10 Best Video Nasties (And Why They Were Banned)

Dario Argento's gory Hitchcockian mystery is now considered one of the Italian horror maestro's finest. It's certainly his most accessible with a straightforward plot of a writer being stalked by a serial killer whose murders are inspired by the writer's latest book.

Similar to how Stephen King would later be influenced to write Misery, Argento's Tenebrae came about following an unpleasant interaction with a fan. In Argento's case the incident was more extreme, where he received threatening phone calls from the fan, who claimed that watching the director's films had damaged him psychologically.

It was an argument the BBFC might've been inclined to agree with, since they banned the film until 1999, then passing it with five seconds of footage removed from the scene where the character Jane (Veronica Lario) has her arm severed. In 2003 it was released fully uncut.

Within its home country the same scene was also censored, first to limit the amount of blood spray on show from a crimson geyser to a scarlet spurt. Then in 1990 it was heavily trimmed, almost beyond recognition, when Lario's new husband Silvio Berlusconi, future Prime minister of Italy, took exception to seeing her "killed" in such a fashion.

For years after it was impossible to view the film uncensored in Italy, but it did eventually see an uncut release on dvd. The PM's divorce from Lario possibly cooled him on the issue.