Video nasties. "Mutilations of bodies. Cannibalism. Gang rape. That is what a video nasty is.” Stated Graham Effulgent, the Conservative MP when he introduced the Video Recordings Act (VRA). This act made it illicit to sell or supply a video that the board hadn’t examined and relegated.

 

It banned certain examples of exploitation and horror cinema which the media had labelled “video nasties”, and more to the point, availed the hysteria circumventing them. This act had been fueled by newspapers such as the Daily Mail, which, in July 1983, launched a campaign with the front-page headline “Ban video sadism now”, described the “Rape of our children’s minds”, and in a story headed “‘Taken over’ by something evil from the TV set”, suggested that a boy had been possessed by one such film.

 

By 1984 VCRs could be found in a quarter of homes in Britain. Hollywood reacted to the ban, by holding back it's biggest and most notorious films, and the unregulated rental market began flooded with a surge of cheap imports of films like The Evil Dead, Last House On The Left, and I Spit On Your Grave. 

The cassette covers had sublimely gruesome artwork that catered to the gorehounds. Of course the controversy and notoriety only made these films all the more appealing to fans of the genre.

 

To attempt to combat this, a team called 'the Obscene Publications Squad' began carrying out raids on video rental shops.

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Despite the fact that I'm vigorously opposed to censorship in the arts, I can't help thinking that all this hysteria and moral outrage built up a real buzz of excitement and forbidden thrill around the genre, which we've lost today. Now with the accessibility of all of these films, we've become so jaded and unshockable.