This HBO documentary, presented via Brett Ratner, presents an account of the distinctive video culture that emerged in Romania in the final years of the Ceacescu regime via a combination of interviews and reconstructions with both ordinary people and key figures in the samizdat video scene.
Up until the mid-1980s Romanian audiences had little access to western media. What was available was heavily censored by the authorities, sometimes for reasons that made sense only to them. One reconstruction, for example, presents the screening of a breakfast scene from a Hollywood film. The scene is cut because the amount of food on the table was in excess of what would be found in a comparable Romanian scenario and painted communism in a negative light vis a vis capitalism.
The VCR – imported and costing about the same as a car – changed this as a clandestine network of dubbing, duping, distributing and front room home screenings developed. Sometimes the multiple-generation copy would be so bad that viewers had to rely upon the dubbing track to tell what was going on, while the threat of a visit from the authorities was ever-present.
The main weaknesses of the documentary are the over-use of reconstructions and some failures of explanation. For instance, was not clear how everybody of a certain age seemed to know the name of one of the most prolific video dubbers, Irina Nistor, when the authorities apparently did not, all the more so since in her day job she worked for the regime.
I would also like to have had a bit more contextualisation and comparison. We see that the Romanian dubbing culture was one where an individual, male or female, would do all of the voices, providing a running translation of the English dialogue, but are not told whether this was standard practice. We also see that swear words would be replaced – which makes for amusing viewing when the film in question is De Palma’s Scarface – but are not told if this mirrored official practice and/or was a means of attempting to make the films family-friendly.
These things said, Chuck Norris versus Communism is worth watching for anyone with an interest in global video cultures. One parallel with the British case, for example, is how the act of banning something – Hollywood product there, the video nasties here – serves only to make it that more appealing.
Showing posts with label video nasties. Show all posts
Showing posts with label video nasties. Show all posts
Sunday, 5 July 2015
Thursday, 13 June 2013
Video Nasties
If you are at all interested in the UK video nasties affair of the early 1980s you have to go here. The creator of the site, devoted to Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead, has meticulously went through UK newspaper archives, many on microfilm and held at the British Library in London, to re-produce hundreds of newspaper articles on the nasties.
I am only one-sixth of the way through one of the PDF's, but it is already giving me new information - and I say this as someone who has read Martin Barker's The Video Nasties; David Kerekes's See No Evil; John Martin's Seduction of the Gullible; Kate Egan's Trash or Treasure, and watched almost all of the nasties, including the likes of Mardi Gras Massacre and Cannibal Terror, along with various documentaries on the affair.
I can only say thank you to the person who has produced this invaluable resource.
I am only one-sixth of the way through one of the PDF's, but it is already giving me new information - and I say this as someone who has read Martin Barker's The Video Nasties; David Kerekes's See No Evil; John Martin's Seduction of the Gullible; Kate Egan's Trash or Treasure, and watched almost all of the nasties, including the likes of Mardi Gras Massacre and Cannibal Terror, along with various documentaries on the affair.
I can only say thank you to the person who has produced this invaluable resource.
Saturday, 2 March 2013
Aenigma fanzine
The look of this new fanzine by Nigel Maskell, of Italian Film Review, is deliberately low-fi and retro, the text being done in a typewriter font where the g’s have the descender filled in with ink and the occasional word is struck through or inserted in pencil, and then appearing as it has been cut out and pasted onto the background, with the result then being photocopied. There’s no colour, excepting the use of red card for the cover.
Anyone who remembers old punk-era, pre DTP zines, or who now reads Cinema Sewer or Rick Trembles’ Motion Picture Purgatory will feel right at home.
Nigel begins with a childhood memory of seeing Asylum whilst on holiday and how it led into horror and then Eurohorror. Following a brief digression into Joan Blondell – a digression that works thanks to the stream of consciousness style of the writing – we’re then onto five of the great Italian horror shock endings, namely Zombie/Zombie Flesh Eaters, The Beyond, Rabid Dogs, To Be Twenty and 'Tis a Pity She’s a Whore.
Next up is a review of The Beast in Heat, in which the brilliant description of the titular Beast – "a Luciano-Pigozzi headed Ron Jeremy figure in a Luis Guzman mask" – pretty much tells those of us in the know all we need to know, that Nigel knows his stuff.
Following this is a piece on Cannibal Holocaust that’s partly about the film and partly about the late lamented video culture in the UK. Nigel’s analysis of documentary authenticity and the wider history of animal cruelty is good, though I would have added in a nod to Flaherty’s Nanook of the North, as a foundational documentary that is nevertheless misrepresentative, sensationalist and exploitative at points. I’d also say more about the score: while effective and mentioned diegetically I feel it detracts from the effectiveness of the whole.
The discussion of Zombie Flesh Eaters is similar: Part a discussion of the film, part the author’s reactions to it and the influence it has had on his life.
All in all, if you’re a reader of this blog, you should find plenty in Aenigma. If you don’t, well, as the masthead proclaims, with a reference to Welsh band Super Furry Animals, “The Man Don’t Give a Fuck”
Available from http://www.italianfilmreview.com/p/eurocult-fanzine.html.
Anyone who remembers old punk-era, pre DTP zines, or who now reads Cinema Sewer or Rick Trembles’ Motion Picture Purgatory will feel right at home.
Nigel begins with a childhood memory of seeing Asylum whilst on holiday and how it led into horror and then Eurohorror. Following a brief digression into Joan Blondell – a digression that works thanks to the stream of consciousness style of the writing – we’re then onto five of the great Italian horror shock endings, namely Zombie/Zombie Flesh Eaters, The Beyond, Rabid Dogs, To Be Twenty and 'Tis a Pity She’s a Whore.
Next up is a review of The Beast in Heat, in which the brilliant description of the titular Beast – "a Luciano-Pigozzi headed Ron Jeremy figure in a Luis Guzman mask" – pretty much tells those of us in the know all we need to know, that Nigel knows his stuff.
Following this is a piece on Cannibal Holocaust that’s partly about the film and partly about the late lamented video culture in the UK. Nigel’s analysis of documentary authenticity and the wider history of animal cruelty is good, though I would have added in a nod to Flaherty’s Nanook of the North, as a foundational documentary that is nevertheless misrepresentative, sensationalist and exploitative at points. I’d also say more about the score: while effective and mentioned diegetically I feel it detracts from the effectiveness of the whole.
The discussion of Zombie Flesh Eaters is similar: Part a discussion of the film, part the author’s reactions to it and the influence it has had on his life.
All in all, if you’re a reader of this blog, you should find plenty in Aenigma. If you don’t, well, as the masthead proclaims, with a reference to Welsh band Super Furry Animals, “The Man Don’t Give a Fuck”
Available from http://www.italianfilmreview.com/p/eurocult-fanzine.html.
Wednesday, 4 July 2012
Trash or Treasure
Based upon author Kate Egan's PhD thesis, Trash or Treasure presents a three-part, broadly chronological academic examination of the British “video nasty” phenomenon from the early 1980s to the early 2000s, highlighting the shifting and contested meanings attached to the films by various cultural and subcultural groups over this period.
The first chapter examines the discourses employed by the British critical establishment, with Egan emphasising a general tendency to 'other' the assumed audience for horror films as “not like us”. She also notes the particularly anti-American nature of much of this criticism, through an examination of three case studies --- The Funhouse, Visiting Hours (whose Canadian origins are mentioned in passing, but not otherwise explored; an odd omission given that it was shot in Montreal) and The Evil Dead.
