Original subtitles

The following 39 videos were successfully prosecuted under Section 2

Obscene Publications Act 1959, following the advice of the Director of Public

Prosecutions, DPP.

Anyone found supplying these titles on video would be liable for prosecution

run the risk of fines and or a prison sentence if found guilty.

This collection, in fact, effectively enshrines the list of the 72 titles

at one time or another, were on the Video Nasties list. If you're a purist,

these are the only films you can call Video Nasties. The fact that some

offensive and gruesome movies were never even caught in the trawl is again a

bizarre anomaly.

It's odd that, I mean, it's almost a badge of honour now to have been on the

Video Nasties list. I'm sure there are filmmakers out there whose films didn't

make the list, who now wish they had.

Third, or Anthropophagus 2, it's sort of a follow -up to Joe D 'Amato's movie

Anthropophagus in that... uh george eastman luigi montefiore plays another

cannibalistic killer who has his insides torn out at the beginning rather than

the end but it's a completely unrelated story it is in fact a rip -off of

halloween and halloween 2 shoved together with some weird science fiction

element about the killer having a rationale for being self -regenerating

his guts have been torn out

It's one of those titles that was just asking for it, isn't it?

Calling your film absurd is almost as asking for trouble as that Andy Warhol

film that's called Bad.

I mean, what do you think critics said?

And it was hardly any better when it was called horrible in France or in some

English language releases recently. It was the monster hunter in America, which

sort of makes sense because there's a character in it who's a monster and

there's a character in it who's chasing him, who is de facto the monster hunter.

Edmund Purdom, the British actor, who plays the kind of macho priest who's

tracking the killer. He's also basically doing Donald Pleasance's act from

Halloween. The killer is out there murdering people. And it's not

It's Super Bowl weekend, which is, interestingly, a holiday they never

bothered to use in the title.

So all the grown -ups are watching the football match. That takes up hours of

this film, is people eating Italian food and watching American football.

while the killer is menacing the babysitter and, indeed, the handicapped

who's frozen in a bed, which ought to make for a really good suspense

You know, the girl's paralysed, can't move from the bed, the killer is in the

room coming together.

Joe DiMato, or, indeed, Massachussie, wasn't particularly good at staging

suspense. What this film does have, at least in its uncut version, is really

gory murders.

Anthropophagus only has a few gory sequences at the very end of a long 90

minutes of wandering around a Greek island.

This ups the ante, and Masakasi had at least learned that if you have something

gory happen every 15 minutes, that means you've only got 15 minutes of tedium

before the next really gruesome thing happens. And the effects are much better

than usual for this kind of thing.

But of course...

After it had been around and upset people on video, the distributors put it

the BBFC, who just said, cut all the violence out. It's just three and a half

minutes of cut, which reduced it to being almost as excruciatingly dull as

Anthropophagus. Taking the gore out of this movie is like putting Singing in

Rain out and removing the musical numbers.

There would be no reason to see that.

And so...

I've never actually seen the cut version of this film. I imagine that would be a

real endurance test for Joe D 'Amato completists, of whom there are more than

few, strangely.

The gory version of this movie is actually reasonably entertaining just

it's so ludicrous.

It's not quite grim enough to be offensive in that the conceptually

upsetting things, like the menacing of a handicapped girl, are so...

clumsily done that they do come across as unintentionally humorous rather than

intentionally upsetting. I find it very hard to get worked up either way over

absurd. It doesn't strike me as being a great work of art martyred by evil

censors, but equally it doesn't strike me as being so gruesomely subversive

it should be wiped away and forgotten.

I mean, I'm reasonably sure I'll never find another reason to watch it again.

Although that said, yeah, it wasn't until you came along and asked me to

about it that I did watch it again for the first time in some decades. And I

found it slightly improved with age, maybe because we've all seen so many

so much worse in terms of boringness, not in terms of gore. We've seen things

much duller recently that it at least seems slightly endearing. I even found

those ridiculous...

scenes of Italian actors pretending to be interested in American football,

slightly endearing. But it's no great loss if you haven't seen it.

When Absurd landed on the Video Nasties list, the distributors put it into the

BBFC, made the suggested cuts, and then advertised in the trades saying that,

you know, would all dealers please return their now illegal tapes so they

be replaced by legal ones?

Of course, most dealers just ignored this.

and for years the both versions run and connoisseurs are able to tell you the

tiny differences which meant that you were buying the full strength version as

opposed to the cut version and certain collectors taped the uncut version over

the cut tape and then presented them on the trading market for I think the

term is silly money to make them more valid the idea that you can there is

a thing as a forged video nasty is peculiar but they do exist and if you're

there collecting this stuff and you want them all lined up on your shelves

beware there are unscrupulous people out there making you know very convincing

looking facsimiles of these films for sale

Ah, Italian exploitation.

I mean, where would we be without Joe D 'Amato? Or to give him his real name,

Aristide Mathesides.

He came up with Anthropophagus the Beast, one of the main titles on the

Nasty list.

Now, what's this about? Well, this is about cannibalism on a Greek island.

In fact, anthropophagus does actually mean, in Greek, cannibalism.

But it's so laughable, you can't really take any of it seriously.

I mean, it's very much an animal -intestines -up -the -jumper sort of

where it's all pulled out, looks really fake.

Loads of blood everywhere. And, of course, George Eastman, who plays the

to give him his real name, Luigi Montefiore, who also wrote the film, has

this red putty all over his face, and it looks really, really fake.

The main bone of contention, I think, for the DPP was the actual scene where

rips open a pregnant woman's stomach and eats the foetus.

It doesn't look very convincing. You can see it's a skinned rabbit.

But these are the things that actually got this sort of movie mentioned on the

news at 10, which it did, and it was called a snuff movie on that particular

programme. Ah, the good old days.

Where were we without that? Of course, everyone would rush out and buy it and

watch it for that reason. But Anthropophagus the Beast.

Not a particularly good one. What was it doing on the list in the first place?

Who knows?

So here we have Axe by Frederick Friedel.

A clashed total terror, it says.

And I think we can guess what it was that the police or busybodies of one

or another disliked about that. It's the title.

It's a Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but with axes.

That's the idea. It seems to be propagating.

Axe will slash up and shock you beyond anything before.

If it had been released under its original title, then I don't think it

have ever have gone anywhere near the banned list, because its original title

was Liza Liza.

which is gentle and poetic and sort of slightly melancholic. It's repeating a

name and it's kind of almost like, you know, it's a poetic sort of title.

Pretty Lisa took an axe, gave her captor 40 whacks.

You can guarantee that if a film called Liza Liza had been on the shelves, it

wouldn't have attracted any kind of unwanted attention at all. And then when

see the film, it's also kind of strange that it ever really kind of ended up on

the band list because...

The violence is very restrained. It's really not a very extreme film. It's

certainly not anything like, you know, Your Cannibal Holocaust or I Spit on

Grave. It did actually see the light of a projector in this country under an

even more lurid title. I mean, it actually played as California Axe

which really does underline the fact that they were trying to sell it off the

back of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Not since the Texas Chainsaw Massacre has the screen delivered terror like

Axe. I think it's very, very well made.

