Nasty Videos

I caught up with another 'video nasty' over the weekend.  I should make clear that I'm not actually going through the notorious list of videos banned by the Director of Public Prosecutions back in the day, but nowadays they tend to show up with a degree of regularity, particularly on the steaming services.  Anyway, this time it was Death Weekend (1976) - aka The House by the Lake), the Canadian home invasion/murderous hillbilly movie.  I actually remember when this was released uncertificated on home video in the UK, in the early days of VHS.  Back then, the major studios and distributors were, I recall, unsure of whether the new medium would fully catch on and were reluctant to release their more prestigious titles to video. (They were undoubtedly also under pressure from already beleaguered cinema exhibitors and TV stations, fearful of losing content).  Consequently, the early video market in the UK at least, seemed to be dominated by, mainly low budget, independent productions, TV movies and public domain films.  For the independent films, particularly genre and exploitation movies, video offered a cheap distribution outlet.  These were films unlikely to get widespread cinema releases or be shown on TV (in the days of only three highly regulated terrestrial channels, that is), with video offering the added advantage of not requiring certification from the BBFC.

Which was all fine until the whole moral panic over 'video nasties' erupted when the press and moral campaigners realised exactly what was in these videos which, so they imagined, were freely available for children to watch.  As ever, it was a case of 'won't someone think of the children'. Now, you'd have thought that simply closing the 'loophole' that allowed films to be released on video without certification, requiring them to be submitted to the BBFC as if they were to be released to cinemas, would have been sufficient response.  But no, apparently this wasn't enough for those moral campaigners, right-wing Tory MPs looking for a band wagon to jump on and tabloid newspapers looking for a headline.  So we also got that 'video nasty' list of titles denied certification.  It was an eclectic list, seemingly being based upon a film's title as much as its actual content.  It was clear that those compiling the list had never actually seen many of the films they placed upon it.  Of course, over time, a significant proportion of the titles were released to home video with sufficient cuts to allow the BBFC to award them certificates.  Moreover, as the decades have rolled on, many have subsequently been release uncut, as attitudes have changed.  It has to be said that, having viewed a number of these films in their uncut state, one is left wondering what the fuss was about.  Where there is gore, it is never convincing, where there is violence, it is frequently poorly staged, undermining its credibility. The worst that can be said is that they are unpleasant in their subject matter.  The main cinematic 'crime' that many of these films commit is that they are poorly made, sometimes to the point that they were offensively bad on a technical level.  But that wasn't what they were being accused of, instead, they were being accused of being potentially morally corrupting.

The lack of any evidence that any violent crimes had ever resulted from watching so called 'video nasties' didn't stop the press from trying to link every horrendous child murder, knife crime and serial killing to various of these films.  Not that there was anything new in this sort of moral panic: back in the fifties there had been similar manufactured outrage over the advent of Hammer's full colour gore-filled Gothic horrors and their imitators, not to mention the demonisation of horror comics on bothsides of the Atlantic.  But, just like the 'video nasties' debacle, it all calmed down once it became clear that watching Curse of Frankenstein hadn't inspired anyone to try building monsters from dead bodies in their spare rooms.  Hammer actually faced enormous problems with the BBFC throughout the sixties.  As time went on, it wasn't the gore and violence that bothered the BBFC so much as the sexual element which was implicit (and often explicit) in these films.  Most specifically, it was the relationship between the sex and the violence which bothered them.  A direct link between the two was, for the censors, off-limits.  Which brings us back to the start of this post and Death Weekend.  Watching it raises the question as to just why it ended up on the 'video nasties' list.  It is undoubtedly violent, but by the standards of contemporary 'nasties' it isn't especially explicit.  Certainly, it is unpleasant in that it depicts a couple being terrorised in their home by a bunch of thugs, with the woman under constant threat of rape - and eventually suffering rape.  The only explanation for the film's bracketing with the other 'nasties' is that it was felt that the sex and violence were too closely linked.