The absence of any aesthetic or thematic analysis of the nasties is understandable, inasmuch as there was no coherent criteria by which films were or were not labelled nasties. Less satisfactory is the absence of Italian and Spanish productions or co-productions, given that a disproportionate number of films labelled nasties were from these countries. It is possible, of course, that these films were also less likely to be given cinema releases, but in my opinion it would have been good to mention this and, indeed, the place of continental European popular cinema in established/establishment critical discourse. (A useful case study here might be the cinema release of the Zombie Flesh Eaters/Toolbox Murders double bill, which Stephen Thrower has identified as giving him the feeling that, so to speak, “the times they were a' changin.”)
Another important limitation of Egan's discussion, albeit one that is entirely understandable in the context of academic research, is that her focus throughout remains firmly upon that group of films originally classified as “video nasties” in the early 1980s. She is uninterested in seeing how the term subsequently became a floating signifier that commentators sought to attach to other films, such as Child's Play 3 or Natural Born Killers.
The second chapter highlights contradictory understandings of the early 1980s, whether Kim Newman's golden age/plague years pairing or, more significant on a wider scale, that tension in Conservatism under Thatcher between economic liberalism and social conservatism.
Egan indicates how this relates to the marketing strategies employed by companies such as Vipco, Go and Replay, in that they operated as ideal(ised) Thatcherite entrepreneurs should, but with a product that was beyond the pale as far as more traditional Conservative elements (Thatcher's “Wets”?) were concerned.
This leads neatly on to the third and final chapter of this section, where Egan looks at the video nasty campaign as it emerged in the media, particularly The Daily Mail. Egan identifies the real or implied Daily Mail reader of the time as someone who was more socially conservative than economically liberal, or thereby not quite the (Althusserian interpellated subject?) Thatcherite ideal, whereby economic liberalism was privileged over social conservatism.
In relation to this perhaps the most significant underacknowledged aspect of the video nasties campaign is that the first politician to raise their concerns was not a Conservative but a Labour MP, Gareth Wardell. This is of particular interest, insofar as it represents an area where Egan criticises Martin Barker's contemporaneous analysis in The Video Nasties (1984), in which Thatcher and the Conservatives tended to be presented as the prime movers in the affair, proactive rather than reactive.
In contrast, Egan argues that the Daily Mail and its alternate vision of [C|c]onservatism were to the fore and that, following the failure of Wardell's campaign, the Conservatives then modified their position to be more like that of the newspaper --- i.e. political conservativism was prioritised over economic liberalism. Put another way it seems to be that the tail, The Daily Mail, wagged the dog, the Conservative party.
Thus endeth the first part...
The fourth chapter explores the particular position occupied by the UK horror magazines/fanzines Fear and, especially, The Dark Side in constructing fan subcultures and discourses around the “nasties” (two other unexplored titles are worth noting here: Samhain and Shock Express).
Egan contends that (1990s) Dark Side constituted its identity in opposition to the (1980s-) US publication Fangoria, which it presented as too mainstream. While Dark Side was more mainstream than fanzines, its subcultural credentials were also established by discussing these publications.
Curiously, given the US/UK element identified in the first section, Egan does not say much about whether the Fangoria/Dark Side distinction (at least from the latter side) has broader associations.
She does, however, provide a compelling analysis of the role(s) played by the magazine's editor and public face, Allan Bryce, as gatekeeper / gamekeeper / groundsman of (a particular) subcultural know-how around the video nasties. This extends to Egan's reading of the magazine's small ads, whereby the reader-initiate was required to learn how to decode their particular shibboleths, whether the names of key directors (D'Amato, Franco, Fulci) or euphemisms (rare pre-certs), or Bryce's sometimes cryptic responses to readers' letters.
The fifth chapter looks at online discourses, as found on websites and discussion forums, with an emphasis upon the (male) nerd/geek type and their (his, my?) struggles over subcultural capital and masculinity. I didn't get much out of this. Whether this was mostly because I reacted against it as a male nerd/geek type; Egan's own lack of personal involvement (there is never any indication of why she chose the nasties as a research topic, nor the kind of existential commitment sensed when reading something written by a “true” fan, that this film/these films really matter); the material appearing dated; the difficulties of examining a nation-specific phenomenon in a post-national internet context; that many academic debates are equally petty territorial pissings (the politics of X are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small, to paraphrase Henry Kissinger); and/or being unsure that her sample was genuinely representative, I don't know.
The issue of representativeness is also evident in the sixth chapter, where Egan provides a detailed analysis of collector “John's” particular approach to the video nasty --- or, more precisely, pre-cert videos with nostalgic associations. What is good about this chapter, besides Egan's provocative comparison of John's video collection with Walter Benjamin's library, is the anthropological “thick description” of John's learning and using specific competences in car boot sales to avoid being taken advantage of and to take advantage of others (the return of the repressed Thatcherite entrepreneur?).
Thus endeth the second part...
A major aspect of John's approach to the nasty is/was his specific interest in the original, authentic, video versions of the films. This leads into the third part of the book, where Egan looks at the re-release and re-evaluation of a number of nasties in the late 1990s and 2000s --- a period marked by the emergence of DVD over video (the VHS/Beta/Video 2000 aspect of collecting and rarity is neither explored nor mentioned, presumably because John had a VHS machine) and a new approach at the BBFC which allowed many previously banned nasties to be certificated, albeit often in cut versions.
The seventh chapter looks at the retrospective marketing of the nasties, with a particular focus upon the Vipco label. Egan identifies Vipco (founded in 1979 and intermittently ongoing to the point where her research ends) as a company who sought to position themselves as the home of the nasties via a cheap and cheerful approach, this in contrast to their more upmarket rivals Redemption.
The eighth and final chapter examines how selected nasties, most notably Last House on the Left, were re-contextualised as art works through their screenings in cultural contexts.
Here, I remember first seeing Craven and Cunningham's film at one of these events, namely Edinburgh International Film Festival screening, where it was introduced by Mark Kermode. Part of the reason for this screening was supposed to be as part of a campaign aimed at getting rid of the VRA. While that didn't happen, one now wonders about it and the BBFC's relevance, except as burdens on UK-based distributors who want to abide by the law: They paid to get inferior (because cut) product certificated while UK consumers bought uncut versions from Ebay, Amazon and so on; if we did buy UK releases, it is because of unique material, perhaps itself engaging with the history of the nasties, as with Egan's discussion of the Anchor Bay's US and UK versions of The Evil Dead, where the latter drew upon the legacy of Palace's distribution and defence of the title in the 1980s.
In sum, a provocative and wide ranging analysis of the “video nasty” and its place in British horror culture. You'll likely find things to disagree about, but that's good...
The first chapter examines the discourses employed by the British critical establishment, with Egan emphasising a general tendency to 'other' the assumed audience for horror films as “not like us”. She also notes the particularly anti-American nature of much of this criticism, through an examination of three case studies --- The Funhouse, Visiting Hours (whose Canadian origins are mentioned in passing, but not otherwise explored; an odd omission given that it was shot in Montreal) and The Evil Dead.
The absence of any aesthetic or thematic analysis of the nasties is understandable, inasmuch as there was no coherent criteria by which films were or were not labelled nasties. Less satisfactory is the absence of Italian and Spanish productions or co-productions, given that a disproportionate number of films labelled nasties were from these countries. It is possible, of course, that these films were also less likely to be given cinema releases, but in my opinion it would have been good to mention this and, indeed, the place of continental European popular cinema in established/establishment critical discourse. (A useful case study here might be the cinema release of the Zombie Flesh Eaters/Toolbox Murders double bill, which Stephen Thrower has identified as giving him the feeling that, so to speak, “the times they were a' changin.”)