And it shares a great deal more with something like Polanski's Repulsion than

does with a gore flick, as such.

It's about a mute girl living apparently with her grandfather in an isolated

farmhouse. Where they met Lisa.

The farmhouse is taken over by a gang of criminals who use it as a criminal

hideout for a while when they're on the run from the police.

And all the violence in the film is against the men who invade that terrain.

It's not... a kind of a film that ever need troubled feminists um it's not it's

not a film where violence against women is an issue it's actually about this

strange mute girl who reacts to the threat from these men by taking the law

into her own hands it's very thoughtfully made it's very well shot

incredible melancholic electronic score the guy who made the film frederick

friedel who's in it as well, used to be a photographer before he got into

filmmaking.

And it's got a photographer's eye, almost like a photographic attitude to

character as well. A lot of the characters are very enigmatic.

You don't really learn very much about them, about their backgrounds.

You're kind of presented with them as people in a landscape, and you don't

necessarily learn anything more about the girl or her grandfather or what

brought them to be in the situation they're in.

You don't even really learn what the criminals have been up to. It's

some sort of heist that's gone wrong. But you start slap bang at the beginning

of the film with very little backstory.

In 1971, they rampage throughout the South.

The film's as much about enigma and what you're not told as it is about what

you're shown.

So even though there are moments of violence, a lot of the fascination is to

with mystery and spaces, empty spaces, you know.

They played a game of William Tell, a killing spree that ended here.

It's a fairly sophisticated visual approach to storytelling, and it's not a

conventional narrative by any means.

It was clearly not something that ever needed to have had questions raised in

the house.

It's a sophisticated, low -key, rather melancholic film with a great deal of

artistic merit.

Texas Panther Massacre, ironically, didn't end up on the banned list.

California Axe Method Acts did, although most people would say that Chainsaw is

a much more disturbing experience than this.

So it's one of those titles where you really do wonder quite what the logic

and because we were never privy to legal arguments about these films or why they

ended up being banned or certain ones were dropped and other ones weren't, we

may never know.

You know, it would be interesting if one day somebody did actually kind of spill

the beans about the decision -making process.

We're not privy to what juries had to say about the film either.

But this did, you know, regardless of its merits and regardless of its

restraint, end up on the banned 39 list.

So it is one of the core titles of the Video Nasty saga.

All I can think is that if anyone goes to the Video Nasty's list thinking...

gore, torture, terror, murder, rape, fantastic, bring it on, and they put

film on, they're going to be terribly disappointed.

It's just I hope that they can see it for what it is rather than for what they

were told it was going to be.

Because if you watch it with a clear head, I think it's a really rather

beautiful film.

Not since the Texas Chainsaw Massacre has the screen delivered terror like

Axe in 1971.

They rampaged throughout the South.

They played a game of William Tell, a killing spree that ended here, where

met Lisa and took what they wanted.

The sharp edge of suspense slams hard into fear, and fear becomes terror.

That's more like it, baby.

Pretty

Lisa took

an axe, gave her captor 40 whacks.

When she saw what she had done, she gave his partner.

41.

Axe will slash off and shock you beyond anything before.

Axe.

The most elusive video nasty is this one.

The Beast in Heat, which apparently only sold a couple of hundred copies and it

now retails at about £500 if you can get your mitts on it. Directed by Ivan

Katansky, the alias for Luigi Bazzella, who was an actor.

What is it? Well, it's tied in with all those Nazi concentration camp movies of

the time and it is pure concentrated camp, let's make no mistake.

You're very pretty.

You'll find out for yourself that we Germans aren't nearly as bad as we're

painted, you know.

The title on the actual video is Horrifying Experiments of SS Last Days,

Beast in Heat, but he was played by Sal Boris, who was sort of like a character

actor from the mid-'70s who did a lot of films like Star Crash, Ator, Sal and

Kitty.

And...

His major scene in this, which is probably one of the reasons why the DPP

on it, is that he munches down on a girl's pubic hair.

That's what I call a Brazilian.

Look at the special effects in other places, too. I mean, there's a scene

a girl gets eaten alive by rats.

They're obviously gerbils with sort of...

black makeup on them um elsewhere it's not very good the torch is a pretty sub

-ilsa which is obviously where the influence of this movie comes from tell

you find the spectacle exciting private shoots yes of course who wouldn't be

excited it's rubbish of course it's tasteless only an idiot would really

be taken in by this sub -ilsa nonsense but of course that's what the dpp were

idiots

I'm certain that my creature will give you a demonstration of its virility that

no human being could be capable of imagining.

I only want you to experience a moment of intense pleasure.

Lieutenant Helen Crash of General Command.

I am a human being.

I can only deplore what you're doing to these poor creatures.

And you, how do you find the experiment?

Excellent.

I think you're a genius. You're wonderful, Dr. Crash. I can't wait to

methods. Do you find me more exciting?

You're just a feature on TV.

Right, Bloodbath, notorious title. Actually, this is a case where the

really doesn't serve the film particularly well. I mean, yeah, it does

scene here, and there's the axe hacking or machete murder stuff in it, but I'm

not... This octopus seems to have come out of nowhere.

It may be in the film. I actually can't remember.

But it's Mario Barber's movie, Antifato, Bay of Blood, Twitch of the Death

Nerve, Carnage, whatever, all the same film.

And... Although it's not one of Barber's best movies, it is quite a classy

picture by the standards of video nasties in that it has an idea.

Not much of one, and it is the classic film play drama

La Ronde by Arthur Schnitzler.

Famously filled by offals, but also done by Rajavadi and many other people, the

chain of seductions, but it's done as a chain of murders, which is a neat idea

and it's sort of funny and disorienting. It's a group of characters who kill

each other off in a round robin with a sort of cheery, tinkly children's type

score to indicate that this isn't terribly serious.

It's been said that it was very much an influence on the American slasher movie

that came out from Friday the 13th onwards, which is true. I mean, it's got

kind of lakeside setting and it has slasher murders and there's a sort of a

subplot about some teenagers who get killed in one scene, which is in Embryo,

the slasher film.

But its emphasis on wit and irony and cynicism distances it from

the much more straight ahead.

style of 80s slasher movies.

It is one of the films on the list that I feel a certain degree of affection

for, although not as much as Bava's other work.

It's not even, I think, as good as Five Dolls for the August Moon, which is the

other film Bava made in this like vein.

But actually, Five Dolls came out theatrically in Britain.

We're not entirely sure whether Bloodbath came out theatrically in

was available.

It was trade -shown, which means it could have been released theatrically.

can't find any evidence of people in real cinemas who saw it. So it may well

have been trade -shown as a preface for its early 80s video release, ten years

after it was made.

So its actual distribution history is murky, to say the least.

and it's been out under more titles than almost any other film apart from Living

Dead at the Manchester Morgue.

Bloodbath had so many titles that it's entirely possible it was released

times by different companies who didn't even realise they had the same film.

