Alright, let’s admit it upfront: if there’s one horror film topic that’s arguably been done to death by now, it’s the Nasties. Is there in fact ANYTHING new to say about them? Given the vast amount of besotted fan-boy nostalgia / earnest academic analysis churned out over the last thirty years, the jaded reader might well think not. However, this short essay proposes to take a fresh look at the one aspect everyone dutifully agrees is central to the story, but no one in contrast seems willing to try and document properly: their lurid sleeve artwork.
Er, hold on a bleedin’ minute! I hear you shout, there’s LOADS of books reproducing the covers – loads of ’em! Yes, indeed there are. But how many make the effort to either historically contextualise their contents or (where possible) identify the individual artists? That’s right, none. Which is where this investigation comes in. There are – as we shall see – numerous gaps outstanding, and the following research can at best be considered a work in progress. But it is at least a start.
Why are the Nasties important? To any British fan over about fifty, the question barely needs asking. Those of us who grew up in the 70s obsessively devouring old horror films on TV will recall the home-video revolution of our teenage years with something approaching awe. In the space of what felt like about six months, every scruffy parade of shops in the country – yes, including the one at the bottom of YOUR road – suddenly featured its own Video Shop, renting out overloaded shelves of incredibly dodgy tat for £2 a night. Walking into these places – their walls covered floor-to-ceiling with fitted racks displaying hundreds of face-on covers, chiefly in the most appalling taste – was an unforgettable experience. As you casually perused the delights on offer, your parents’ purloined Membership Card stuffed hotly in your pocket, there was essentially only one question on your mind – was the miserable old git in the green cardigan smoking a fag behind the Counter going to let you take out Nightmares in a Damaged Brain? I mean, hadn’t he read the papers? Didn’t he know it was BANNED and ILLEGAL? Might he, in short, be prepared to facilitate you deliberately scarring yourself for life? Or were you going to be stuck with Warlords of Atlantis again?
Isn’t that a nice top? It’s from C&A – she saw Lady Di wearing one just like it on telly… (Newry Video, Hill St, Newry, Armagh 1983)
So much for nostalgia. The Nasties are, of course, important because they represent the last great (pre-digital) Moral Panic to engulf this country, putting a bunch of cheap and obscure horror films on the front pages of our national newspapers for months on end, and leading to the rushed introduction of what amounted to State Censorship in order to control them. But this essay is not about the socio-political history (already done to death elsewhere), nor is it an attempt to analyse the films themselves (most of which were irredeemably crap). Rather, our focus will be on the sleeve artwork which first brought them notoriety, and later became a key element in the vociferous campaigns mounted against them. But did this frequently outrageous imagery really emerge – as most commentators still seem to implicitly suggest – from a complete vacuum? As we shall try and demonstrate, it certainly did not. About half the sleeves in question just adapted pre-existing international publicity campaigns, which were themselves part of a long-established (if largely disreputable) exploitation tradition stretching back to the 1960s.
Before we go any further though, the historical background will have to be sketched in. As this is (broadly speaking) very familiar territory, we can try and run through the essentials as tersely as possible.
The first mass-market domestic Video Cassette Recorder – JVI’s HR-3300 machine – was launched in the UK in Feb 1978, though the earliest pre-recorded cassettes didn’t begin appearing until the following year. The original distributors of the latter were chiefly established Super-8 firms like Derann, Mountain and Iver (plus a few new start-ups including Intervision, Hokushin and Vipco), and by the end of 1979 about 400 tapes had been released. These earliest examples were often issued in generic (ie non-illustrated) cardboard slip-cases, or sometimes even crudely-adapted Super-8 boxes. The very first British ‘horror videos’ to appear thus included titles like 4-D Man (Mountain), The Asphyx (Intervision), The Devil’s Rain (Iver) and The Witchmaker (Derann).
Horror videos, 1979-style
In late 1979 police raided a converted Soho basement ‘cinema’ showing hard-core porn via videotapes, and the proprietors – Messrs Gallagher, Donnelly and Hayes (together with their company Mainchair) – routinely charged with publishing an obscene article for gain. Defending them, Britain’s leading obscenity QC Geoffrey Robertson resourcefully argued that his clients should be acquitted on the key technicality that a video cassette critically did not constitute an ‘article’ under the terms of the 1959 Act. This notion hinged on two points: first, that video failed to involve ‘projection of light onto a screen’ as defined in the Act, and second that – being oxidised magnetic tape only – it contained no actual obscene images (unlike celluloid film, which is composed of multiple photographic frames visible to the naked eye). Impressed by these arguments, the trial judge directed the jury to find the defendants Not Guilty.
Horrified at the implications the Crown appealed the verdict, and the Court of Appeal (led by Lord Justice Sir Frederick Lawton) convened on 1st Sept 1980 to review the case. Lawton tersely rejected all the defence’s submissions: the trial judge had been mistaken to apply the ejustem generis rule (when interpreting the statute’s relevant clauses), the pedantic suggestion that video did not involve projection of light was specious, and whilst it was true the medium did not exist when the 1959 Act had been drafted, nevertheless its authors had clearly intended it to cover all future methods of recording technology that might subsequently be developed. A videocassette thus WAS an Article under the terms of the Act, and (to reinforce the finality of the judgement) leave to Appeal to the House of Lords was refused. Robertson’s ingenious loophole had been very firmly closed.
