Been quite a while since I've done one of these, but it's time to take a look back at another case of when things went tits up in the film industry, and what lessons were utterly failed to be learned from it. Now usually with these I look at what Hollywood and such didn't take to heart from the mess, but this time, the lessons in question weren't learned by society in general, and indeed it's just one case of a very familiar song and dance, one that we're seeing quite a few versions of play out at the moment, just with different singers and dancers. So we're heading back to the eighties, but not the neon lit cool tourist version of nostalgia, but the bleak and horrible reality; Stranger Things, this is not. MUSIC!
The Video Nasties
When home video became a commercial reality in the late 70s, it took major studios a while to really warm up to the idea, they weren't entirely sold on the concept and business model that the medium offered. So as a result, they didn't release as much as you might think at first, it took a few years to get into full swing. But the public really liked the idea, they were eager to try it out, creating a problem of high demand, low supply from the big distributors. So smaller outfits saw an opportunity; they realised that if they could get anything they could cheap and get it into video shelves, it could satisfy a hungry public without that much competition. This is one reason why the VHS age is looked back upon so fondly as, for a while, the playing field for odder, smaller productions was not just levelled, to begin with it actually had an advantage over the majors. It's also why a lot of stuff from that time was just plain weird, it was a case of "get it cheap, give it artwork to stand out, get it on video store shelves".
In Britain this was happening, but there were a couple of extra wrinkles. Whilst the studios were hesitant getting into the medium, the legalisation was just slow to adjust to it; there was no ruling that films distributed on video tape had to get the same sort of certification from the British Board of Film Classification that cinema releases did, so things were coming out without any ratings. Now add to that the further wrinkle that one major source of cheap fare for the video distributors was the growing horror grindhouse circuit, especially some of the major taboo busting films coming out of Europe at the time. Getting these released uncut, at the time when the BBFC were being very strict with their cinema cuts, turned out to be a major boon, and thus there was an arms race to get the most extreme things possible, especially anything with imagery that would really turn heads and catch eyes at the video store. So add these to the fact that there also wasn't much regulation in regards to who could set up a video rental business, and it meant there was nothing to stop little Jimmy from renting stuff like Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS, Zombie Creeping Flesh, or The Gestapo's Last Orgy from a particularly irresponsible video store owner. A major flashpoint occurred when particularly notorious company Vipco (notorious not just for the films they released but also the somewhat shoddy quality of their business) decided it would be hilarious to send a copy of Cannibal Holocaust to the head of the "Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children!" brigade herself, Mary Whitehouse. (The one who called Doctor Who "teatime brutality for tots"!) Her response was when things hit the fan!
Keep in mind that at the time, this was the era of the Thatcher government, who badly needed a scapegoat to draw attention away from the harm they were doing. So when this issue arose, they leapt on it, a righteous cause they could fight, for the good of the people! Of course, that scenario I raised above about kids being able to rent the most inappropriate things imaginable, it's hard to say how often such things did happen, if they did at all, but you know the mindset of a rightwinger; if a scenario might conceivable sound like it could happen, IT'S HAPPENING ALL THE TIME EVERYWHERE!!! As a result, a full blown campaign against them lead by Tory MPs and, of course, The Daily Hei Mail. It was truly an insane time, of video shops being raided by police, filmmakers hauled up in court (many of whom, including Sam Raimi over the Evil Dead, thankfully weren't successfully prosecuted, although others were), and more, lead by use of the Obscene Publications Act... which later turned out to be an inaccurate and technically illegal use of the act. The main MP who was at the forefront of the whole thing was one Graham Bright, who amongst other things said the following on national news.
Now like a lot of these "Lessons not Learned" articles of mine, this is a really really brief summary, with more than a bit of simplification and "Lies to Children" about it. For more details on the whole thing, I can recommend a pair of excellent documentaries, Video Nasties: The Definitive Guide, by Jake West. They come in two box sets that split the whole thing into two neat chunks; Moral Panic, Lies, and Videotape looks at the main controversy itself, what lead up to it, the coverage at the time, and talks to many key people involved. Draconian Days looks at the effect of the Video Recordings Act, the days of trading in these films amongst collectors, and the BBFC under James Ferman, with a focus on what an odd, contradictory figure he was in regards to his position on censorship. Plus the sets include trailers for all the films on the Nasties lists, and talks with film critics and experts on why exactly those films might have been targeted, and which of them are worth seeking out, it's great stuff.
Well in many ways this is an echo of previous lessons not learned; I mentioned in previous articles like this the Hays Code which happened with film in general in the early 30s, and in the 1950s there was the furore around comic books, the age when the book Seduction of the Innocent made all kinds of bold claims, and the Comics Code came into effect. What's more, the UK and a few other countries went through a lot of this again in the early 90s, especially with titles like Mortal Kombat and (of all things!) bloody Night Trap! This wave of censorship after moral panics keeps on happening over and over with every form of new media, and few involved rarely point out that this things seldom turn out have properly been for the greater good in the long term.
But it goes beyond horror and media; these moral panics happen over EVERYTHING, and at the moment in the UK we have the ridiculous EHRC Guidance about Trans people's access to public spaces, fuelled again by the same hysteria and the Daily Mail, and just as I'm writing this we have the incredibly poorly thought out "Social Media Curfew" Kier Starmer is trying to introduce, which is going to be a nightmare to enforce or control properly due to a lack of understanding of the issue. It's worth noting that with the Video Nasties scandal, when it flared up again in the late 90s, as a result of Child's Play 3 being suggested as being an influence of the Jamie Bulger case (based on literally nothing! The dad of one of the killers had rented it once when said child wasn't even there, and didn't even like horror.), there was almost a major amendment to the VRA. This was so poorly thought out and worded that it would have meant ANYTHING rated over PG would have been illegal to sell or rent on video; it had to be explained to a lot of MPs that yes, this means "Proper Films" like The Godfather or Schindler's List would be affected too. This is also a point where parallels with the "Trans Debate" (erg!) appear again, as like how there genuinely isn't a definition of the word "Woman" that would include all cis women but not trans women (no matter what TERFs claim!), there isn't really a way of covering all violent or explicit films that includes all horror or trash films but leaves out ones that it's publicly acceptable to like.
It really is the same thing all over again, a government trying to look like it's doing something useful, often under a pretence of "protecting children" when it's just making things more complicated for everyone, foisting off the work of it on the rest of us, and ignoring the potential harm it could cause. With the Nasties, it was shops unable to survive the Police just taking their entire rental stock away, with recent events it's stirring up bigotry against LGBTQ+ people and, with the social media thing, unable to connect to friends that might help them through it. So let that be the main lesson; ignore frothing at the mouth moral panics, look at what practically can be done about problems (if there's even a problem at all; trans people have been using toilets for yonks with no issues!), don't do knee-jerk responses that have zero thought put into them, and above all, F*** the Daily Mail.
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