The history of the video nasties has been recounted many times (Barker 1984; Barker and Petley 1997; Egan 2007; Petley 1984a, 1984b, 2011) and the films that caused offence have themselves been endlessly examined (Dickinson 2007; Jackson 2002; Maguire 2018; Mee 2013; Petley 2005; Starr 1984; Szulkin 2000; Waddell 2016). However, the industry that gave rise to the category has received scant attention. While earlier histories have tended to emphasise issues of censorship that offer only glimpses of an underexplored industrial history, this chapter, and indeed this book, aims to address this oversight by focusing explicitly on an industry that is still portrayed in heavily caricatured terms; that is frequently presented as immoral or corrupt and is still understood through the rhetoric of the tabloid press, as ‘merchants of menace’ (Sun Reporter 1982: 5).

The first part of this chapter presents a short contextual history drawn from the tabloid press, the intention of which is to provide a historical overview, outlining key moments in the campaign against the video nasties while also outlining the ways in which distributors were discussed in the press. This narrative account will provide the basis for the second part of the chapter which seeks to complicate the established story of the video nasties and position the reaction to them, something that is often discussed as being a quintessentially British phenomenon, within a broader tradition of the legislative frameworks governing film globally. From this, a picture begins to emerge that emphasises a narrative of industrial control, rather than a narrative of societal concern, and begins to complicate conventional readings of both the films and the industry that produced them.

Towards an Industrial History of the Video Nasties

In almost every account, the catalyst that begins the chain of events that leads to the introduction of the Video Recordings Act in 1984 is the same: Television and Video Retailer magazine reporting on a number of complaints made to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) about the nature of the advertising being used to promote three videocassettes: The Driller Killer (1979), SS Experiment Camp (1976) and Cannibal Holocaust (1980). This unease over the artwork first appears in the February 1982 issue of the magazine and predates any anxieties over content by a matter of months.