I Eat Cannibals:A Journey Into The World Of Video Nasties.

"We, we live half at night, watch things on VCRs" - VCR, The XX

"Catch a horror taxi, I fell in love with a video nasty" - Nasty, The Damned

Do you remember the days of video nasties? I do. I came of age in the video era and though, to the best of my knowledge, the Tadley Video Centre on Franklin Avenue didn't stock Cannibal Holocaust, Gestapo's Last Orgy, or Zombie Creeping Flesh alongside Blazing Saddles, Cujo, and Mr T's The Toughest Man In The World there were always kids in the playground who reckoned they'd seen them and there were always private video retailers illegally trading from some innocent looking suburban home who could secure you a copy. It was better than watching Little and Large.

Headpress Publishing's David Kerekes and Jennifer Wallis remember them too and they are, it could be said, quite obsessed with them. David has written a book about them and the two of them were in Conway Hall, with the London Fortean Society, yesterday evening to give other fans as well as some curious outsiders and Fortean regulars a talk about them:- Cannibal Error:A Social History of the 'Video Nasty'.

Video cassette records (VCRs) arrived in the 1970s and at first they were just for people to tape their favourite shows and watch them at a later date. But pre-recorded tapes soon followed, initially instructional videos and Hollywood blockbusters that were available to rent on a nightly basis. Usually you'd go to your local video shop but in some cases the vendors would deliver door to door.

The arrival of VHS and Betamax (its superior cousin) ushered in a new dawn for the VCR and at some point in the early eighties there were approximately six million video recorders in UK homes. It was at this point my family got our first one, a Sony (good company to work for, I hear) and a Betamax. The first thing we did was tape Coronation Street and play footage of Albert Tatlock walking backwards down the road.

They were different times. Intervision were one of the first companies to really build up a library and they had available a huge array of cassettes from concert films, children's films, westerns, chess, fishing, 'adult' entertainment, and horror. One of the horror films, 1980's Cannibal Holocaust - directed by Ruggerio Deodato, prompted complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) and soon enough a moral panic followed. 

Much like the moral panics that had followed the penny dreadfuls of the nineteenth century and much like the moral panic that had followed the release of earlier films like The Exorcist (1973, William Friedkin) and The Wild Geese (1978, Andrew V. McLaglen). Mary Whitehouse - by that point already a veteran complainer - and her National Viewers' and Listeners' Association joined forces with Times and Daily Mail columnists and outraged second wave feminist groups to try and get these video nasties banned.

It wasn't so much the content of the films (most of those who were against them hadn't even seen them) so much as the cover art and the names of the films - as well as the fact they were been viewed privately in people's homes which somehow implied seedy indulgence. Or most likely wanking. Although, come to think, that's pretty much the same thing.

Video companies were not slow to exploit the commercial possibilities of this mostly confected moral outrage and soon started ramping up both the titles and the cover art. A whole genre of Nazi sexploitation films (SS Experiment Camp, Helga - She Wolf of Stilberg, Fraulein Devil etc; - Rob Zombie even made a spoof - Werewolf Women of the SS - as recently as 2007) had already existed but were soon incorporated into the video nasty genre and some criminals, seeking an opportunity to have their sentences lessened and to pass the blame for their actions, started to say their morals had been corrupted by exposure to these films. 

You may remember the furore about Child's Play 3 (1991, Jack Bender) following the horrific murder of James Bulger in Liverpool in 1993 (there was no evidence whatsoever that the murderers had ever even watched the film) and one criminal blamed his actions on the fact he'd watched Robin Askwith's skinny white bum going up and down in Confessions of a Window Cleaner.  

Confessions of a Window Cleaner wasn't banned but I Spit On Your Grave, The Driller Killer, Death Trap and several other films were, in 1982, under the Obscene Publications Act. A list of proscribed films - not all horror - was drawn up by the Director of Public Prosecutions (at that time Thomas Hetherington but a position that would be held years later by one Keir Starmer) but there was much confusion. Most video retailers didn't know what films were on it and nobody bothered to tell them or to circulate a list which though it did exist was coming to be regarded by some as apocryphal.

In Greater Manchester, the chief constable James Anderton (whose claim that he had a 'direct line to God' earned him the nickname God's Cop and a song on a Happy Mondays album) got heavily involved and banned videos of not just The Evil Dead (1981, Sam Raimi) but The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas (a 1982 musical comedy starring Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds and featuring the song I Will Always Love You - absolute filth) and even some kid's cartoons.

Properly banned all over was the film Snuff (1976, Michael Findlay and Horacio Fredriksson), a classic of the 'nasties' genre which is, essentially, a cheap cash-in on the story of the murders of Sharon Tate and four others by the Manson family in 1969 and is also, according to Jennifer Wallis, 'incredibly dull'. The outrage, subject matter aside, primarily focused on the implication that one of the actresses in the film was genuinely murdered during the filming of it. The FBI investigated it and found there to be no evidence at all that this had happened.

One of the producers, Allan Shackleton - a sexploitation movie veteran, had calculated correctly that this story would work in the film's favour and he took to goading feminist critics to create more publicity and planting fake protestors outside of screenings of his film. A film that went on to do very well despite overwhelmingly negative reviews. It seems there really is no such thing as bad publicity. Have you seen who the next American president is gonna be?

Other savvy marketing came with The Demons (1973, Jesus Franco) whose cover featured a woman with an axe embedded in her groin (is that were the horrific term 'axe-wound' comes from?) and Nightmares In A Damaged Brain (1981, Romano Scavolini, Italians love this stuff) is a film about a disturbed young man who brutally murders his parents with an axe because, as a child, he'd witnessed them having kinky sex. A fake brain was used to promote the film, the Director of Public Prosecutions got involved and one scene in the film was deemed so unsavoury that two of the executives behind the film were sent to prison, one of them for eighteen months.

The film critic and historian Derek Malcolm spoke in favour of the film despite not being a fan of it and so did the celebrated barrister and academic Geoffrey Robertson QC (now KC). They could see that though some of the films were tasteless, horrific, gory, and possessed very dubious sexual politics they weren't dangerous and they weren't likely to send people over the top or cause them to go out on killing sprees any more than Chitty Chitty Bang Bang would fool you into thinking your car could fly.

Most of the films on the infamous list have now been passed by the BBFC and are now available. In the case of the ones that haven't that's more down to lack of demand than anything else. David Kerekes and Jennifer Wallis were obviously horror, and video nasty, fans and I am too but I don't think I'd like to only watch horror films all the time. Not because they're disturbing but because so many of them are predictable and aren't actually very scary.

The talk wasn't scary, it wasn't supposed to bem but it was highly enjoyable. It took in Kim Newman, The Exorcist, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Terrifier 3 and a fun Q&A afterwards touched on a whole range of subjects (Zombie Flesh Eaters, the Dunblane massacre, George Romero, Roger Corman, Salon Kitty, Margaret Thatcher, Oxford's Bodleian Library, Vincent Price, The Last House On The Left, A Serbian Film, Porky's, and The Hay's Code). Thanks to Conway Hall, thanks to the London Fortean Society, thanks to Deborah Hyde for hosting (and not being put off by some kind of brass band concert in the main hall), and thanks to David and Jennifer for a evening that was anything but nasty.