video Nasties via his acting skills and his amazing profligacy in these films. That man is Giovanni Lombardo Radice. He was forced to take the pseudonym John Morghen for the bulk of his films because his family were desperately ashamed that he was a horror movie actor and was besmirching the family name by his antics. If I had a horror movie actor son, I would worship him like a saint! GLR as I will call him was integral to Italian horror movies in general, not just the Nasties. He played a foul scumbag who lived with a dead baby in City of the Living Dead (directed by Fulci in fine form). He was in Michele Soavi's Stagefright (Aquarius) - my favourite slasher movie of all time. GLR was also in Phantom of Death (Off Balance) a latter day, highly enjoyable Giallo directed by Ruggero Deodato - he of Cannibal Holocaust and House on the Edge of the Park Video Nasty directorial fame. But it is in the Nasties that GLR shines. David Hess's dim witted side kick in House on the Edge of the Park. The evil Mike in Cannibal Ferox who gets his comeuppance when his manhood and right hand are chopped off, followed by his brain becoming dinner for a bunch of cannibals. He made a big impact in Cannibal Apocalypse as the renegade cannibal Vietnam vet who will munch everyone he can sink his teeth into. For these bravura performances, I have crowned GLR - King of the Nasties.