Another important limitation of Egan's discussion, albeit one that is entirely understandable in the context of academic research, is that her focus throughout remains firmly upon that group of films originally classified as “video nasties” in the early 1980s. She is uninterested in seeing how the term subsequently became a floating signifier that commentators sought to attach to other films, such as Child's Play 3 or Natural Born Killers.
The second chapter highlights contradictory understandings of the early 1980s, whether Kim Newman's golden age/plague years pairing or, more significant on a wider scale, that tension in Conservatism under Thatcher between economic liberalism and social conservatism.
Egan indicates how this relates to the marketing strategies employed by companies such as Vipco, Go and Replay, in that they operated as ideal(ised) Thatcherite entrepreneurs should, but with a product that was beyond the pale as far as more traditional Conservative elements (Thatcher's “Wets”?) were concerned.
This leads neatly on to the third and final chapter of this section, where Egan looks at the video nasty campaign as it emerged in the media, particularly The Daily Mail. Egan identifies the real or implied Daily Mail reader of the time as someone who was more socially conservative than economically liberal, or thereby not quite the (Althusserian interpellated subject?) Thatcherite ideal, whereby economic liberalism was privileged over social conservatism.
In relation to this perhaps the most significant underacknowledged aspect of the video nasties campaign is that the first politician to raise their concerns was not a Conservative but a Labour MP, Gareth Wardell. This is of particular interest, insofar as it represents an area where Egan criticises Martin Barker's contemporaneous analysis in The Video Nasties (1984), in which Thatcher and the Conservatives tended to be presented as the prime movers in the affair, proactive rather than reactive.
In contrast, Egan argues that the Daily Mail and its alternate vision of [C|c]onservatism were to the fore and that, following the failure of Wardell's campaign, the Conservatives then modified their position to be more like that of the newspaper --- i.e. political conservativism was prioritised over economic liberalism. Put another way it seems to be that the tail, The Daily Mail, wagged the dog, the Conservative party.
Thus endeth the first part...
The fourth chapter explores the particular position occupied by the UK horror magazines/fanzines Fear and, especially, The Dark Side in constructing fan subcultures and discourses around the “nasties” (two other unexplored titles are worth noting here: Samhain and Shock Express).
Egan contends that (1990s) Dark Side constituted its identity in opposition to the (1980s-) US publication Fangoria, which it presented as too mainstream. While Dark Side was more mainstream than fanzines, its subcultural credentials were also established by discussing these publications.
Curiously, given the US/UK element identified in the first section, Egan does not say much about whether the Fangoria/Dark Side distinction (at least from the latter side) has broader associations.
She does, however, provide a compelling analysis of the role(s) played by the magazine's editor and public face, Allan Bryce, as gatekeeper / gamekeeper / groundsman of (a particular) subcultural know-how around the video nasties. This extends to Egan's reading of the magazine's small ads, whereby the reader-initiate was required to learn how to decode their particular shibboleths, whether the names of key directors (D'Amato, Franco, Fulci) or euphemisms (rare pre-certs), or Bryce's sometimes cryptic responses to readers' letters.
The fifth chapter looks at online discourses, as found on websites and discussion forums, with an emphasis upon the (male) nerd/geek type and their (his, my?) struggles over subcultural capital and masculinity. I didn't get much out of this. Whether this was mostly because I reacted against it as a male nerd/geek type; Egan's own lack of personal involvement (there is never any indication of why she chose the nasties as a research topic, nor the kind of existential commitment sensed when reading something written by a “true” fan, that this film/these films really matter); the material appearing dated; the difficulties of examining a nation-specific phenomenon in a post-national internet context; that many academic debates are equally petty territorial pissings (the politics of X are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small, to paraphrase Henry Kissinger); and/or being unsure that her sample was genuinely representative, I don't know.
The issue of representativeness is also evident in the sixth chapter, where Egan provides a detailed analysis of collector “John's” particular approach to the video nasty --- or, more precisely, pre-cert videos with nostalgic associations. What is good about this chapter, besides Egan's provocative comparison of John's video collection with Walter Benjamin's library, is the anthropological “thick description” of John's learning and using specific competences in car boot sales to avoid being taken advantage of and to take advantage of others (the return of the repressed Thatcherite entrepreneur?).
Thus endeth the second part...
A major aspect of John's approach to the nasty is/was his specific interest in the original, authentic, video versions of the films. This leads into the third part of the book, where Egan looks at the re-release and re-evaluation of a number of nasties in the late 1990s and 2000s --- a period marked by the emergence of DVD over video (the VHS/Beta/Video 2000 aspect of collecting and rarity is neither explored nor mentioned, presumably because John had a VHS machine) and a new approach at the BBFC which allowed many previously banned nasties to be certificated, albeit often in cut versions.
The seventh chapter looks at the retrospective marketing of the nasties, with a particular focus upon the Vipco label. Egan identifies Vipco (founded in 1979 and intermittently ongoing to the point where her research ends) as a company who sought to position themselves as the home of the nasties via a cheap and cheerful approach, this in contrast to their more upmarket rivals Redemption.
The eighth and final chapter examines how selected nasties, most notably Last House on the Left, were re-contextualised as art works through their screenings in cultural contexts.
Here, I remember first seeing Craven and Cunningham's film at one of these events, namely Edinburgh International Film Festival screening, where it was introduced by Mark Kermode. Part of the reason for this screening was supposed to be as part of a campaign aimed at getting rid of the VRA. While that didn't happen, one now wonders about it and the BBFC's relevance, except as burdens on UK-based distributors who want to abide by the law: They paid to get inferior (because cut) product certificated while UK consumers bought uncut versions from Ebay, Amazon and so on; if we did buy UK releases, it is because of unique material, perhaps itself engaging with the history of the nasties, as with Egan's discussion of the Anchor Bay's US and UK versions of The Evil Dead, where the latter drew upon the legacy of Palace's distribution and defence of the title in the 1980s.
In sum, a provocative and wide ranging analysis of the “video nasty” and its place in British horror culture. You'll likely find things to disagree about, but that's good...
Thursday, 14 June 2012
A little campaigning...
This week Third Window Films, who specialise in bringing Asian cinema to UK audiences, announced that they were no longer going to distribute films theatrically:
http://compactd.exblog.jp/15533802/
The first reason Third Window gives for this decision is the cost of having a film BBFC certificated for both cinema and home video.
This is something which disproportionately affects independent filmmakers and distributors, since they are paying the same as the majors for certification, this despite the obvious fact that their product is never going to sell in comparable quantities.
There's now an online petition urging the BBFC to reduce their costs:
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/34821
Whether or not this will make any difference is another matter, but the mandatory requirement to have films certificated by a single agency seems like the kind of restrictive business practice that a supposedly pro-business government should be acting against.
Unless they're really only concerned with helping big business...
http://compactd.exblog.jp/15533802/
The first reason Third Window gives for this decision is the cost of having a film BBFC certificated for both cinema and home video.
This is something which disproportionately affects independent filmmakers and distributors, since they are paying the same as the majors for certification, this despite the obvious fact that their product is never going to sell in comparable quantities.