In this respect, it found itself suffering the same fate as Straw Dogs (1971) - a film which had undoubtedly inspired Death Weekend - which, despite having been certificated for cinema exhibition, was denied a certification for home video release, finally getting an uncut DVD and video release in 2002.  There is, however, a key difference between the two films in their depiction of rape.  Straw Dogs has always been problematic because there is a clear implication in one of the rape scenes that Susan George's character a) enjoys the experience at some level (her attacker is a former suitor) and b) has somehow been 'asking for it' by being sexually provocative.  Oddly, while not denying that this impression might be drawn from the first rape scene, the BBFC justified its 2002 change of heart by claiming that the unpleasantness of the second rape scene made clear that rape wasn't an experience welcomed by the character.  Therefore, they argued, in its uncut form, the film wasn't 'promoting harmful activity', in contravention of the Video Recordings Act.  In other words, one scene of sexual violence cancels out another by putting it in context.  By contrast, Death Weekend is pretty clear that Brenda Vaccaro's character neither enjoys nor invites sexual assault.  It is portrayed as a humiliating ordeal she is coerced into by force.  Hardly a 'promoting' of harmful behaviour.  

But the Video Recordings Act has always been applied inconsistently.  Last weekend I also watched another Canadian horror film, Incubus (1981).  As far as I'm aware, despite being released around the time of the 'video nasties' furore, Incubus was never listed as a 'nasty' or blocked from video release.  Yet it mixes sex and violence far more freely that Death Weekend.  In the course of the film a number of women are violently raped by an unseen assailant, with the bloody results shown in, for the time, quite graphic detail. To be fair, it is clear that none of the victims invited or enjoyed the experience (most of them die horribly as a result) so, technically, it isn't 'promoting 'harmful behsviour.  Moreover, the assailant is revealed as a supernatural entity, so the BBFC might have reasoned that it was all so fantastical that it couldn't possibly encourage real-life sexual violence.  Except that it hadn't stopped them refusing certificates to zombie movies and cannibal films, raising the question as to exactly how these films might 'promote' harmful behaviour?  Were they really arguing that such films might encourage anyone watching them to try using voodoo rites to raise their dead grannies, or to start biting chunks out of the neighbours?  The defence of the Video Recordings Act was that it was aimed at protecting 'vulnerable' viewers, such as children, who might see such films on home video and be unduly influenced by them.  The problem with this approach is that it negates the principle of parental responsibility, that it is surely up to parents to regulate what their children watch (or view on the internet), rather than rely upon the government to place blanket bans of anything deemed 'unsuitable'?

I grew up in a household where the TV viewing of myself and my siblings was carefully regulated.  Creaky old horror films were generally deemed OK, but anything with explicit sex and violence not.  As I grew up, so the viewing restrictions were relaxed.  I'm very glad that I wasn't exposed to a lot of the stuff I watch now at an age when I wouldn't have been able to fully comprehend what I was watching.  While I doubt very much that I would have become a sex murderer, but it would undoubtedly have disturbed me and prevented me from ever being able to enjoy such things as an adult.  (As an aside, looking back, some of the kinkiest stuff was being shown in prime time in those days - busty young women were tied up, gagged and imperiled on a weekly basis in things like The Saint, The Avengers and all those other ITC adventure series, which were repeated throughout the seventies).  But to return to Death Weekend - was it in any way a 'good' film?  Well, it is highly derivative and relentlessly violent.  But the violence is ugly and those employing it are clearly mindless thugs.  It does attempt to employ a degree of social commentary: the main male protagonist, a wealthy dentist who lures a model to his isolated house with false promises of a weekend party in order to get her alone for sex, is shown to be as morally bankrupt as Don Stroud and his gang of violent hicks, objectifying women, but using money rather than violence to browbeat others.  Overall, it is actually a decently made film, although ultimately quite depressing in its depiction of male violence.  Still, there's no denying that I got a perverse thrill from watching a one time banned 'video nasty' on a Sunday afternoon, (I stumbled across it as it was showing on B-Movie TV).