Medusa announced this picture for release in 1984 as Bay of Blood, one of

more commonplace alternate titles, and then didn't release it, either because

they found out somebody else already had it in release, or because it was banned

under another title.

But then again, if you banned it under that title, it could easily have crept

back as Chain Reaction or Twitch of the Death Nerve or any of these other

titles. It is now out and available in the UK and the US on DVD in various

forms. Still, nobody's quite settled on what its actual title is, but under any

title, it's worth watching.

The trailer is kind of arty and solarized and sort of acid trippy. Maybe

conceal how gruesome it is, because it is quite gruesome.

But it's sort of gruesome fun rather than gruesome grueling.

and the fact that all these people are horrible caricature stick figures.

I think its tone is closer to, say, something like Dr. Phibes or Theatre of

Blood than Last House on the Left, which means that its sort of labelling as a

nasty is slightly unfair.

I mean, it's a cut above most of its fellows.

It's a cut above most Italians of psycho slasher type movies as well.

Blood Feast by the infamous Herschel Gordon Lewis.

Nothing so appalling in the annals of horror, it says, and audiences who saw

that at the drive -ins in 1963 when it was made would have probably agreed at

the time.

If you had a time machine to go back to a drive -in in 1963 and see Blood Feast

with an audience who had no idea what they were in for, that would be one of

things I would use my TARDIS for.

Just the pleasure of seeing it with an audience who had never been exposed to

that kind of...

level of gruesomeness before.

It is a very gruesome film.

It's also so silly and so campy and so bizarre that you'd have to

be such a chump to be offended by it. I really can't believe that anyone could

watch it and get on their high horse about the violence. It's just hilarious.

John Waters has written very amusingly about this, saying that he fell in love

with Lewis's films when he saw people jumping out of their cars at drive -ins

go and be sick in the butters.

and he said at last i knew i'd found a filmmaker after my own heart um it's not

going to have that kind of effect now obviously anyone who saw it in the early

80s would have been aware that it was you know um you know cast off mannequin

limbs from dressmakers dummies with bits of you know awful sticking out of the

end you know from a local butcher shop still it's the thought that counts and

comes you know the desire to be gross is certainly there and and there are times

when it it manages this strange flip between completely unconvincing and

actually really quite gross as well, so it kind of has it both ways.

And even though you're looking at it thinking, this is so false, it also

kind of unpleasant as well, so it's an interesting kind of line that it crosses

there. The villain, Fuad Ramses, is a caterer who is slaughtering women to

recreate a feast to an Egyptian idol.

We don't really know why he's particularly obsessed with this Egyptian

what he thinks he's going to achieve by this, but he is.

recreating the Egyptian feast with body parts from women who look like Wilma

from the Flintstones or something.

It's fun to see these strange early 60s Jetsons -style hairdos on

women who are having their legs cut off in glorious technicolour.

So, yeah, I've got a lot of affection for the film. I think there's not a lot

you could really say to make a case for it as a great... contribution to cinema,

except that, you know, from it, from This Little Acorn, so many other kinds

gory and extreme sort of horror films grew. It really was the first.

Herschel Gordon -Lewis, who made this film, is a very, very...

witty and sharp and clever guy, although the films aren't necessarily the best

way to prove that, but he is a very sharp guy. I think he was an English

and had worked in advertising, was very sussed.

I think he came to make this film because he was looking at exploitation

that already existed and saying, what can we do that's not been done before?

He'd been making softcore, kind of nudie, cutie, sort of softcore sex

I was getting a bit bored with those. He'd made about three or four of those

they were starting to become a bit repetitive.

And he sat down with his producer one day and made a list.

What could we do that hasn't been done before? And gore was on the list.

And the rationale was that in horror movies or movies of any kind, if someone

died prior to Blood Feast, they fell over, they clicked their chest. If they

were shot, there might be a trickle of blood, but essentially they died and

closed their eyes and fell on the floor and that was the end of it.

No, not in this film. And this is the innovation with Blood Feast, is that not

only do you see flesh torn from the bone, not only do you see someone's

yanked out of their throat, but the victims are alive and screaming and it

on and on and on for a while as well. And this is something that he took

and further in his later films. If you get something like Wizard of Gore or The

Gorgor Girls, and you can tell by the titles of those two how seriously he was

taking it by that point. The killings...

got on and on and on and you got like three minute deaths you know which is in

screen terms it's just an insane amount of time so that wasn't that was an

innovation no one had done anything like that before no one had quite rubbed the

audience's nose in death and mutilation and suffering uh quite it sounds awful

doesn't it it sounds like it's a terrible night out but having said that

clumsiness and the amateur hour quality and the kind of kitsch elements mean

that you're not it's not an endurance test you know it's not like watching the

guinea pig films or something you know they're essentially kind of amusing and

there's a kind of a jocular quality to them there's something about lewis's

films where you can tell that he's kind of laughing up his sleeve behind the

camera you know and even more so if you make the mistake of taking anything

seriously you know as he went on as the films got more and more grisly they also

got more and more satirical and sillier and crazier

And it was obvious that if anyone was foolish enough to get offended by any of

his films, then he would have been cackling with glee behind the scenes,

thinking, he's got another one.

You know, really made a fool of him this time. So, you know, you've got to be

aware that it's a wind -up.

These gory scenes in Lewis's films are a wind -up. He's really pushing your

button, seeing if he can get a reaction out of you.

So, you know, these people that hopped out of cars at the drive -in to go and

sick in the bookies, he would have been going, yes!

Ladies and gentlemen, you are about to witness some scenes from the next

attraction to play this theater.

This picture, truly one of the most unusual ever filmed, contains scenes

under no circumstances should be viewed by anyone with a heart condition or

anyone who is easily upset.

We urgently recommend that if you are such a person or the parent of a young

impressionable child now in attendance,

Let you and the child leave the auditorium for the next 90 seconds.

A gruesome orgy of human mutilation.

That's what Blood Rites was hyped as on the cover, although it's actually Andy

Milligan's 1968 clunker, The Ghastly Ones, retitled. Blood Rites, or The

Ones, as it could really have been called. Why did they retitle it Blood

That's such a boring title.

The Ghastly Ones is a gift.

That's one of those great exploitation titles. I can't believe that they

it. But this is... quite unique in video nasty land because this is the very

first video to feature a reversible cover on one side you get the artwork

you take it out and reverse it you actually get the photographic sign or

more interesting anything that's actually on show in the movie which is

full of amateurish acting terrible special effects you can actually hear

Milligan prompt the actors when they forget their lines one of the things I

really like about Milligan is that You can tell that it's one of his movies

within 20 seconds of it starting.

You know, the style, the way, the delivery of dialogue, the whole

everything. It's like his name is through the work like a stick of rock.

Rape, mutilation, and the sadistic story of human slaughter.

Milligan is a figure that a lot of people don't like.

The cult around Andy Milligan is one of the smallest of all the cult directors,

probably. I think he's fantastic.

Milligan was a very interesting guy.

He's been dubbed the horror Andy Warhol.