There's now an online petition urging the BBFC to reduce their costs:
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/34821
Whether or not this will make any difference is another matter, but the mandatory requirement to have films certificated by a single agency seems like the kind of restrictive business practice that a supposedly pro-business government should be acting against.
Unless they're really only concerned with helping big business...
Thursday, 5 April 2012
Laughable article in the Daily Heil
Psychology Professor Craig Jackson on media violence - writing in the Daily Heil
His article includes this little gem:
I hope Martin Barker chimes in and tears this guy a new one...
His article includes this little gem:
One of the most infamous examples was the torture and murder of James Bulger in 1993. For his killers, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, were said to be enthusiasts of the macabre horror film Child’s Play 3 about the murderous doll Chucky who comes to life.What he fails to mention, of course, is that there is no evidence that Venables and Thompson ever saw Child's Play 3; that this was just an unsubstantiated claim made by the sensationalist gutter press such as the very newspaper his article appears in.
I hope Martin Barker chimes in and tears this guy a new one...
Wednesday, 13 April 2011
Cannibal Holocaust almost uncut
Interesting things are afoot at the BBFC it would seem.
Ruggero Deodato is currently working on a director's cut of Cannibal Holocaust that will feature less animal cruelty. It seems a copy of the film was submitted to the BBFC and the only one of animal cruelty scenes that was going to require cuts was the killing of the small rodent type animal. A reason this was unacceptable was that whereas the other animals killed on camera were consumed for food, this was not.
There's something of an irony here in that within the diegesis of the film this animal is one which is eaten (the guide who kills it actually remarks 'tonight we eat meat' or something like that) whereas a pig that gets shot later is presented as not being eaten ("that pig would have been food for those people').
Context based guidelines just get harder to understand the longer you think about them contextually...
[There's loads more on the topic at the Cult Labs forums]
Ruggero Deodato is currently working on a director's cut of Cannibal Holocaust that will feature less animal cruelty. It seems a copy of the film was submitted to the BBFC and the only one of animal cruelty scenes that was going to require cuts was the killing of the small rodent type animal. A reason this was unacceptable was that whereas the other animals killed on camera were consumed for food, this was not.
There's something of an irony here in that within the diegesis of the film this animal is one which is eaten (the guide who kills it actually remarks 'tonight we eat meat' or something like that) whereas a pig that gets shot later is presented as not being eaten ("that pig would have been food for those people').
Context based guidelines just get harder to understand the longer you think about them contextually...
[There's loads more on the topic at the Cult Labs forums]
Friday, 26 November 2010
The Video Nasties: The Definitive Guide
The time: The early 1980s
The place: Britain
The greatest threat to the British way of life, it emerged, was not Thatcher and the divisive ideological project associated with her name but a new technology, home video.
As videos were not required to go before the BBFC (British Board of Film Censors) and as the major studios regarded the new medium as a threat and hesitate to put out their own films, all manner of material suddenly became available from Europe and that has never appeared on British screens.
Somewhere along the line concerns emerged over a particular category of videos, the nasty. The concern was not the traditional one with sex. Films have been prosecuted as pornographic before. Rather it was more about violence and other content for which films had never been prosecuted before.
Some of this concern may have been legitimate. Some was manufactured – sometimes, ironically enough, by distributors lurid packaging and advertising.
The popular press became involved, along with elements of the quality press and others who should have known better. There was the sense that something had to be done. And so an act regulating the video industry was proposed and, with few willing to stand up for the nasties, duly passed into law – or was taken to have been passed into law, as would only become apparent a quarter-century later.
Sadly, the new 2010 VRA (Video Recordings Act) was passed without little debate, although fortunately now it is more or less an irrelevance in the Internet era.
As this summary indicates, the history of the video nasties affair is well-enough known.
The obvious questions are thus whether there is space for and/or a need for The Video Nasties: The Definitive Guide.
To answer this we can begin by itemising what the package contains. The first disc presents a new documentary on the nasties. The second presents trailers and commentary on the 39 films eventually to be successfully prosecuted by the DPP (Department of Public Prosecutions) list. The third does the same for another 33 films which were prosecuted but acquitted. These can be watched either on their own or intercut with commentaries that provide valuable contextualisation and critique.
Including other materials, like a gallery of pre-cert video logos and identifiers (some, like Red Tape, more porn than anything else in their address, others, like Rothmans, not obviously directly relevant to the nasties) there is over 12 hours of material to go through.
It’s not just about the quantity, however. The material is overall of a high quality, the kind of stuff that ranks as an 8 or 9 out of ten.
As such, it’s probably easier for me to begin with the little negatives that remove that final mark or two.
The first of these is the range of fan critics discussing the nasties. Those that are featured – Stephen Thrower, Alan Jones, Kim Newman, Marc Morris, Alan Bryce – are certainly knowledgeable and broadly representative. But there are other figures from the British cult cinema scene who have discussed the nasties before and who conspicuously absent, notably David Kerekes (author of See No Evil) and John Martin (author of Seduction of the Gullible). One hopes that their exclusion was nothing to do with professional rivalries or similar.
The same may be said of the more academic figures like Xavier Mendik and Patricia MacCormack, given that Kate Egan, author of Trash or Treasure, is absent.
Correspondingly the inclusion of Emily Booth amongst the presenters is a bit awkward, particularly when she seems to be reading pre-prepared commentary rather than spontaneously drawing upon her own in-depth knowledge of the subject.
The second are a few errors in the individual commentaries: Discussing Jess Franco’s Devil Hunter, Thrower appears to confuse Sabrina Siani with Ursula Buchfellner. Discussing Umberto Lenzi’s Cannibal Ferox Alan Bryce indicates that it is Lorraine De Selle’s character who has hooks put through her breasts, when in fact it is Zora Kerowa’s.
It might seem pedantic to point these out, but as the documentary itself demonstrates exactitude is required when we are talking about this subject.
The third is the relative lack of discussion of the wider culture that grew up around the nasties. One reason for this is perhaps that it could entail more self-reflection and, indeed, self-criticism on the part of some of the commentators.
One of the more distinctive aspects of British horror fandom testified to by the entire package here is, after all, not only the continuing centrality of the video nasties but arguably their importance in terms of some of these commentators own careers.
Without wishing to become too ad hominem, I do feel, for instance, that Bryce’s The Dark Side was sometimes overly fixated on the nasties and that this inhibited discussion of other aspects of horror cinema.
Likewise, it would have been interesting to see more analysis of a company like VIPCO and how they worked in relation to the pre-VRA and post-VRA climates, or to hear about what the VRA meant in terms of the creation of this documentary itself, given that there must be images in some of the available trailer materials that still could not be passed for certification.
But, again, these are minor quibbles for a package that does what it sets out to admirably.
The place: Britain
The greatest threat to the British way of life, it emerged, was not Thatcher and the divisive ideological project associated with her name but a new technology, home video.
As videos were not required to go before the BBFC (British Board of Film Censors) and as the major studios regarded the new medium as a threat and hesitate to put out their own films, all manner of material suddenly became available from Europe and that has never appeared on British screens.
Somewhere along the line concerns emerged over a particular category of videos, the nasty. The concern was not the traditional one with sex. Films have been prosecuted as pornographic before. Rather it was more about violence and other content for which films had never been prosecuted before.
Some of this concern may have been legitimate. Some was manufactured – sometimes, ironically enough, by distributors lurid packaging and advertising.
The popular press became involved, along with elements of the quality press and others who should have known better. There was the sense that something had to be done. And so an act regulating the video industry was proposed and, with few willing to stand up for the nasties, duly passed into law – or was taken to have been passed into law, as would only become apparent a quarter-century later.
