Top Five
Posted By : PoppaScotch, Wednesday Oct,13
For those of you who live in North America, you may not be familiar with the term "Video Nasty" at all and in all honesty, that is probably a very good thing. In the mid to early 80s in Great Britain, the term video nasty was applied to films that were being distributed on video cassette that were deemed inappropriate for the masses because of the inclusion of violent or "socially inappropriate" content. In the UK, the Video Recordings Act of 1984 was passed which gave the government power to restrict the sale and distribution of violent and inappropriate films that the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) decided to be withheld in the thoughts of public interest. So what this meant was that a lot of great horror films were banned in the UK until fairly recently and still today, some of these films are still unable to be purchased in the UK in their full and uncut form. Here are five of the best films that through a series of unfortunate events ended up on the official government "Video Nasty" list.
The Beyond ( – 1981) Lucio Fulci’s surreal experiment on the subconscious revolved around the 1927 murder of an artist in Louisiana who was believed to be a warlock. In the hotel where he was murdered, his death somehow opened one of the seven gates of hell. Decades later, a woman from New York and a doctor find themselves in this surreal limbo of face eating tarantulas and undead spirits in order to try and find their way home. This is a Giallo film that is used as one of the centerpieces of the movement and despite the supposed "shocking material" this film is truly the work of a very talented director showing viewers a beautiful and moving experience with his interpretation of the genre. The film was released theatrically in 1981, but didn’t make it to an uncut DVD until 2001, 20 years after the film was made.
I Spit on Your Grave 1978) Also titled "Day of the Woman", this seminal grindhouse flick about a woman writer who is viciously raped by some locals at her cabin is still to this day a very difficult film to watch due to a long and graphic rape scene as well as numerous violent scenes of the woman’s revenge. It has since become a legend in the field of horror as almost a litmus test to the strongest viewers of the genre to the point where it’s still seeked out by the people who are bored with the new craze of torture porn as the text book example of an over the top and ridiculously violent film. We here in North America have had the pleasure of seeing this film since it came out in 1978 and its theatrical re-release in 1980. However in the UK, this one didn’t see the light of day until 2001 when 7 minutes of the film were cut including a good chunk of the graphic rape scene.