In New York, he'd hang around this Greenwich Village gay coffee house

Cafe Ceno. A lot of other contemporaries did as well. He'd bring all the rent

boys and oddball Manhattanites back to his house in Staten Island, this

Victorian mansion where he'd make these films.

Usually between about $5 ,000, $25 ,000, I think the budgets do really show.

With some of the most hideous tortures and heinous crimes ever shown on the

motion picture screen.

He's a person that had a vision, however warped and however clumsily realized

that vision was.

He was telling stories his way. He wanted to tell them his way.

I mean, one of the hallmarks of a Milligan film is talk.

talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and

every single character gets to gas on at great length to everyone else and it's

always bitter talk as well.

People are always sniping and joibing and complaining at each other and

marriages are always collapsing.

Servants are always plotting to overthrow their masters. He was a fan of

so you can see where that's coming from. He used to produce things like The

Maids. In his theatre work as well, he produced several of those Jeunet plays.

Not for the squeamish, but an experience so sensually exciting that it will be

the stomach shocker of your life.

And then another thing that he's got to offer, which isn't to everyone's taste,

but I think it's a valuable addition to the language of cinema, is his camera

work. and specifically a particular instruction which he used to write on

scripts to himself, because he wrote them, he thought them, he edited them,

designed the costumes, he did absolutely everything virtually himself.

But something that apparently Jimmy McDonagh's wonderful book tells us that

used to do with his scripts was that at certain points in the margins there

would be this note saying, swirl camera.

Now, if you watch the films, when you get to the violent scenes, he didn't

money to do... He makes Herschel Gordon Lewis look like James Cameron. There was

virtually no money. And so the gore scenes are fleeting, shall we say.

Kind of over and done with very quickly. And just to help to disguise the fact

that they're very clumsily done and, you know, incredibly unconvincing.

he will swirl camera at the key moment. So you're lucky if you get a glimpse of

a flesh wound before. It's like... It's like scanning the walls and the sky and

the ceiling and anything but his unconvincing gore effect.

So swirl camera, I think, is a great technical addition to the lexicon of

cinema, I think.

It's as important as Jeff Franco's zooms.

But, yeah, what a trailer.

William Mishkin, I think, was the person who was responsible for making the

trailer. And he really knew how to get some life into the proceedings.

Into this house came the monsters of slaughter.

With some of the most hideous tortures and heinous crimes

ever shown on the motion picture screen.

The ghastly ones.

Rape. Mutilation and the sadistic story of human slaughter.

Meet Colin, the mad brother who loves to eat meat.

Live meat.

Or Liz, whose sick need is only satisfied by the sadism of man.

Any man.

Or John, who learns the terror of the ultimate torture, but never lives to

tell about it.

The ghastly one.

What is it? Not for the squeamish, but an experience so sensually exciting.

that it will be the stomach shocker of your life.

The ghastly one.

Bloody Moon by Jess Franco.

Not one of Franco's more typical.

and yet probably one of the most frequently seen by casual horror fans

not have caught the Franco bug.

It's a classic film, and it's a Jess Franco film. Now, that for me is like

Christmases at once. That's just two of my favourite ever things in one play.

But even though it's not a great Jess Franco film, it doesn't have the

stamp of some of his other films like La Contessa Noire or Virgin and the

Mondelein Dead.

Even though it's...

got a lot of flaws i love it to bits i just i could watch well i could watch

bloody moon now quite frankly i've watched it about 30 times in my life so

know that tells you something doesn't it don't say what bloody moon summer

nights filled with horror a killer who's lost for blood will stop at nothing and

then also just to throw into the mix as well it's got disco music so it's a

slasher film It's a Jeff Franco film, and it's got a disco soundtrack as well,

and terrible, unconvincing disco hoofing as well. You know, that's just, you

know, it's just nirvana.

It's not a film that you would coach someone to try and establish what it is

that makes Jeff Franco special.

It's a kind of a gun -for -hire job.

It

doesn't

represent him terribly well, but if you put that to one side and just treat it

as a slasher movie...

It's just wonderful.

It's just got everything you could ask for. It's got the ditzy, ridiculous

characters who you've got absolutely no problem with seeing hacked up at all.

You'd be quite happy to see that happen. Abe has been murdered.

That's nonsense.

He wants to kill me too.

And unlike a lot of Franco films, it really does go for the gore and special

effects. He actually shoots special effects.

almost unheard of with Jeff.

You're lucky if somebody gets their throat cut, you're lucky if you see a

line of red across, not gaping flesh wounds.

But in this, you've got severed heads, blades coming out through

somebody's back, a girl's back and coming out through the nipple, which I'd

to read a feminist critique of that scene, actually. That's like a knife

coming out of a nipple.

What's the feminist angle on that image?

That's the combination of blood on breasts, I believe, which was a total no

as far as the BBFC were concerned.

And, you know, it's always been considered to be, amongst the

of trigger image, you know, for violence against women, that, you know, the

moment blood touches breasts or blood emerges from breasts, then, yeah, sort

like everyone's going to run amok and start chopping them off.

Franco's films are heavily eroticised and his stock -in -trade is to kind of

blend horror and eroticism.

Your kiss is cold and icy as death.

Your embrace keepeth the night.

It's interesting that some of the more overt and challenging combinations of

and horror that Franco did never even made it onto video in this country.

But Bloody Moon, for all the fact that it's not one of his more personal films,

still does have this undercurrent of the erotic in combination with quite

graphic horror scenes as well.

I imagine that probably is what yanked the chain of the censorious at the time.

And also the cover is very lurid. It's a screaming girl, sort of like a rotating

blade. I think if I remember rightly, wasn't there a problem with... tools of

any kind, chainsaws, you know, any kind of hand tool, like axes, of course,

circular saws, anything you'd find in a workman's toolkit, basically.

The toolbox murder's been the obvious case, Pyrex Lance.

I think the BBFC in particular took against anything which, probably because

they were concerned about imitative violence, you know, a wave of circular

murders would have followed from a free availability of Bloody Moon, you know.

Bloody Moon, a film you won't soon forget.

And one of the real charms of the film as well is just it's got a tin ear for

dialogue. I'm dying to sleep with him. I can't wait till tonight. I wish you

were here now.

Really, there's some lines in there that just always, always kind of brighten my

day if I hear them.

There's one particular one where a girl says, I bet he's never even made it with

a girl, the phony Spanish lover.

Fantastic. I must admit, I can't find many ways of getting it into

very often, so this is perhaps my only chance, but what a line. Fantastic.

Your kiss is cold and icy as death.

Your embrace, deep as the night.

Abe has been murdered.

That's nonsense.

He wants to kill me, too.

Bloody moon.

Summer nights filled with horror.

A killer who's lust for blood will stop at nothing.

Nights of blood.

Nights of terror that will leave you breathless.

Young girls in search of love and adventure become the prey of a

killer.

I am

dying

to sleep with him. I can't wait till tonight. I wish you were here now.

Fear will grip you on this holiday of terror.

A dream vacation becomes a nightmare.

Bloody Moon, a film you won't soon forget.

Bloody Moon.

