For anyone who is unfamiliar with the period, the moral panic that accompanied the arrival of video nasties must seem an odd and implausible moment in British history. In 1982, just as home video was finding a foothold, alarm erupted over the publicity materials that were being used to promote a disparate group of horror films that had just been released into the newly established marketplace. One tabloid journalist dubbed these films the ‘video nasties’, and the name stuck, quickly becoming a colloquial term that would be used to describe what was believed to be a new wave of extreme horror films entering the UK from the US and Europe. Concern soon began to build about these video nasties and the effect that they might be having upon society, with some keen to suggest that the videos were the root cause of a variety of social ills. This concern quickly escalated into a moral panic and a campaign that sought to ‘Ban the Sadist Videos’, with the tabloid press leading the charge that resulted in a series of prosecutions that targeted consumers, retailers and distributors alike. By 1984, the hysteria was over, passing almost as quickly as it had arrived, but in its wake, it left an indelible mark on British society, a slew of prosecutions, and the Video Recordings Act (VRA) – a system of censorship that still governs films released to the British market today.

The alarm raised by the advent of the video nasties is an important moment in the history of British censorship and is most frequently discussed in those terms.