Alright, let me tell you about this wild ride I went on today. So, I was just chilling, scrolling through Facebook, right? And boom, I see this thing from IMDB about “Video Nasties.” Never heard of it before, but it sounded kinda cool, in a messed up way.
Turns out, “Video Nasties” was this big deal back in the 80s in the UK. Basically, it was a list of 72 movies, mostly horror, that got people all riled up. They were like, “These movies are gonna corrupt everyone!” But here’s the kicker, only 39 of them actually got into legal trouble when this Video Recordings Act thing passed in 1984.
Naturally, I had to know more. I spent, no joke, hours going down this rabbit hole. I found tons of articles, some books even, all about these “nasty” movies. One film that caught my eye was “The Funhouse.” It’s about these friends who, like idiots, decide to stay overnight in a funhouse. Big mistake, obviously. People start getting killed off, you know, the usual slasher stuff.
But why was “The Funhouse” on the list? I mean, sure, it’s scary, but was it really that bad? I kept digging. And I discovered that this whole Video Nasties thing was started by the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association. They were basically the moral police of video tapes, freaking out about all these low-budget horror and, uh, “exploitation” films.
I found this one site, Nucleus Films, talking about the whole Video Nasties thing. They were even putting out some kind of “definitive guide” to it. They had this quote, “Prepare to be corrupted and depraved once more…” Okay, that’s a bit much, but you get the idea. These films were considered seriously messed up.
Then I stumbled upon this old legal document, or something like that, that was used for this “VIDEO NASTIES: THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE.” It was supposed to explain why so many extra titles were, I don’t know, on some kind of extended naughty list. Honestly, the whole thing was a bit confusing, but it was like finding a piece of history or something.
Here’s what I think about “The Funhouse”:
- It’s a slasher film, so it’s got the usual violence and gore.
- It’s probably on the list because of the whole moral panic thing back then.
- People were freaked out about these kinds of movies, especially on video, where anyone could watch them.
And get this, I read that “The Exorcist” and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” were initially on the list too, I think. But then they got released with an “18” rating years later, in 1999. Crazy, right?
So yeah, that was my day. From a random Facebook post to a deep dive into 80s video censorship. Who knew?