Sadly, the new 2010 VRA (Video Recordings Act) was passed without little debate, although fortunately now it is more or less an irrelevance in the Internet era.
As this summary indicates, the history of the video nasties affair is well-enough known.
The obvious questions are thus whether there is space for and/or a need for The Video Nasties: The Definitive Guide.
To answer this we can begin by itemising what the package contains. The first disc presents a new documentary on the nasties. The second presents trailers and commentary on the 39 films eventually to be successfully prosecuted by the DPP (Department of Public Prosecutions) list. The third does the same for another 33 films which were prosecuted but acquitted. These can be watched either on their own or intercut with commentaries that provide valuable contextualisation and critique.
Including other materials, like a gallery of pre-cert video logos and identifiers (some, like Red Tape, more porn than anything else in their address, others, like Rothmans, not obviously directly relevant to the nasties) there is over 12 hours of material to go through.
It’s not just about the quantity, however. The material is overall of a high quality, the kind of stuff that ranks as an 8 or 9 out of ten.
As such, it’s probably easier for me to begin with the little negatives that remove that final mark or two.
The first of these is the range of fan critics discussing the nasties. Those that are featured – Stephen Thrower, Alan Jones, Kim Newman, Marc Morris, Alan Bryce – are certainly knowledgeable and broadly representative. But there are other figures from the British cult cinema scene who have discussed the nasties before and who conspicuously absent, notably David Kerekes (author of See No Evil) and John Martin (author of Seduction of the Gullible). One hopes that their exclusion was nothing to do with professional rivalries or similar.
The same may be said of the more academic figures like Xavier Mendik and Patricia MacCormack, given that Kate Egan, author of Trash or Treasure, is absent.
Correspondingly the inclusion of Emily Booth amongst the presenters is a bit awkward, particularly when she seems to be reading pre-prepared commentary rather than spontaneously drawing upon her own in-depth knowledge of the subject.
The second are a few errors in the individual commentaries: Discussing Jess Franco’s Devil Hunter, Thrower appears to confuse Sabrina Siani with Ursula Buchfellner. Discussing Umberto Lenzi’s Cannibal Ferox Alan Bryce indicates that it is Lorraine De Selle’s character who has hooks put through her breasts, when in fact it is Zora Kerowa’s.
It might seem pedantic to point these out, but as the documentary itself demonstrates exactitude is required when we are talking about this subject.
The third is the relative lack of discussion of the wider culture that grew up around the nasties. One reason for this is perhaps that it could entail more self-reflection and, indeed, self-criticism on the part of some of the commentators.
One of the more distinctive aspects of British horror fandom testified to by the entire package here is, after all, not only the continuing centrality of the video nasties but arguably their importance in terms of some of these commentators own careers.
Without wishing to become too ad hominem, I do feel, for instance, that Bryce’s The Dark Side was sometimes overly fixated on the nasties and that this inhibited discussion of other aspects of horror cinema.
Likewise, it would have been interesting to see more analysis of a company like VIPCO and how they worked in relation to the pre-VRA and post-VRA climates, or to hear about what the VRA meant in terms of the creation of this documentary itself, given that there must be images in some of the available trailer materials that still could not be passed for certification.
But, again, these are minor quibbles for a package that does what it sets out to admirably.
Wednesday, 27 October 2010
Bay of Blood cuts waived
The seeming outbreak of common sense at BBFC continues as another former "video nasty" is passed uncut:
http://www.bbfc.co.uk/EVF059583
The new DVD from Arrow looks a pretty good package as well:
http://www.arrowfilms.co.uk/index.php?c=y&s=bd39246dd448ff3a272da060ec280255&art_id=4&tle_id=471&v=
http://www.bbfc.co.uk/EVF059583
The new DVD from Arrow looks a pretty good package as well:
http://www.arrowfilms.co.uk/index.php?c=y&s=bd39246dd448ff3a272da060ec280255&art_id=4&tle_id=471&v=
Friday, 24 September 2010
Inferno passed uncut in UK
Meaning footage of a mouse being eaten by a cat is no longer excised.
http://www.bbfc.co.uk/website/Classified.nsf/ClassifiedWorks/D8C0CDE0C913455E8025773C0036C8E0
http://www.melonfarmers.co.uk/nasties_news.htm#More_Cat_and_Mouse_Games_4298
http://www.bbfc.co.uk/website/Classified.nsf/ClassifiedWorks/D8C0CDE0C913455E8025773C0036C8E0
http://www.melonfarmers.co.uk/nasties_news.htm#More_Cat_and_Mouse_Games_4298
Friday, 20 November 2009
Thought provoking pieces on the VRA
Or, how to help independent cinema and why it won't happen:
http://reformthevrauk.blogspot.com/2009/10/reform-uk-video-recordings-act-1984.html
http://jw48.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/heres-how-the-regional-screen-agencies-could-support-british-indie-films-at-no-cost/
http://reformthevrauk.blogspot.com/2009/10/reform-uk-video-recordings-act-1984.html
http://jw48.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/heres-how-the-regional-screen-agencies-could-support-british-indie-films-at-no-cost/
Tuesday, 25 August 2009
The VRA debacle - a brief chronology
1973
UK joins the EEC.
1983
An EEC directive is passed saying that national "standards" laws also have to be passed before it. Basically, other member countries need to know what your standards laws are to facilitate free trade, that they can or cannot sell these goods in your country. Meanwhile, in the UK, there is the beginnings of a moral panic over the so-called "video nasties".
1984
The British government duly passes the VRA, placing constraints the upon video industry. It fails to formally notify the EEC. Thus, German, French, Italian and other EEC/EC nationals would unknowingly commit a crime by trying to distribute their videos in the UK. Ignorance of the law is, after all, no defence.
1985 - July 2008
Thousands of pre-cert titles disappear from video shelves because it is not economical to have them mandatorily certificated. Many small distributors fold, much to the benefit of the major studios, who had been caught on the hop by the rise of home video. These same companies are also placed in advantageous position with regard to the BBFC as a whole, because they can keep resubmitting a film for classification and paying the requisite fee until they get the certificate they want. Smaller companies are not in a position to do. Prosecutions of individuals continue, as does the impounding and destruction of imported material.
Society becomes no safer - indeed, the shocking murder of Jamie Bulger by two boys takes place in the context of "video nasties" being illegal. Nonetheless, the gutter press quickly stirs up a new moral panic, blaming one of the BBFC-certificated Child's Play series for inspiring the crime; that neither of the killers ever saw the film is besides the point.
Subsequently the BBFC begins to relax its policies, with a number of previously banned films being re-released uncut. Meanwhile, the development of the internet and the replacement of video by DVD means that consumers are increasingly importing what they want to view from abroad anyway. The resulting influx of previously banned material does not cause the collapse of society, as the moral minority had claimed it would.
August 2009
Someone notices that the VRA was never properly ratified. The British government's response is to say that the legislation will be hastily re-enacted and the EC properly informed this time. This does not offer anything to the 1700 or so people successfully prosecuted under a quarter century of the VRA and thereby given fines, sentences or criminal records; those priced out of the market by the apparent requirement to have a BBFC certificate, or indeed all those who ever shelled out money to that organisation for something they did not necessarily want. They'll be lucky to get an apology, never mind any form of compensation or redress.
