Lurid Trumps are a card game based on the fondly remembered Top Trumps of the 1970’s and 1980’s, themselves based on an even older game called Quartets. The third in a series of four covering the so-called Video Nasties films banned in Britain during the 1980’s, the final two sets will cover the Section 3 films – those which were not banned outright but which could still be seized by local authorities and the owners/sellers tried at magistrates courts.
Produced by UK-based company, Gods & Monsters, Lurid Trumps are a card game playable by two or more players. Each player is dealt an equal number of cards from a shuffled pack, keeping the face of the card shielded from prying eyes. From the dealer’s left, each player in turn reads a category and score from their top card – the highest value wins, the winner taking all the cards played in that hand and placing them at the bottom of their stack. The ultimate winner is the player left with the most cards.
The first two series of Video Nasties Lurid Trumps covered the 72 films banned outright as a result of the Video Recordings Act 1984, which required all home released videos to be assessed and rated by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). The 72 films listed by the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) were each given a rating on their respective cards. The categories are:
Gore Score
Gratuitous Sex
Infamy Level
Nasty Rating
Each is given a rating out of 100 – no one card is impossible to beat. With the first two sets having sold out within days (and now commanding absurdly high prices on internet auction sites), Gods & Monsters have now released the penultimate set, covering the murky world of titles classed as “Section 3”. These films were liable to get a conviction under the lesser section three of the Obscene Publication Act:
3. In section 3(5) of the Video Recordings Act 1984 (exempted supplies), for paragraphs (b) and (c) substitute—
“(b)does not, to any significant extent, depict any of the following—
(i)human sexual activity or acts of force or restraint associated with such activity,
(ii)mutilation or torture of, or other acts of gross violence towards, humans or animals, or
(iii)human genital organs or human urinary or excretory functions, and
This would mean the confiscation and destroying of video tapes ordered by a magistrate but were not considered to be capable of getting a conviction at the High Court – though there were examples of guilty pleas at Magistrates Court.
The list of the Section 3 titles is as follows:
Abducted
Aftermath
The Black Room
Blood Lust
Blood Song
The Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll
Brutes and Savages
Cannibal (aka Last Cannibal World)
Cannibals
The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith
The Child
Death Weekend
Demented
The Demons (Jess Franco)
The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein
The Executioner
Foxy Brown
GBH
Hell Prison
The Killing Hour
The Last Horror Film
The Last Hunter
The Love Butcher
The Mad Foxes
Mausoleum
Naked Fist
The New Adventures of Snow White
Rosemary’s Killer (aka The Prowler)
Savage Terror
Scream for Vengeance!
Shogun Assassin
Street Killers
Suicide Cult
Terror
Tomb of the Living Dead
The Toy Box
Werewolf Woman
Wrong Way
As with the previous sets, the cover card will feature a key figure in the history of the Video Nasties saga: following in the footsteps of Mary Whitehouse (Series 1) and former BBFC zealot James Ferman (Series 2), Series 3 will feature Graham Bright, an MP who was particularly outspoken about films he’s never actually seen, going as far to suggest that some of the films had the power to even corrupt innocent dogs who may be watching! Having been made a Sir (British democracy at its finest?), keen dog-protector Bright is now a highly-paid Cambridgeshire Police and Crime Commissioner, although he finds it difficult to attend meetings that finish “too late in the evening”…
