Video nasties revisited 40 years after crackdown

Dr Mark McKenna has examined the political dynamics behind a law that banned "video nasties"

So-called "video nasties”, horror films which sparked outrage in the 1980s, are being revisited this Halloween as cult classic The Evil Dead is shown on a university’s big screen.

Film expert Dr Mark McKenna will unpick the issues around the dark fictional films that went on to represent what he described as “an iconic era in film history” at the event in Stoke-on-Trent.

The films caused a “moral panic” that led to the Video Recordings Act being passed 40 years ago, he said.

An exhibition, lecture and screening will be held at the University of Staffordshire’s Stoke-on-Trent campus on 31 October.

Dr McKenna, associate professor of film and media industries, has examined how it was the lurid images on the front of VHS covers that triggered legislation that came later, more than the films themselves.

“A moral panic erupted about the advertising that was being used to promote an array of horror films," he said.

He said video rental in the UK at the time was an affordable pastime and horror had been successful.

Well-known titles included Driller Killer, SS Experiment Camp and one of the best known, The Evil Dead, a film directed by Sam Raimi and which featured college students visiting a remote cabin.

But he said the ensuing panic that was generated by the videos was played out in the press.

That panic then led to the introduction of the Video Recordings Act which he described as a “a convenient deflection” for the Conservative government, whose reputation had been damaged by events such as the Toxteth riots in Liverpool in 1981 and the Sinking of the Belgrano during the Falklands War a year later.

Some of the content in the videos was problematic, he added.

But he said: “All the films targeted as video nasties have since been released. They were not that offensive compared to what we see now.”