While this melodrama was being played out (with no obvious impact on anyone beyond Soho’s pornographers) the distributors began to organise, forming a trade body – the British Videogram Association – in Nov 1980, with their first dedicated magazine, Video Business, launching three months later in Feb 1981. The market expanded rapidly – indeed explosively – and there were quick fortunes to be made, but with the new format totally unregulated many of the more energetic entrepreneurs were prepared to push their product very hard indeed. And in terms of Horror that meant ultra-sleazy international exploitation (often containing material the BBFC would never have passed uncut for theatrical exhibition) advertised in the most brazenly attention-grabbing manner possible. With the spring ’82 Falklands war suddenly dominating the headlines, Britain was in a belligerently patriotic mood, and unconsciously ripe for one of its periodic moral panics.
The scandal’s essential starting-point is probably the back cover of Television and Video Retailer magazine in Jan 1982, which featured a full-page ad promoting Go Video’s new release SS Experiment Camp. This certainly got complained about, though whether by outraged readers, the nervous BVA, Go’s mischief-making owner himself, or possibly some combination of all three is now unclear. At any rate, four months later in May two significant landmarks appeared: the Advertising Standards Authority’s monthly case report of its latest judgments, and a prominent Sunday Times article provocatively tagged ‘How High Street Horror Is Invading The Home’. The ASA report upheld complaints against three separate video covers, Driller Killer (‘appalling’), Cannibal Holocaust (‘goes well beyond the bounds of decency’), and SS Experiment Camp (‘We regret that some editors should be prepared to publish advertisements in which increasingly films of a violent or sexually perverted character are described in terms which, like the films themselves, are calculated to appeal to only the most degraded tastes’). The Sunday Times article meanwhile coined the term ‘Nasty’ (supposedly trade jargon) for the first time, and reproduced the covers of Macabre, Driller Killer and SSEC as calculatedly shocking illustrations.
JVC’s original press-ad (Feb ’78), Sunday Times article (May ’82), Astra trade-ad (May ’82)
Thus prompted, in June the police cautiously got involved, sending copies of SSEC, Driller Killer and I Spit on Your Grave to the DPP for an opinion as to their potential liability under the Obscene Publications Act. There was initially some hesitation, as the distributors’ obvious defence – that no formal guidelines regarding acceptable content existed – was considered a fair point in a completely new situation, and it was felt that standard Section Two prosecutions (involving jury trial with potential fines / imprisonment) would be unreasonably harsh in the circumstances. The earliest hearings (the first two were at Willesden and Croydon Magistrates Courts over Aug/Sept) were thus under the softer option of Section Three, involving forfeiture and destruction of previously-seized stock only. But the police made it clear this grace-period wouldn’t last forever, and the first Section Two trial (at Leeds in Feb ’83) saw hapless shop-owner Stephen Taylor fined a hefty £600. Interviewed later, Taylor complained that he felt the sum was excessive, but conceded he was probably lucky to be the first such case: “If I’d been the second, I might have got six months imprisonment!” As we shall see, this was to prove strikingly prescient.
The first formal DPP list of ‘banned’ titles (ie those successfully prosecuted or with prosecutions pending) was issued in July 1983 and continued to be intermittently updated over the next two years, as new tapes were added and older ones occasionally dropped. The final edition in Dec 1985 featured just 39 titles, though a compilation of all twenty or so lists gives a grand total of 72 tapes, now generally considered to represent the ‘official’ Video Nasties. The end result of all this excitement was a rushed Act of Parliament – the Video Recordings Act – hastily passed in July 1984, which enforced BBFC certification of ALL pre-recorded tapes released in the UK. With an attached fee of c.£600 per title, this quickly led not only to the disappearance of the Nasties themselves, but most of their cheapskate independent distributors. In Sept 1987 two linked industry-bodies were jointly founded by the BVA / BBFC: the Video Packaging Review Committee (which examined and approved submitted sleeve artwork) and the Video Advertising Review Committee (ditto trade and press ads). Britain’s once gleefully chaotic home-entertainment landscape had changed forever.
So, without further ado, just what WERE these talismanic 72 films? The following table (which attempts to summarise both the distribution AND sleeve-artwork details) will hopefully make things clearer. There are seven columns of relevant information, explained more fully below…..
Looking at these columns individually:
1) Title. Occasionally truncated for space reasons – if you aren’t clear what any of these are, you really shouldn’t be reading this essay at all. Many of these films naturally went under multiple international titles, but what’s given here is what appeared on the sleeve itself. Two domestic variants should be noted however: Axe was released theatrically in the UK (by Childs Assocs 09/82) as California Axe Massacre, and Island of Death (by Winstone 01/78) as Craving For Lust.