The Burning, it's an entirely ordinary Friday the 13th rip -off. It was

unusually for a video nasty, released by fairly respectable people, Thorne EMI

Video, Handmade Films, George Harrison Company, who made The Life of Brian and

Longwood Friday and stuff like that. It was the first film venture for the

Weinstein brothers, who later created Miramax.

In fact, it was produced by Harvey and even scripted by Bob Weinstein. Director

was Tony Malem, a British guy who'd made Riddles of the Sands, not bad little

film, didn't have much of a subsequent career. He was fired off a movie called

Split Second with Rutger Hauer.

Tom Savini worked on it. It's got some interesting people in it. Holly Hunter

in it for about two seconds.

And other recognisable actors pop up as victims.

But it is basically a summer camp slaughter movie.

A legend of terror isn't just a campfire story anymore.

There was another glitch to do with its video release, which made it among the

more complicated of the nasties to track, in that...

For theatrical release it lost some nine seconds but accidentally when it was

released on video the uncut version was put out and then recalled when it was

pointed out that a mistake had been made but for a long time there were two

different versions of this in nearly identical

sleeves floating around and the recall didn't really work. It just led to a

great deal of confusion. You could argue that cutting nine seconds out of this

reasonably gory but entirely ordinary picture didn't make a blind bit of

difference. What I find odd is that anybody ever noticed because you would

had to see this film in a cinema and then watch it again on

video.

and recognize that there were nine seconds of extra gore in there

then feel impelled to complain about it.

I just can't imagine the mindset of somebody who did that, but obviously

somebody must have.

First of all, the burning, and there's the scene at the beginning when he puts

the garden shears in.

And the version I'd seen, I found out later, only when I was at school, was

And someone went, yeah, but he actually opens the shears and goes like that. I

said, no, no, not on mine he didn't. And I suddenly felt like, oh my God, I've

seen the cut version.

There's a cut version. And you felt like the shame.

I need to get hold of the uncut version to see the garden shears open up. But

it's still with me now, the kind of feeling of, ah, I never saw that at the

time. Again, if you're a connoisseur and a collector, the way to tell between

the cut and the uncut version without actually, you know, fast forwarding

through to the raft scene and see it's a finger -stipping and a throat

-stabbing, by the way, is what was going on, is that the cut version, the legal

version, has a date stamp.

on the the tape itself proving that it's different and legal of course that

version is utterly worthless to collectors who want the one without the

stamp which proves it has that finger -stepping it's out yeah in a fully uncut

version on dvd now if you actually want to see the film uh if you want to own

the the precious hallowed artifact that will cost you a bit more

If you're planning to go camping, don't.

If you're looking forward to midnight swims, don't.

I'm going to sneak on back to the campsite.

Get some matches.

We'll do the hot fire.

Don't be long. And if you're thinking about being with someone like no one can

see you, don't.

Because this summer, a legend of terror isn't just a campfire story anymore.

They say he smashed his way through the bunk room door in just a mass of flames.

He cried out, I will return.

I will have my revenge.

He lives on whatever he can catch right now.

summer five years ago is about to happen again and again and again.

Cannibal Vietnam veterans scoff their way through Atlanta in Anthony M.

Cannibal Apocalypse.

Antonio Margheriti is the director of this, of course, under that pseudonym.

This was bound to be a film that was going to end up on the DPP's radar,

Cannibal. apocalypse i mean you know all the stuff that they sort of pushes

their buttons it was actually titled originally in italy as apocalypse domani

which translates as apocalypse tomorrow a clever play on words from francis for

capola's big hit at the time apocalypse now the italians always did that sort of

thing with their titles

The Italian cannibal genre was always going to be a hot potato for the DPP,

here this one doesn't let you down.

I mean, there's some great stuff in this. I mean, all courtesy of Gennetto

Rossi, the make -up man behind Zombie Flesh Eaters.

Entrails get ripped, and of course you've got John Morgan having his

blown out and the camera going through.

Horror veteran John Saxon.

plays the lead anti -hero.

He has gone on record as saying that it's one of the worst films he's ever

appeared in and he wished he'd never done it and all that, how they all do

now. Of course, he had read the script. I mean, he knew what he was doing.

I mean, he wasn't ashamed to cash the paycheck, was he?

But, of course, it's so typical of American actors who appear in Italian

they honestly think no one's going to see them until it sort of ends up at the

drive -in next door, and then they sort of throw their hands up in horror and

go, it wasn't me, gov, honest.

But Cannibal Apocalypse actually does deliver. There's some great stuff in it,

and it's one of Antonio Margheriti's best films.

Put it down.

Cannibalism.

A Vietnam vet barricaded in the flea market taking pot shots at the cops

outside.

Okay, that's enough. Wait a minute.

Please.

Please try to understand her.

Listen to me.

While she was here, I had this urge to bite her. To bite her, you understand?

Like Bukowski.

We got it.

There's no exit there.

Made in 1981 by Umberto Lenzi, Cannibal Ferox was actually an attempt to

capitalize on the success of Cannibal Holocaust, which of course was a major

everywhere. In America, it was known as Make Them Die Slowly, presumably because

they thought the Americans wouldn't know what a ferox was.

It was also announced in its publicity that it was banned in 31 countries.

it was actually banned in England as well, so that presumably made it 32.

It did actually make it into the Guinness Book of Records.

So I guess that must be true.

The film itself is a typical Italian cannibal movie.

And you have sequences in it, for example, where there's probably one of

most famous scenes where an actress gets hung up by her breast.

A scene that seems to imitate a similar sequence in the Richard Harris Western,

A Man Called Horse.

But there's also poor old John Morgan, who suffered a lot in these kind of

movies, gets his cock chopped off, basically, and the top of his head split

like a breakfast egg and the brain scooped out.

So that's a fun sequence.

Really, it's one of those movies that deserves its reputation, and most

for the animal cruelty, because there's the killing of a pig and that sort of

thing, which is the reason, really, that it's had problems, still continues to

have problems to this day with the censor.

you know the uncut version which was released back in the day is still quite

collector's item anyway on to the gore

Come on, bitch.

Where's your stud?

Give me just a little more. It's fantastic.

How would you like to make an Indian girl?

Well, Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust, one of the original 17, it

banned from the beginning of the video nasties era to the end.

Lots of films with cannibal in the title were banned. The reason for that was

probably Cannibal Holocaust. It was by association with this, because it is

still a gruesome, shocking, terrifying film.

I can't understand the reason for such cruelty.

Well, Cannibal Holocaust was one of the most notorious of the nasties, and it

was actually prosecuted, one of the very early ones to be prosecuted and found

guilty under the Obscene Publications Act. Because, of course, up until that

time, prosecutions under the Obscene Publications Act had only been brought

pornography, never for violence.

And movies like Griller Killer...

and Cannibal Holocaust and SS Experiment Camp were like test prosecutions,

really, to see whether a jury would find these videos guilty under

the Epithene Publications Act, and they did. This is another one of those

pictures where the ad mats, the artwork, the cover images were so strong

that... For a start, I mean, they must have shifted a lot of tapes when they

in the trades. But they were also just begging to be used out of context by the

Daily Mail in their indictments of Video Nasties. And every newspaper that did a

layout on Video Nasties would have the cover image of Cannibal Holocaust, which

is this grotesque vision of what a third world cannibal looks like tucking into

a double handful of guts.