Was the Video Packaging Act of 1985 properly ratified? Are are any other laws that might turn out not to have been properly ratified which people are suffering under? How come none of the lawyers in Parliament or who took on VRA-related cases as either prosecution or defence never even noticed?
And, more worryingly for trash cinema fans, who is to say any new legislation won't contain new clauses to tighten things up?
So, if you want your copy of Grotesque, as banned last week by the BBFC, you'd better get it now - although having just watched it a couple of nights ago I can't say it was particularly engaging, but it's also no worse than other Japanese ero-guro stuff I've seen as far as sadism, torture and mutilation go...
UK joins the EEC.
1983
An EEC directive is passed saying that national "standards" laws also have to be passed before it. Basically, other member countries need to know what your standards laws are to facilitate free trade, that they can or cannot sell these goods in your country. Meanwhile, in the UK, there is the beginnings of a moral panic over the so-called "video nasties".
1984
The British government duly passes the VRA, placing constraints the upon video industry. It fails to formally notify the EEC. Thus, German, French, Italian and other EEC/EC nationals would unknowingly commit a crime by trying to distribute their videos in the UK. Ignorance of the law is, after all, no defence.
1985 - July 2008
Thousands of pre-cert titles disappear from video shelves because it is not economical to have them mandatorily certificated. Many small distributors fold, much to the benefit of the major studios, who had been caught on the hop by the rise of home video. These same companies are also placed in advantageous position with regard to the BBFC as a whole, because they can keep resubmitting a film for classification and paying the requisite fee until they get the certificate they want. Smaller companies are not in a position to do. Prosecutions of individuals continue, as does the impounding and destruction of imported material.
Society becomes no safer - indeed, the shocking murder of Jamie Bulger by two boys takes place in the context of "video nasties" being illegal. Nonetheless, the gutter press quickly stirs up a new moral panic, blaming one of the BBFC-certificated Child's Play series for inspiring the crime; that neither of the killers ever saw the film is besides the point.
Subsequently the BBFC begins to relax its policies, with a number of previously banned films being re-released uncut. Meanwhile, the development of the internet and the replacement of video by DVD means that consumers are increasingly importing what they want to view from abroad anyway. The resulting influx of previously banned material does not cause the collapse of society, as the moral minority had claimed it would.
August 2009
Someone notices that the VRA was never properly ratified. The British government's response is to say that the legislation will be hastily re-enacted and the EC properly informed this time. This does not offer anything to the 1700 or so people successfully prosecuted under a quarter century of the VRA and thereby given fines, sentences or criminal records; those priced out of the market by the apparent requirement to have a BBFC certificate, or indeed all those who ever shelled out money to that organisation for something they did not necessarily want. They'll be lucky to get an apology, never mind any form of compensation or redress.
Was the Video Packaging Act of 1985 properly ratified? Are are any other laws that might turn out not to have been properly ratified which people are suffering under? How come none of the lawyers in Parliament or who took on VRA-related cases as either prosecution or defence never even noticed?
And, more worryingly for trash cinema fans, who is to say any new legislation won't contain new clauses to tighten things up?
So, if you want your copy of Grotesque, as banned last week by the BBFC, you'd better get it now - although having just watched it a couple of nights ago I can't say it was particularly engaging, but it's also no worse than other Japanese ero-guro stuff I've seen as far as sadism, torture and mutilation go...
Video Recordings Act never properly implemented
25 years of the VRA and now it is discovered that it was never properly implemented:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6808592.ece
Unfortunately rather than recognising that it was bad legislation, passed in a moral panic, that ought never to have been passed in the first place, it is being re-implemented.
Order your un-classified films now and take advantage of the loophole?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6808592.ece
Unfortunately rather than recognising that it was bad legislation, passed in a moral panic, that ought never to have been passed in the first place, it is being re-implemented.
Order your un-classified films now and take advantage of the loophole?
Monday, 17 March 2008
The neo-nasty menace?
[This is another piece for the writing on film class I'm doing which I thought I'd share here; comments and suggestions on improvements / errors welcome]
According to right-thinking types British society is under threat from media violence as never before. “Torture porn,” the Internet, gangsta rap and computer games are breeding a generation of desensitised young men. Unable to distinguish between image and reality they rape, assault and kill without compunction. Just as we need to be saved from them, they need to be saved from these media by more vigilant censorship.
Things recently came to a head with the private members bill by Conservative Member of Parliament Julian Brazier, in which he argued for giving MPs the ability to overrule British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) decisions. Though the bill stood little chance of becoming law and was defeated, the debates within Parliament and the mass media were very interesting for a number of reasons. First, because of the crossing of party lines in the debate, with Brazier gaining his most prominent support from Labour MP Keith Vaz and the bill being criticised by both Conservative and Labour MPs. Second, because the arguments of Brazier, Vaz and their supporters in the media were really nothing other than the same old story that we had seen a quarter-century ago with the original “video nasties” affair. Third, because the response, as expressed in Internet discussions, including comments made on the websites of the same media, showed the extent to which Brazier and Vaz were out of touch with large sections of the public they claimed to represent. This last aspect was somewhat new and shows what the politicians and pundits perhaps most fear: the emergence of an informed population able to use new technology to route around censorship and misinformation.
Brazier singled out a number of different films in the parliamentary debate around his bill, including Gaspar Noé's Irreversible (a glamorisation of rape, according to the MP) and David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises (too violent, apparently). I want, however, to concentrate on something rather less critically respectable than these art house auteurs: Sergio Garrone's Nazi exploitation shocker SS Experiment Camp.
As it so happens Garrone's thirty year old film was one of those which had kick-started the original “video nasties” affair of the early 1980s. A history lesson: to the major studios the emergence of home video in the late 1970s and early 1980s represented a threat rather than an opportunity. Wary of losing theatrical sales, they declined to release big name films onto video or at best released them after a long wait. This created a vacuum for product which was filled by a large number of small scale entrepreneurs who bought up the rights to just about any film they could. Seeking to drum up interest in a marketplace that was thus growing more and more crowded by the day, SS Experiment Camp's distributors Go Video actually sent self-appointed moral watchdog Mary Whitehouse of the National Viewers and Listeners Association (NVLA) promotional artwork for the video, which depicted a near-naked woman suspended upside down on a crucifix alongside a leering SS man, posing as a concerned member of the public. Whitehouse took the bait, the media ran with the story and rentals/sales of the video duly increased. It was classic exploitation film ballyhoo, and exploitation of that exploitation by the NVLA. It would be repeated, with minor variations, by other companies such as VIPCO, with their lurid “the drill keeps tearing through flesh and bone” promotional artwork and copy for Abel Ferrara's Driller Killer, and World of Video 2000, with their guess-the-weight-of-the-damaged-brain competition for Nightmares in a Damaged Brain, with equal effect upon sales. Everyone won, at least for a while. The problem for Go and their competitors was that the lurid advertising campaigns soon proved to have worked that bit too well. Whitehouse and company had sunk their fangs in on the issue and were not going to let go.
Seeing a convenient scapegoat that distracted attention from the effects of her own government's economic and social policies, Margaret Thatcher quickly jumped on the bandwagon and, to cut a long story short, the Video Recordings Act was born and quickly passed by Parliament. Through the provisions of the VRA a relatively small number of films were banned outright. It became illegal to sell or offer them for sale. All other films had to be certificated by the BBFC before they could be legally released on video. As a result, a far larger number of films simply disappeared, because it was prohibitively expensive to pay for the privilege of having them checked by the BBFC examiner, who might also require cuts and resubmission. The (un)anticipated consequence of the former provision was to give the banned films a lasting cachet and create a black market for them. The (un)anticipated consequence of the latter was to take the video industry out of the hands of the small players and return it to the major studios who could afford to take a high-profile film like Rambo back to the BBFC again and again until a satisfactory compromise was reached over its home format content and certificate.
