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page one | page two | page three | PAGE FOUR | page five DAVID HYMAN DOESN'T COMPLY with most people's stereotypical view of a film censor - or 'examiner', to use the modern parlance. Sitting in his office in the BBFC's Soho Square building, this 39-year-old Londoner is far more casual than you'd expect, both in terms of his dress sense (no white, starchy collar here) and his attitude towards horror movies. If his obvious enthusiasm for talking about them doesn't give him away as 'one of us', then the promotional Mark Of The Devil sick-bag pinned to his notice board just might.     The BBFC currently employ 27 full-time examiners. Hyman is one of the nine with a speciality in horror. He wasn't working for the BBFC back in 1984, when they were appointed as the country's regulators of video. "It was thought at the time, I'd imagine, that because the board were already classifying film, they already had the skill and expertise to deal with it."     The BBFC's Director James Ferman was previously said to have been "furious" at the Board's powerlessness as regards video certification. All his birthdays subsequently came at once, as the BBFC faced a massive task. The Video Recordings Act came into effect on September 1, 1985. All of the videos already released in the UK, with a few exemptions in the fields of, say, music and sport titles, were to be systematically withdrawn. They would only resurface if the distributor chose to apply for a new BBFC certificate (at a cost of £4.60 per screen minute) and was actually granted one. The 'C' in BBFC was changed to 'Classification' - a word which many considered euphemistic.     "The various stages of the VRA came in phases," explains Hyman. "That's why people remember unclassified films still being on the shelves - such as Straw Dogs in Woolworths - as late as '86 or '87. Shopkeepers naturally couldn't whip everything off the shelves, because there'd be nothing for them to actually sell!"     Officially, the nasties were long gone. The Video Packaging Review Committee, founded in 1987, would ensure that lurid box art went the same way as TV's cigarette ads. Yet at an underground level, the nasties lumbered on. Original tapes would change hands for astronomical sums at film fairs, while pirates enjoyed a particularly booming trade.     "I did dozens of copies for one video shop owner, who knew people wanted to see this stuff," recalls one dealer from the late '80s. "Customers started asking if he had anything stronger, harder, so I did him copies of something like The New York Ripper, which never even came out over here. On a great morning, I'd wake up and open a recorded delivery envelope with £300 cash in it. There were reports that pirates could make thousands every month, which was bollocks. You'd need thousands of video recorders and millions of customers."     Nevertheless, he admits, "I did make constant money on the side. It was a market created by the Tory government, which was fitting, seeing as Thatcher was all about the entrepreneur."     Such dealers would occasionally get their collars felt. Says Harvey Fenton, "I know someone who got fined hundreds of pounds for bootlegging, in 1991. It made the evening news, when Trading Standards officers made co-ordinated raids across the country. I remember speaking to him on the phone: he was in such a panic that he went down the bottom of his garden and smashed up some of his videos with a hammer."     Some video shop dealers would maintain an under-the-counter service for trusted customers. "Even as late as '89," says Fenton, "our local video store in Maidstone had a whole bunch of nasties hidden away. They weren't even more expensive to rent: you just had to get to know the guy. I remember a party at Southampton University, where some guy had hired something ridiculous like Xtro and The Evil Dead - which was always a favourite - to play in the background. Being banned, made something more fun. And if you'd seen the film, that made you cooler. The whole thing was like kids smoking: getting kicks out of something illegal or illicit." DESPITE BRITAIN'S NEWLY TIGHTENED censorship system, the media and certain MPs still saw fit to rant about the dangers of any movie which they deemed a 'nasty'. This happened every few years, generally following an inexplicable crime, such as Michael Ryan's Hungerford massacre in August 1987 (launching controversy over Rambo-style flicks), or the tragic murder of three-year-old James Bulger in February 1993 (pointing the finger at Child's Play 3). Whenever a shocked British public needed answers, video remained a convenient scapegoat to wheel out.     