Actually, that was one of the less offensive images in the film. There were

actually some much stronger images that could have been used and weren't.

However, it became the image that encapsulated everything that was truly

transgressive and revolting and ought to be banned, you know, the ban this thick

filth approach, which was the rallying cry of the censorias.

during the whole Video Nasties era.

What wasn't realised, I think, by many people, both by the police and by the

DPP, and also people who were renting or buying the movie, actually was that it

was a cut print.

You know, like so many movies, it circulated around the world in

versions for different markets.

If you like, there were kind of hotter versions and there were cooler versions.

And the version which was distributed in the UK by Go Video was definitely a

cooler version. There were much, much, much stronger versions of the film

available. So even though people got terribly angry and upset about this

they weren't actually being exposed to the...

the full horrors of Cannibal Holocaust.

But it was literally a case that you could have cut every single frame of

violence out of this film, and the fact that it was called Cannibal Holocaust

would still have got it banned.

One of the scenes which was most definitely cut from the Go video release

the forced abortion scene, which is certainly a pretty...

horrendous scene. And again, it's one of those scenes in the film which is

strikingly realistic.

I mean, clearly, the woman concerned was not having a forced abortion.

But like a lot of the scenes in the movie, it's extremely realistically

could actually make you think that that's exactly what you were seeing.

sort of an interesting film to talk about.

Yeah, it's the kind of thing academics really like, because it does complicated

things with point of view and the use of found film footage, and it sort of

addresses issues of representations of violence, all those things you can do

theses about.

I never tried to do it because I didn't like the animals, because I'm a lover of

animals.

So I never wanted to do it, except that in the end I said, OK, I'll make

this film. And I did it again because it bothered me.

When I saw the television, the evening newspapers...

the news, my son was complaining because they were always seen dead, killed by

the Red Brigadists. It was a very hard time.

So I said, look how strange it is, journalists can show, in the hours

to children, terrible things.

And when I make a film, they forbid it at 18, they cut it, they copy it, they

don't want to burn it, and yet my films are banned at 18.

Anyone can go and watch it at 18, if not, no.

So it was a film to go against those journalists who went to make scoops and

where they couldn't do it, they created them.

One of the interesting things about Cannibal Holocaust is that every time

hear these stories of snuff movies being found at collectors' fairs, etc.,

etc., very, very often one of the films that is eventually cited is Cannibal

Holocaust. But that's because the violence in Cannibal Holocaust is so

believable. There's a great deal of verisimilitude in this film. One of the

interesting things that the film...

does is it edits together scenes of actual

cruelty to real animals and deaths of real animals with

staged cruelty and staged deaths of human beings.

And what in fact happens is because you realise that what you're watching when

it comes to the animals is absolutely unstaged and real and took place in

of the camera,

That kind of feeling of verisimilitude actually carries over into the scenes of

cruelty between human beings and makes them seem all the more

realistic. The equivalence of...

unfaked animal atrocities with faked human atrocities, I think rather

Cannibal Holocaust's position as an indictment of unethical documentarians.

maybe it also adds an extra level of ironies that you could do several

appendices and footnotes to your thesis on representations of violence in

Cannibal Holocaust.

But any idea that Diodato is not a good filmmaker, I think will be

dispelled by looking at a really good print of Cannibal Holocaust. The trouble

with Cannibal Holocaust is that, like so many of the nasties, it circulated

because of being banned in second, third, fourth, nth generation copies,

horrible, dupey videos.

It really did... take the DVD era to come along before we could see these

in all their true glory.

Now, some really are crap.

I mean, some really do look awful, even on a decent DVD.

You look at a film like Cannibal Holocaust, you can actually see that it

terrific and that Diodato is a filmmaker of very, very considerable skill.

The film may be reprehensible, but badly made, it certainly isn't. It is a film

that... You can see why it upset people.

Even now, it's still pretty strong meat.

But it is, you know, one of the key horror films of its era.

I mean, it's an important movie.

But I mean, we've got the point of the video nasties. Sometimes we highlighted

some films that otherwise we might not even have noticed. I think this

Driller Killer is another.

Films that actually had sort of slipped by in their home territories. It was the

fact that they became video nasties, Fight For Your Life, that made people

notice them, that made some people look at them and say, you know, there's

actually stuff going on in these movies that's worth talking about.

The film was finally passed in the new millennium by the

BBFC on video and DVD.

It was only passed with very, very, very considerable cuts, somewhere around

seven minutes of cuts, some of these being for animal cruelty, but some being

for scenes involving sex and or violence between human beings as

well. So beware BBFC -certificated versions of this film. It's

really worth going online and getting a decent, complete DVD of this.

I still don't understand the English people how they manage to prohibit that

film.

I mean, they should understand it.

Watch it, Alan. I'm shooting.

Oh, good Lord.

It's... It's unbelievable.

It's... It's horrible.

I can't understand the reason for such cruelty.

It must have something to do with some obscure sexual rater.

With the almost profound respect these primitives have for virginity.

The Cannibal Man.

This Spanish film from 1971 opens up with a very gruesome scene of a

cow being slaughtered and then being cut into various parts of meat. And it

contextualises the main character who works in a slaughterhouse, cannery,

a special kind of soup that people love to eat because it's full of meat.

A river of blood is created by The Cannibal Man.

The film actually, however, doesn't appear to be about a cannibal man.

It is more a kind of study of one man who seems to, against his will and

his volition, get out of control in his little accidental habit of killing

people.

It's quite interesting because technically one could say that it's a

killer film because it's about this man who, over the period of a week...

kills a number of people.

However, the first murder is an accident. He kills a taxi driver

who is a very objectionable taxi driver, I should add.

And then he keeps having to kill people who tell him to go to the police. And so

every time he kills someone, it's because they've said, oh, you killed

person, you have to go to the police. And then the next person is looking for

the person he's killed earlier, and then he has to kill them. So it's a very

incremental film, and therefore it's quite easy to follow.

It has some really interesting cinematography in that it is set in the

wastelands of Madrid.

And so there's a kind of urban feel to it that insinuates a sense of despair.

The cannibal man living in today's jungle kills for his freedom.

I think that the character, though, is not entirely unlikable. He seems to

simply be a victim of a situation that is rolled out of his control.

Strangely enough, even though the film starts with the slaughter, we don't see

any more slaughter. And so I think with the English title of the film and also

with the fact that it opens with a kind of...

stock footage of bulls being slaughtered. We're being set up for

may well seem to be quite gratuitous and perhaps you could argue that the

censors saw that opening scene, saw the title Cannibal Man and thought this is

immediately going to be a horribly gratuitous and offensive film. But

as the story unravels those set up elements really don't quicken to a

of any kind of blood

desire that we may have to be fulfilled.

Does this man discover the dark secrets of the cannibal man?