Fast forward 20 or so years or, rather, chapter skip to the late noughties.
The government has changed, though dissatisfaction with Nü-Labour's opportunistic abandonment of its old principles and policies is growing. The NVLA has likewise mutated, becoming Mediawatch after Whitehouse's death but otherwise repeating the same old mantras. New technologies have emerged, most crucially DVD and the Internet, along with new issues of control phrased in the same old terms of new and unprecedented threats to the young and impressionable.
Reacting against the major players' attempts to artificially control the DVD market through the use of Region Coding, which divides the world up into a number of different zones and makes most content region specific, keen film enthusiasts quickly spotted the potential of having region-free players and importing otherwise unavailable releases on-line retailers. After all, it was not against the law to purchase banned films, only to sell them. But, if a retailer is not located within the UK, then UK laws like the VRA do not apply to them. True, the horror fan who sought to import an uncut SS Experiment Camp from abroad was still taking a chance: customs might open their package, declare the contents legally obscene, have them destroyed and issue a fine or court summons. But it was a calculated risk that paid off more often than not. Horror fans were finally getting the chance to see uncut films again and British society could hardly be said to have collapsed as a result.
In truth, the video nasties appealed only to a relatively small and self-selecting audience, perfectly capable of maintaining a critical distance from the films for the most part. Read an online debate about the cannibal films of Ruggero Deodato and Umberto Lenzi, for instance, and it's clear how the fans are capable of saying why the former director's Cannibal Holocaust is a technically, aesthetically and intellectually superior film to the latter's Cannibal Ferox – which to be sure the cynic might say is not exactly difficult – without endorsing the films' putative racism or the killing of animals on screen.
If anyone was losing out here it was the UK based DVD distributor or retailer whose hands were effectively tied by the VRA. Yet over the course of the last few years the majority of nasties have in fact been re-released, sometimes with significant cuts by the BBFC – the animal cruelty of the aforementioned cannibal films contravenes earlier animal welfare legislation, which few would presumably wish to oppose – but more and more with only minor cuts or on a number of occasions none whatsoever.
In this the BBFC was responding to public opinion, canvassed through a number of high-profile consultation and research exercises, and a growing body of effects research based on more sophisticated models of the audience-text relationship. Adult audiences increasingly wanted to be treated like adults and be allowed to watch a film such as SS Experiment Camp if they so desired.
Indeed anyone over 18 had actually already been free to buy or rent the film, which had been passed by the BBFC uncut and released on DVD at the end of 2006 for over a year by the time it came to Brazier's attention. It could hardly be said that society had changed significantly for the worse in this time as a result of the film's availability nor that there had been any clear upsurge in anti-Semitic incidents that could be traced to the film.
So why bother with it? The answer should be obvious: it was an easy and obvious target: what sort of sick individual would watch a film called SS Experiment Camp, never mind attempt to defend it. Now, as it so happens the film is ineptly made and often outright laughter inducing, hard to take serious at any level – never more than when one recently castrated male victim utters the immortal line “you bastard, what have you done with my balls?” The “horrifying experiments of the SS” are more camp than anything else. They may be stupid and distasteful, but when has either ever provided an adequate reason for censorship? Just ask Eli Roth, the Jewish director of another Brazier target, the so-called “torture porn” films Hostel and Hostel II, who recently contributed a spoof “Nazisploitation” trailer to Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's homage to trash cinema, Grindhouse.
Indeed, if there's the hint of exploitation attaching to anyone here, I would suggest that it is to Brazier and politicians like him, with their characteristic singling out of deviant minorities such as trash film fans, practitioners of BDSM or players of 'violent' video games like in the expectation that few will prove willing to stand up for them.
Yet this is another place where things are changing as a result of new technology. And, more importantly, changing for the better. While there were certainly dissenting voices at the time of the original video nasties campaign, it was difficult for them to be heard. Newspapers could only publish so many letters to the editor and would exercise a greater degree of control over which were selected. Today, by contrast, comments such as that by Dr B Flaks in response to a Times online opinion piece, “Stop this debasing film,” can find a place:
“In a free and civilized country there should be no need for any argument to stop the kind of censorship that we endured twenty years ago. I lived through the despicable 'Mary Whitehouse' period and have no wish to see that repeated. In order to watch such films people have to make the effort to go out and buy them – they will not see them by accident. If anyone does watch it and is disturbed by it, that says more about the viewer than the film.
The protection we do need is from venal and stupid politicians and from activists who would like to dictate to their compatriots what they can see or read.”
The politician's response to arguments like this is often predictable: it is fine for educated, middle class types to watch a SS Experiment Camp, but it needs to be kept out of the hands of the plebian masses who can't be relied upon to take care of their children. The problem with such arguments, besides what amounts to a patronising class-based racism, is that absolutely anything can and does inspire the psychotic individual. Take the case of Pierre Williams, sentenced to 38 years in prison for the murder of his former partner and her children. The text which Williams drew inspiration from was however not SS Experiment Camp or any other ex- or neo-nasty but the Bible. As the Times online reported:
“A container of cocoa butter at the crime scene became significant when a Bible was found in Williams’s possession: three pages were underlined in ballpoint pen and the words “special oil” high-lighted in three places. Detectives also found several other significant passages underlined, including: “Moses took some of the special oil and some of the blood which was on the altar and he sprinkled them on Aaron and Aaron’s clothes.””
So can we expect to a call for banning the Bible next?
According to right-thinking types British society is under threat from media violence as never before. “Torture porn,” the Internet, gangsta rap and computer games are breeding a generation of desensitised young men. Unable to distinguish between image and reality they rape, assault and kill without compunction. Just as we need to be saved from them, they need to be saved from these media by more vigilant censorship.
Things recently came to a head with the private members bill by Conservative Member of Parliament Julian Brazier, in which he argued for giving MPs the ability to overrule British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) decisions. Though the bill stood little chance of becoming law and was defeated, the debates within Parliament and the mass media were very interesting for a number of reasons. First, because of the crossing of party lines in the debate, with Brazier gaining his most prominent support from Labour MP Keith Vaz and the bill being criticised by both Conservative and Labour MPs. Second, because the arguments of Brazier, Vaz and their supporters in the media were really nothing other than the same old story that we had seen a quarter-century ago with the original “video nasties” affair. Third, because the response, as expressed in Internet discussions, including comments made on the websites of the same media, showed the extent to which Brazier and Vaz were out of touch with large sections of the public they claimed to represent. This last aspect was somewhat new and shows what the politicians and pundits perhaps most fear: the emergence of an informed population able to use new technology to route around censorship and misinformation.
Brazier singled out a number of different films in the parliamentary debate around his bill, including Gaspar Noé's Irreversible (a glamorisation of rape, according to the MP) and David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises (too violent, apparently). I want, however, to concentrate on something rather less critically respectable than these art house auteurs: Sergio Garrone's Nazi exploitation shocker SS Experiment Camp.
