10 Video Nasties That Became Horror Classics

David Cronenberg’s sci-fi horror Scanners is best known for its infamous head explosion scene in which the evil ‘scanner’ Revok (Michael Ironside) uses his terrifyingly powerful psychic powers to literally blow up a man’s brains.

It was this very scene that saw Scanners make its way onto the video nasty list but bar that one admittedly gory moment plus a rather grisly final fight involving convulsing veins and popping eyeballs, Cronenberg’s movie really isn’t all that gruesome. In fact, it’s pretty mind-blowing (pardon the pun) that it was even included at all.

In a rather prophetic move Cronenberg’s next film – the surreally gory Videodrome, which went into production before the whole video nasty hoopla really kicked off – took the idea of violent media content as harmful and repositioned it as a tool used by moral crusaders to wipe out the kind of degenerates who would watch such filth.

Funnily enough, Mary Whitehouse and Co barely batted an eyelid at Videodrome. It’s almost like they didn’t want us getting any Cronenberg-esque ideas about what video nasties are really about …