2) Video Distributor. The company name and release-date. Some firms (eg Derann) issued material under multiple labels, but to avoid confusion only the main distrib is given here. In terms of dates, it can be immediately seen that (barring just three exceptions) ALL the films concerned were released over the three-year period Jan 1981 – Dec 1983. The exceptions are Expose (Intervision) and Prisoner of the Cannibal God (Hokushin), both from 1980 (Expose may even conceivably be 1979), plus Revenge of the Bogey Man (VTC), the final title to belatedly appear in Feb 1984. [Given that Vipco’s original Bogey Man had been added to the list back in Oct 1983 VTC were clearly pushing their luck here, particularly when the otherwise-dreary sequel is padded out with endless stock-footage from the first film, including all its picturesque murders.]
3) Theatrical Distributor. Again, company name and release-date (the latter via the Monthly Film Bulletin’s review). 29 of the 72 films also got a UK cinema release (albeit often in a cut form) – in six cases (highlighted in RED), the video release actually preceded (or was simultaneous with) the theatrical screening, with several others only lagging behind by a month or two. One well-known example – Palace’s Evil Dead – is representative, since although the cinema poster uniquely also promotes the video, the film itself premiered (at the London Film Festival) in Nov 1982, three months ahead of the video release.
For the sake of completeness (though I don’t want to get bogged down in censorship minutiae) it should also be noted that a further eight films on the list were submitted to the BBFC by theatrical distributors. Two of these – Don’t Look in the Basement (Columbia-Warner 09/77) and Absurd (Eagle 08/83) were passed X with cuts, but never ultimately released. The other six – Last House on the Left (Oppidan 07/74), Deep River Savages (Mark Assocs 09/75), Late Night Trains (Oppidan 07/76), Love Camp 7 (Miracle 04/77), House on the Edge of the Park (Target 03/81) and Fight For Your Life (Production Assocs 10/81) – were all Rejected outright. Finally, there is some evidence that I Miss You Hugs & Kisses was speculatively picked up by a UK theatrical distrib at some point (as a double-bill quad poster exists – see below), but it was never BBFC-certificated or released.
Go video-shop posters from Feb 1982, and Sam Peffer, the veteran artist who painted them
4) Art – Original or Adaptation? Self-explanatory. There are some borderline cases, but where the sleeve artwork reproduces a recognisable element from an earlier theatrical poster, it’s classed as an Adaptation. By this reckoning, there are 36 of each – ie an exact split.
5) Art – Photographic or Illustration? Again self-explanatory, and again there are a few borderline cases featuring both, though with these the dominant element has been selected. The split here is again interestingly exact – 36 of each – confounding any attempts to generalise about an overall promotional Nasty ‘style’.
6) Source Poster. I have fudged this slightly to keep things simple. The standard British theatrical poster is the Quad (30″x40″), and the standard US equivalent the One-Sheet (40″x27″). The main Spanish format is likewise the Uno-Hoja (40″x27″), while the German is the smaller Din A1 (33″x23″), and the French the much larger Grande (63″x47″). Italy has three sizes, the Locandina (Playbill 27″x13″), the Due-Fogli (Two-Sheet 55″x39″) and the Quattro-Fogli (Four-Sheet 78″x55″). The Loc and QF typically feature the same art, while the mid-size DF usually has an alternate design. Use of poster-artwork on video sleeves will often reflect the film’s nationality – ie an Italian film may well feature Italian art – though this isn’t always the case, and distributors were essentially reliant on whatever turned up with the print / master tape.
7) Illustrator / Designer. These can be either named individuals or Design Studios – the latter usually being two or three commercial artists working in formal partnership (and potentially employing freelances themselves). Add to this confusion the fact that (i) only a small number of video sleeves feature any design credit, and (ii) only a small number of theatrical posters feature any artist-signature, and it can be appreciated what a challenge assigning final responsibility is. I have tried to include as much detail as possible in the notes below, in the hope that others will perhaps be inspired to follow up some of the clues provided.
Arguably the most extreme of the classic Nasty sleeves (at least compared with the relatively restrained original US poster, centre), and Mike Lee of Vipco, who commissioned it.
Having got all that out of the way, we can now turn our attention to the sleeves and posters themselves. It would be laborious to reproduce every one of the 72 (already largely familiar) sleeves, so a better shorthand option is this recent upload of Allan Bryce’s seminal 1998 book:
https://archive.org/details/VideoNastiesByAllanBryceStarbrite
… featuring all the relevant covers at full-size. It should be noted however that Bryce includes the sleeves for both Shogun Assassin and Xtro, which most purists argue are not true Nasties (whilst regularly seized, neither were ever prosecuted and hence fail to appear on any DPP lists). Additionally, there are a couple of alternate designs not featured which are relevant to our thesis, and these will thus also be reproduced below.
What follows therefore are comparisons of key video sleeves alongside the original theatrical posters they adapted, plus (for context) ALL the British quad posters, plus (for interest) the small handful of what appear to be original British sleeve-illustrations. Got that? Good, then let’s begin…