Effects of The Video Recordings Act 1984
Under the 1984 Act, the British Board of Film Censors was renamed the British Board of Film Classification and became responsible for the certification of both cinema and video releases. All video releases after 1 September 1985 had to comply with the Act and be submitted for classification by the BBFC. Films released on video before that date had to be re-submitted for classification within the following three years. The increased possibility of videos falling into the hands of children required that film classification for video be a separate process from cinema classification. Films that had passed uncut for cinema release were often cut for video. The supply of unclassified videos became a criminal offence, as did supplying 15 and 18 certificate videos to under-aged people. As well as the low-budget horror films the Act was originally intended to curb, a number of high profile films which had passed cinema certification fell foul of the Act. In particular, The Exorcist, which was made available by Warner Home Video in December 1981, was not submitted for video certification by the BBFC and was withdrawn from shelves in 1986. Similarly Straw Dogs was denied video certification and removed from video stores. Popular culture backlash against the Video Recordings Act included the May 1984 release of "Nasty" by the punk-goth outfit, The Damned, who celebrated the condemned genre with the lyrics, "I fell in love with a video nasty."
The TV show The Young Ones included an entire episode entitled "Nasty", in which the characters rent a video recorder specifically to watch a "video nasty" (with the fictitious name "Sex With the Headless Corpse of the Virgin Astronaut"), and which featured a lip synched performance of "Nasty" by The Damned. In another episode, "Bambi", the titular character had apparently done a "Disney nasty" entitled "Bambi Goes Crazy-Ape Bonkers With His Drill and Sex".
The television programme Spitting Image parodied the Video Nasties with their sketch of a sickeningly nice, low-budget film, entitled a video "nicie".
Neil Innes' song "My New School" (1984) contains a video nasty reference "It's got all the charm of a video nasty/I've never been anywhere so ghastly, my new school."
The 1985 Doctor Who serial "Vengeance on Varos" was set within the confines of a 'Punishment Dome' where the repellent alien delegate Sil was delighted to learn that recordings of real life executions, dismemberments, drownings, acid baths and other 'delights' were being peddled to the apathetic population at large to keep them both docile and entertained. After the transmission in January 1985 there were quite a few official complaints about the content of the serial to both the BBC itself and the Radio Times.
BBC Video advertised their offerings (such as Doctor Who) as "Video Tasties".
Read more about this topic: Video Nasty
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