Video Nasties

Season 1: Video Nasties

 Weeks 1-19,  25-72, 77-81

In the early 80s at the beginning of the home video boom, there was no legal requirement to have a video certified (i.e. Passed as U, PG, 15, 18 or whatever).

The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), felt that objectionable videos needed to be controlled, and therefore expanded the 'obscene publications act' to cover violence as well as sex.

A list was publish monthly of titles that the DPP thought may get a jury conviction as obscene. The list changed monthly, titles being added as complaints came in, and removed as prosecutions failed.

No reason had to be given for a titles placement on the list, and listed titles could be (and were) seized by the police and taken as evidence.

In all 72 titles spent at least some time on the list, 39 of them gaining successful prosecutions.

This list is informally known as the 'video nasties' list

The DPP list was dropped when the video recordings act came into effect, and titled had to be rated by the BBFC.

The full list can be seen on the previous sites 'viewing schedule' page, and copies of the posts from that site can be found by using the VIDEO NASTY tag.

Further the posts are split into the movies which were successfully prosecuted, and those which were eventually removed from the list.