L - Lameness
Unfortunately we cannot declare all 72 Nasties works of towering cinematic genius, for every Zombie Flesh Eaters, there is a Zombie Creeping Flesh. For every Cannibal Holocaust - a Cannibal Terror. Some of the films are quite jaw dropping in their lameness - so much so, that they definitely don't resemble mind corrupting hard core horror films that their banned status supposedly accords them. They look like whacked out versions of Sesame Street. SS Experiment Camp - sounds juicy but is so unbelievably lame, director Sergio Garrone should be made to hang his head in shame indefinitely. The pretending to be sinister experiment camp has the holiday atmosphere of Butlins, the women all have bikini lines and shaved arm pits as well as no body hair (which is so realistic for Nazi era Germany). The men sport 70s coiffeured hair dos and the plot is the silliest of all the Nazi films. A high up Nazi who got his knackers ripped off by a woman while he was raping and pillaging in Poland, decides to stage sex experiments between the fittest soldiers of the Third Reich and a bunch of female prisoners. This is to gauge who is the fittest, most potent man so he can steal his gonads and have them transplanted into himself. He finds his man and usurps his balls. When the unlucky castrated soldier goes to make love to his girlfriend the next night, he finds to his chagrin that he cannot get it up. Eventually he twigs on that he has no testicles and screams "What have you done to my balls you bastards!". Then there is a big fight and everyone dies. And thats SS Experiment Camp for you folks, a notorious Nasty, lamer than Jedward squared.
M - Moral Panic
Yes. Video Nasties are to blame for every random and premeditated crime under the Sun! This is according to our moral guardians. Ever since the early days of cinema, the power of the moving image has been seen as an entity to corrupt and deprave the masses. Censorship and moral panic are virtually as old as cinema itself. But the level of moral panic afforded to the Video Nasties was unique in its fever pitch, vehemence and its sense of proportion. Essentially what the anti-Nasty brigade were protesting against were tacky, sensationalist video covers, provocative film titles and a bit of strong gore and violence. It seems ludicrous looking at the Nasties today that people thought they might inspire viewers to violence. Part of it was due to a class issue which persists to this day. The moral guardians thought that the bulk of Nasty viewers would be working class and by their logic, more prone to violence. Films have been censored along these lines for decades. The middle class or Intelligentsia who supposedly watch high brow films - arthouse and foreign cinema - are judged by the moral guardians to be able to deal with objectionable material. The middle class won't commit crimes. So they are allowed foreign language material which presumably the working class won't watch and therefore won't be corrupted by. Movies of this ilk include Baise Moi, A Serbian Film, Irreversible, The Pornographer, Ma Mere, Romance etc.. The Nasties were low class and thus forbidden for the working classes' moral good. Sheer snobby nonsense.