It was in this vaguely more enlightened, but often volatile, period that video nasties began to tentatively push their heads out of the grave. Having closed Vipco down when the VRA arrived (by which time the likes of Astra Video and Intervision had gone forever) Mike Lee again set up shop in 1992 and made an appointment to see James Ferman. He recalls: "Ferman said, 'I'll do one at a time, and we'll see how we go'. I don't think he liked my films, and he certainly never liked Lucio Fulci. But I was determined to get these films released, because I didn't believe they'd do anybody any harm. The first one we got through was Zombie Flesh Eaters, in the same cut version that the BBFC originally approved for cinema. The fans rallied to our support and bought it."     David Hyman notes that, in many cases of re-submitted nasties, the BBFC was forced to wield their scissors. If a title had recently been successfully prosecuted by the DPP, they had to ensure it would be unlikely to fall foul of the law again.     "We couldn't decide to ignore the fact that a title had been, say, successfully prosecuted eight times, even if it had the odd acquittal, " he says. "We couldn't even just snip a second out. The Board was still required to make significant changes to the work, which would often mean quite lengthy cuts to the gore horror."     Over the last few years, a relatively new DVD label named HardGore has issued cut versions of three particularly notorious nasties: Nightmares In A Damaged Brain, I Spit On Your Grave and the grim shockumentary Faces Of Death.     "For a small label," says HardGore's Andrew Kirkham, "it makes sense to go for titles with the highest profile. Your returns, in theory, are greater. But you first have to find the rights-holder for each movie: I'm sure that some of the nasties haven't re-surfaced simply because no-one knows who owns the damn things. Even when you find out, some rights-holders will try and charge a fortune for a title if it's notorious."     He notes that, so far, HardGore's ex-nasties have stirred up precious little protest. "You're half-expecting a tsunami of abuse and offended people and it really hasn't happened. Nightmares In A Damaged Brain hasn't even sold that well. It makes a nonsense of the fact that someone went to prison over this movie." Might Kirkham have secretly wanted a tsunami? "Probably, " he laughs. "If I'm putting my marketing and PR hat on, then yes. But realistically-speaking, it's probably good that we didn't get that. It could be pretty hard to handle." Many of the former nasties are now legally available on shiny discs. So will they all, one day, re-appear? Just how offensive are they now?     "Some of them definitely still couldn't be released," says Harvey Fenton. "The ones with animal mutilation would fall foul of British law, which covers the mistreatment of animals. I come down very much on the liberal viewpoint that if you've invented a work of fiction and you're not actually killing small furry beasts, there's no justification for cutting it."     "The Nazi movies are pretty offensive," reckons Marc Morris. "They are indefensible, really, like the movies with animal cruelty. Cannibal Holocaust is horrible beyond belief."     The majority of the nasties, as the BBFC's David Hyman acknowledges, look fairly harmless in the cold light of 2004. "A lot of stuff that looked state-of-the-art in the early '80s actually looks rather silly now. They're not scaring people and they have a sort of kitsch value, with the poor dubbing, camp music and effects. It's like the old Hammer films of the '50s and '60s, which look like costumed melodramas now."     Yet twenty years after they were supposedly preventing from bringing about society's collapse, video nasties retain an allure which is not to be underestimated.     "Our three former nasties are the most popular HardGore releases, without a doubt," says Andrew Kirkham. "I suppose it comes down to publicity. If a name's been in the public domain for long enough, you're more likely to investigate it. No-one would even think about, say, Don't Go Near The Park if it came out again. Our latest release of I Spit On Your Grave has shown that it's not just the horror fanbase buying these titles: it's the man on the street."     "They remind people of my age, and slightly older," smiles David Hyman, "what they could get and then couldn't! It's a baby boomer thing - people get to a certain age and remember stuff from the past."     "Some people feel they missed the 'video nasty' generation," theorises Marc Morris. "It's like people who wish they'd been there for punk, or the hippie movement. It still bewilders me, though - it's a peculiar kind of English romanticism. It does seem to be in our genes!" page one | page two | page three | PAGE FOUR | page five features menu | home © Copyright Slasherama 2002-present