One of the most interesting parts of the film, however, is the interjection of a

gay character.

And there's almost a sense, because of the kind of traditional exploitation

films, that the gay character is going to become a victim.

However, in quite an astounding final scene, the protagonist goes to kill the

gay character, who completely submits, and by his submission, he is spared.

And finally, as a result of this, the protagonist goes and calls the police

gives himself in. So there's a beautiful elliptical ending to this film that I

think will surprise the viewers.

And so in terms of its gratuity and its violence, the film only mildly delivers.

The murders are quite...

visceral and enjoyably so, but there also seems to be a poignant

every time he kills someone as if he never really wanted to and he takes no

pleasure in it. So I think for elements of ambiguity in killing, this film is a

really good example of the creation of a complexity in a character who's having

inner turmoil that comes out as externalised violence.

Don't be hasty.

What do you want?

Well...

Please go in there if you want to.

If that's what you need to ease your mind.

What strange foreboding secret is within this room?

So you're ashamed to look me in the face.

Marcus, what happened?

Did the paper have anything?

No, not a word.

Did you read it all?

Well, there was something.

The man died.

His picture's in the paper.

What lures the innocent into the death room?

What smells in here?

What?

Please, excuse me. I don't want you to suspect that I... What do you mean?

suspect.

The cannibal man living in today's jungle kills

for his freedom.

Discover his unique way of disposing of the bodies.

A river of blood is created by the cannibal man. Marcos!

Does this man discover the dark secrets of the

cannibal man?

The devil hunter, Jeff Franco, again.

And this is one of the rarest of the Videonasters. It's one of the ones that

changes hands for the most crazy amounts of money. I think 400 or 500 pounds

wouldn't be unusual.

And I understand you're giving me this one, actually, for doing this. That's

great.

Devil Hunter, again, it's a rather untypical Jeff Franco title.

He's not very fond of it. It's got a cannibal theme. Essentially, it's kind

response, a very low -budget and rather oblique tangential response to films

like Cannibal Holocaust.

Now, Franco has said in interviews that he absolutely hated Cannibal Holocaust,

didn't like the idea of making cannibal movies, but his producers at the time

were saying, oh, come on, you know.

why not just knock a couple out for us? And he was working at such a clip at the

time that he probably just thought, well, go on then, I've got a few weeks,

got a fortnight's spare, I'll do you a couple of cannibal films.

They're not great films, and again, they're not great examples of Jeff

art.

Devil Hunter is one of those movies that you can watch it and think, has someone

flipped?

hallucinogens into my tea because everything is just the sound is the

kind of echoey and it's a montage of non -musical kind of atonal sort of

scraping and moans and groans characters just kind of pop up as if

they're going to do something important and then just kind of wander off again

having done nothing at all and there's no sense of development what's the

for your visit here miss crawford we're checking out locations for our next film

The plot is very, very threadbare, and there are times when, for minutes on

you're thinking, what's actually happening?

What am I actually watching?

What's happening here? I don't really understand this film.

So it's kind of fun at that level.

And in terms of violence, Cannibal Holocaust, of course, was shocking and

extremely graphic and obviously disturbed a lot of people when they saw

it's very hard to imagine anyone being disturbed by the violence in in devil

hunter i mean it more or less revolves around slow motion footage of chewing

kind of strings of bloody tripe or something like that you know and it's

know it's not even trying to be convincing it's not it's certainly not

be kind of uh verity kind of you know like cannibal holocaust it's not

interested in trying to convince you he doesn't give franco doesn't give a

monkeys about reality

uh in in in terms of violence he's a symbolic filmmaker in a lot of ways you

know or an expressionist he's not um he's not concerned with trying to create

kind of you know realism he seems to have kind of contempt for realism a lot

the time you know this is the man who famously shot a scene that was meant to

in slow motion but the safe film actually shot it in real time and just

pretended to be moving in slow motion if you're going to do that you don't care

about realism you know The person committing the violence in the film is

very athletic, very large black guy who's got these kind of prosthetics,

maybe that's too posh a word for what they really are, kind of, you know,

plasticine eyes stuck over his real eyes.

Why? God knows.

I mean, in terms of actors in there, there are several familiar faces from

Franco's films, like Olivier Maffo.

Antonio Mayans is in there, quite an early role for him.

The female lead is Sabrina Siani, who is this sort of blonde bombshell,

sort of rather statuesque, but also slightly blank -faced, understandably

mean, I don't think there's anything in the film to kind of pull anything

particularly passionate out of her, so she might have been...

capable of much more, who knows, but she certainly looks rather elsewhere in the

film. She's, you know, very beautiful.

But the idea of the plot is that she's like the white woman who ends up in the

hands of a native tribe.

The plot description makes it sound like an action movie.

The cover makes it look like an action movie.

I don't know.

Presumably somebody saw it, complained.

Complained about what? I mean, it is a puzzle. Something like Devil Hunter, not

only is it kind of weird and grisly, a bit grisly, it just doesn't look

like what a certain person's idea of cinema should look like.

And I think that's probably why a lot of these films ended up offending people,

because they had the safety net taken away. The style template was not there

safely in place to tell you, OK, it's just a movie.

Even if it's a horror movie, Hammer movies, they've got a particular kind of

structure that enables you to put the horror in context.

You know where you are. It's a story with a proper beginning, middle and end

all the rest of it.

A lot of these films are shot in such a haphazard way that all of those safety

markers about what constitutes a real film are completely missing. Now that's

thrill for people like myself and an awful lot of other people who love...

exploitation pictures.

But I think it's also a very disorientating and disturbing thing for

like to have movies made the proper way, the old pattern the proper way, you

know, with certain verities of craft in place. And if you take those things

away, I think it disturbs people as much as...

you know an open flesh window you know the combination of the two perhaps that

really seems to rattle people there's a tribe in the area they sacrifice human

beings victims are usually young girls and they eat their hearts it would be a

mugs game to kind of try and mount a kind of an art defense for the for it as

film it's just not that kind of film it's just a disorientating 90 minutes

where at the end of it you're really none the wiser about why it was made,

you've just watched, what the experience could be summed up as.

It's just 90 minutes in the twisted mind of Jess Franco.

What's the reason for your visit here, Miss Crawford? We're checking out

locations for our next film.

Who are you?

What do you want from me? Get out of here once!

He won't come up with a dough.

He couldn't care less about her.

He'll pay you. You can bet your life he'll pay.

Why don't we send him a piece of her? That'll convince him to pay her.

What do you think?

That's our island.

There's a tribe in the area, and they sacrifice human beings.

The victims are usually young girls, and they eat their hearts.

You have Don't Go in the Woods, not Don't Go in the Woods Alone, that's just

title on the sleeve. This was one of a run of don't titles.

Don't look in the basement, don't go in the house, don't open the window, don't

answer the phone.

A few of these ended up on the nasties list, so maybe there was an idea that

there was something wrong with don't movies.

Don't go in the woods. It's not just a warning.

It's the only way to stay alive.

Edgar Wright actually made a trailer for a film called Don't, which is in the

American version of Grindhouse.

