This is a historical listing of all films considered to be ‘video nasties’ in the UK.
When horror films began to be seized by police under the 1959 Obscene Publications Act, it was something new – previously, only sexual material was thought to be ‘obscene’ (“taken as a whole, the work has a tendency to ‘deprave and corrupt’ ‘ – that is, make morally bad – a significant proportion of those likely to see it.”). In order to ‘help’ the video trade – which of course had no idea which horror films would suddenly be considered ‘obscene’ – the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) drew up lists of titles that had either been successfully prosecuted or had prosecutions pending, starting on June 30th 1983 and ending o December 1st 1985. This list would change according to convictions or acquittals, and peaked at 62 titles. The final list that existed by the time the Video Recordings Act 1984 came into force featured 39 films, and this final list is the one used by most cult movie collectors as ‘definitive’.
Naturally, most shops began clearing their shelves of the films on the list – even those that were never successfully prosecuted – and so all these movies are amongst the most collectable VHS releases.
The final 39 official ‘video nasties’:
Absurd (uncut)
Axe (aka California Axe Massacre)
Blood Bath (1972)
Blood Rites (aka The Ghastly Ones)
Bloody Moon
The Burning (uncut)
Cannibal Ferox (uncut)
Cannibal Holocaust
Don’t Go in the Woods
Evilspeak (uncut)
Fight for your Life
Forest of Fear (aka Bloodeaters)
The Gestapo’s Last Orgy
House by the Cemetery
Love Camp 7
Mardi Gras Massacre
Nightmares in a Damaged Brain
SS Experiment Camp
Tenebrae
The remaining films that were removed from the ‘nasties’ list over the 18 month period were (dates removed from the list included where known):
The Beyond (removed April 1985)
Cannibal Terror (removed September 1985)
Dead and Buried (removed June 1985)
Death Trap (removed December 1985)
Deep River Savages (removed September 1985)
Delirium (removed May 1985)
Don’t Look in the Basement (removed December 1985)
The Evil Dead (removed September 1985)
Frozen Scream (removed October 1984)
Funhouse
I Miss You Hugs and Kisses (removed October 1984)
Inferno (removed September 1985)
The Living Dead (aka The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue – removed April 1985)
Nightmare Maker (removed December 1985)
Possession (removed October 1984)
Pranks (removed September 1985)
Prisoner of the Cannibal God (removed May 1985)
Revenge of the Bogey Man
The Slayer (removed April 1985)
Terror Eyes (removed June 1985)
Toolbox Murders (removed May 1985)
Unhinged (removed December 1985)
Visiting Hours (removed November 1984)
The Witch Who Came from the Sea (removed June 1985)
Women Behind Bars (removed October 1984)
It’s impossible to list all the films seized by individual police forces, of course – Manchester, under the grip of fanatical Christian police chief James Anderton (later immortalised in Manc music as “God’s Cop” by the Happy Mondays), operated a list in excess of the DPPs (including a blanket ban on the softcore Electric Blue series, Werewolf Woman, Dawn of the Mummy, Massacre Mansion, Night of the Seagulls, Mother’s Day, Rosemary’s Killer and Superstition), while other films confiscated by police forces included Maniac, The Hills Have Eyes, Xtro, The Thing, Friday the 13th, Madman, Basket Case, Emmanuelle 2, Children of the Corn (which had been further cut by distributors EMI after gaining BBFC certification), Suffer Little Children (seized by police before it was even released and while negotiations over cuts were taking place with the BBFC) as well as numerous softcore and hardcore adult movies.
Most notoriously – and evidence of the incredible ignorance of the repressive police carrying out these pointless raids – were the seizures of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (allegedly mistaken for Cannibal Apocalypse!), Lee Marvin war film The Big Red One, Burt Reynolds comedy The Last Little Whorehouse in Texas, Disney movie The Devil and Max Devlin (after a mischief-making complaint from anti-censorship journalist Liam T. Sanford) and An Unmarried Woman!
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