As it so happens Garrone's thirty year old film was one of those which had kick-started the original “video nasties” affair of the early 1980s. A history lesson: to the major studios the emergence of home video in the late 1970s and early 1980s represented a threat rather than an opportunity. Wary of losing theatrical sales, they declined to release big name films onto video or at best released them after a long wait. This created a vacuum for product which was filled by a large number of small scale entrepreneurs who bought up the rights to just about any film they could. Seeking to drum up interest in a marketplace that was thus growing more and more crowded by the day, SS Experiment Camp's distributors Go Video actually sent self-appointed moral watchdog Mary Whitehouse of the National Viewers and Listeners Association (NVLA) promotional artwork for the video, which depicted a near-naked woman suspended upside down on a crucifix alongside a leering SS man, posing as a concerned member of the public. Whitehouse took the bait, the media ran with the story and rentals/sales of the video duly increased. It was classic exploitation film ballyhoo, and exploitation of that exploitation by the NVLA. It would be repeated, with minor variations, by other companies such as VIPCO, with their lurid “the drill keeps tearing through flesh and bone” promotional artwork and copy for Abel Ferrara's Driller Killer, and World of Video 2000, with their guess-the-weight-of-the-damaged-brain competition for Nightmares in a Damaged Brain, with equal effect upon sales. Everyone won, at least for a while. The problem for Go and their competitors was that the lurid advertising campaigns soon proved to have worked that bit too well. Whitehouse and company had sunk their fangs in on the issue and were not going to let go.
Seeing a convenient scapegoat that distracted attention from the effects of her own government's economic and social policies, Margaret Thatcher quickly jumped on the bandwagon and, to cut a long story short, the Video Recordings Act was born and quickly passed by Parliament. Through the provisions of the VRA a relatively small number of films were banned outright. It became illegal to sell or offer them for sale. All other films had to be certificated by the BBFC before they could be legally released on video. As a result, a far larger number of films simply disappeared, because it was prohibitively expensive to pay for the privilege of having them checked by the BBFC examiner, who might also require cuts and resubmission. The (un)anticipated consequence of the former provision was to give the banned films a lasting cachet and create a black market for them. The (un)anticipated consequence of the latter was to take the video industry out of the hands of the small players and return it to the major studios who could afford to take a high-profile film like Rambo back to the BBFC again and again until a satisfactory compromise was reached over its home format content and certificate.
Fast forward 20 or so years or, rather, chapter skip to the late noughties.
The government has changed, though dissatisfaction with Nü-Labour's opportunistic abandonment of its old principles and policies is growing. The NVLA has likewise mutated, becoming Mediawatch after Whitehouse's death but otherwise repeating the same old mantras. New technologies have emerged, most crucially DVD and the Internet, along with new issues of control phrased in the same old terms of new and unprecedented threats to the young and impressionable.
Reacting against the major players' attempts to artificially control the DVD market through the use of Region Coding, which divides the world up into a number of different zones and makes most content region specific, keen film enthusiasts quickly spotted the potential of having region-free players and importing otherwise unavailable releases on-line retailers. After all, it was not against the law to purchase banned films, only to sell them. But, if a retailer is not located within the UK, then UK laws like the VRA do not apply to them. True, the horror fan who sought to import an uncut SS Experiment Camp from abroad was still taking a chance: customs might open their package, declare the contents legally obscene, have them destroyed and issue a fine or court summons. But it was a calculated risk that paid off more often than not. Horror fans were finally getting the chance to see uncut films again and British society could hardly be said to have collapsed as a result.
In truth, the video nasties appealed only to a relatively small and self-selecting audience, perfectly capable of maintaining a critical distance from the films for the most part. Read an online debate about the cannibal films of Ruggero Deodato and Umberto Lenzi, for instance, and it's clear how the fans are capable of saying why the former director's Cannibal Holocaust is a technically, aesthetically and intellectually superior film to the latter's Cannibal Ferox – which to be sure the cynic might say is not exactly difficult – without endorsing the films' putative racism or the killing of animals on screen.
If anyone was losing out here it was the UK based DVD distributor or retailer whose hands were effectively tied by the VRA. Yet over the course of the last few years the majority of nasties have in fact been re-released, sometimes with significant cuts by the BBFC – the animal cruelty of the aforementioned cannibal films contravenes earlier animal welfare legislation, which few would presumably wish to oppose – but more and more with only minor cuts or on a number of occasions none whatsoever.
In this the BBFC was responding to public opinion, canvassed through a number of high-profile consultation and research exercises, and a growing body of effects research based on more sophisticated models of the audience-text relationship. Adult audiences increasingly wanted to be treated like adults and be allowed to watch a film such as SS Experiment Camp if they so desired.
Indeed anyone over 18 had actually already been free to buy or rent the film, which had been passed by the BBFC uncut and released on DVD at the end of 2006 for over a year by the time it came to Brazier's attention. It could hardly be said that society had changed significantly for the worse in this time as a result of the film's availability nor that there had been any clear upsurge in anti-Semitic incidents that could be traced to the film.
So why bother with it? The answer should be obvious: it was an easy and obvious target: what sort of sick individual would watch a film called SS Experiment Camp, never mind attempt to defend it. Now, as it so happens the film is ineptly made and often outright laughter inducing, hard to take serious at any level – never more than when one recently castrated male victim utters the immortal line “you bastard, what have you done with my balls?” The “horrifying experiments of the SS” are more camp than anything else. They may be stupid and distasteful, but when has either ever provided an adequate reason for censorship? Just ask Eli Roth, the Jewish director of another Brazier target, the so-called “torture porn” films Hostel and Hostel II, who recently contributed a spoof “Nazisploitation” trailer to Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's homage to trash cinema, Grindhouse.
Indeed, if there's the hint of exploitation attaching to anyone here, I would suggest that it is to Brazier and politicians like him, with their characteristic singling out of deviant minorities such as trash film fans, practitioners of BDSM or players of 'violent' video games like in the expectation that few will prove willing to stand up for them.
Yet this is another place where things are changing as a result of new technology. And, more importantly, changing for the better. While there were certainly dissenting voices at the time of the original video nasties campaign, it was difficult for them to be heard. Newspapers could only publish so many letters to the editor and would exercise a greater degree of control over which were selected. Today, by contrast, comments such as that by Dr B Flaks in response to a Times online opinion piece, “Stop this debasing film,” can find a place:
“In a free and civilized country there should be no need for any argument to stop the kind of censorship that we endured twenty years ago. I lived through the despicable 'Mary Whitehouse' period and have no wish to see that repeated. In order to watch such films people have to make the effort to go out and buy them – they will not see them by accident. If anyone does watch it and is disturbed by it, that says more about the viewer than the film.
The protection we do need is from venal and stupid politicians and from activists who would like to dictate to their compatriots what they can see or read.”
The politician's response to arguments like this is often predictable: it is fine for educated, middle class types to watch a SS Experiment Camp, but it needs to be kept out of the hands of the plebian masses who can't be relied upon to take care of their children. The problem with such arguments, besides what amounts to a patronising class-based racism, is that absolutely anything can and does inspire the psychotic individual. Take the case of Pierre Williams, sentenced to 38 years in prison for the murder of his former partner and her children. The text which Williams drew inspiration from was however not SS Experiment Camp or any other ex- or neo-nasty but the Bible. As the Times online reported:
“A container of cocoa butter at the crime scene became significant when a Bible was found in Williams’s possession: three pages were underlined in ballpoint pen and the words “special oil” high-lighted in three places. Detectives also found several other significant passages underlined, including: “Moses took some of the special oil and some of the blood which was on the altar and he sprinkled them on Aaron and Aaron’s clothes.””
So can we expect to a call for banning the Bible next?
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