There's not actually much to say about this. It's an extraordinarily amateurish

bunch of people go in the woods and are slaughtered by a deranged mountain man.

picture. There was a much better film called Campsite Massacre about the same

time, which was the same basic plot, but with proper actors and decent

photography and some quite exciting bits.

This was one of the first movies I remember seeing that was just completely

inept on every level. Now, of course, it looks like a masterpiece compared to

all those films people camcorder in their backyards with their friends

around. pretending to be zombies or whatever but it was i think

And considering that, you know, this went to jury trial at some point, you

ordinary people watching movies like this must have been more affronted by

lack of production values and the amateurishness of the filmmaking than by

gore, which, again, it's gruesome. Lots of people get killed, but not in a

particularly upsetting or terrifying manner. It started as a carefree weekend

camping trip.

soon turned into an orgy of unrelenting horror.

There's one tiny sequence in it which again is almost a good idea where

somebody is expecting the monster to come around the corner and stabs them

then realizes they killed a completely innocent person and tries to apologize

the dying guy.

And that very same sequence is restaged in Neil Marshall's movie, The Descent.

I've seen it actually done again a couple of times recently.

And in there, it's a really powerful, affecting moment. But in Don't Go in the

Woods, it's just a joke that isn't particularly funny.

James Bryan, the director, has tried to pretend that he... It was intended to be

a comedy all along and it has a sort of jokey end credits music to the tune of

the Teddy Bear's Picnic. I bet they didn't pay Performing Rights Society to

composer of Teddy Bear's Picnic to do it.

But it's not. It's just...

clod -hoppingly inept on every level. It was an endurance test to sit through in

the 80s.

It hasn't really improved over the years, although there's a special

out in America that's quite entertaining because it has retrospective

documentaries about the making of it, and the commentary track is actually

cheerful and sort of insightful in the problems of making low -budget movies

like this.

It sort of makes you appreciate all the more the achievement of the makers of

the Blair Witch Project, who had fewer resources. They had fewer people to go

into the woods with and still actually made a film that worked.

It proves that actually you don't have to make rubbish because you haven't got

any money.

The other thing is that the tagline is don't go in the woods alone.

And these are the most crowded, isolated woods. You can't turn a corner without

more victims turning up, including somebody.

on a skateboard or jogging there's something on a wheelchair there's an

is in there painting someone you think these are the you know these woods have

got more people passing through than you know tottenham court road station at

rush hour uh most of them get killed by the the mad beardy axe murdering person

i can't even remember what the point of it was what it was that drove the

maniac mad in the first place, if it's even mentioned.

I think he's just a local loon. He doesn't even have what The Burning or

have, an urban legend or a rural legend where somebody explains the myth of the

mad guy in the woods. You get nothing.

It's just, here are some victims, here's a mad guy, pile of bodies, the film's

over, let's go home.

You won't see the forest for the screams.

And even if you're a completist who's got that DVD special edition, what you

don't have is what you're about to see now, the original theatrical trailer.

Don't go in the woods.

Something's out there. Something evil.

Something so terrifying only screams can describe it.

Hunters become the hunted.

Every camper is fair game.

When a walking nightmare turns a lush green forest crimson red with the fresh

blood of each new victim.

It started as a carefree weekend camping trip. It soon turned into an orgy of

unrelenting horror.

You can run. It will catch you.

You can hide.

It will find you.

After that, you won't see the forest for the screams.

Don't go in the woods. It's not just a warning. It's the only way to stay

Hi, my name is Brad Stevens.

I'm the author of the book, Abel Ferrara, The Moral Vision. And I'm going

talking a little bit about Abel Ferrara's film, The Driller Killer, one

more notorious entries on the video nasties list.

And when I say the film was notorious, I have to say its notoriety was almost

entirely due to the cover of the video, which you can see here.

This cover in particular, when it was reproduced in trade magazines, as much

anything else.

contributed to the uh the start of the video nasties panic in truth the film is

violent but uh it would have been cut certainly if it had ever been submitted

the bbfc but uh just the title and the cover of the video were what made it

a notorious film the film came out in 79 but dipco released the video in 82 and

i would have been um i guess around 15 years old at the time and i went and

rented it from my local video store attracted obviously by the cover and

thinking i was going to see something like a herschel gordon lewis film that

certainly the kind of film that i was expecting and right from the first shot

which showed a man who i now know now but i didn't know then was the director

abel ferrara walking into a church i could see this was something uh quite

different from what i had expected to see something much more intense see

lane as reno miller a man driven to the very edge

I saw the film very soon after it was released. And in fact, I believe we have

here the original rental slip, which is dated from early

1982. Yeah, this is dated from March 1982.

I believe it came out in February.

And I would probably have seen it around that time.

And I recall that I was so impressed by it, but I was absolutely convinced that

this film was not originally called The Driller Killer.

It seemed to me so sophisticated that I was sure it must have been called

something else and had been retitled The Driller Killer for its video release.

And I spent some time trying to find out what the original title was, but of

course, as it turned out, it was The Driller Killer.

The film has usually been described as Abel Ferrara's first film. In fact, he'd

already made a hardcore porn film called Nine Lives of a Wet Pussy.

And he also acted in that under the pseudonym Jimmy Lane.

And that's also the pseudonym that he uses in this film. In fact, you can see

the name Jimmy Lane is on the cover.

One thing that's worth pointing out is that, like a number of other VIP co

-titles, The Driller Killer was uncut in terms of violence, but was missing

several narrative scenes.

There's a scene which runs six or seven minutes showing the central character,

Reno, played by Ferrara, getting ready to go to a nightclub and turning up in

the nightclub playing pinball.

There's a whole sequence that was cut out.

This was then restored to the version that was submitted to the BBFC many

later for a video release which was pre -cut.

Now the version you have on DVD is completely uncut with all the violence

the six or seven minute section intact.

Originally, Ferrara started out making a hardcore porn film and this rather

disreputable seeming horror film.

It's rather ironic that today he's regarded as something of an art house

and he's worked with major stars like Christopher Walken and Harvey Keitel.

And yet, the bizarre thing is that his films now

aren't that different from the films that he was making in the 1970s. I mean,

even his porn film, Nine Lives of a Wet Pussy, thematically and stylistically,

is absolutely consistent with the films that he's making today, such as Mary and

Go -Go Tales, films which have, as yet, not even been released in the UK.

The Driller Killer's reputation as a video nasty, which, as I say, was...

very much influenced by the title and the cover of the video.

It has been extremely hard for the film to shake off. Even now, if you mention

the title to people, you get the impression that you're talking about

which is obviously disreputable.

In fact, the film has very respectable historical antecedents in, for example,

taxi driver and certainly in Polanski's Repulsion.

The film is very much...

in the style of Repulsion. It's a study of psychological breakdown.

I think it's worth pointing out that there is a way to read the film as that

none of the driller killings are actually happening, that it's all

that's taking place in the central character's mind.

But it is a portrait of psychological disintegration.

There's no violence for, I think, the first 40 minutes or so.

And when I first watched it, that was what struck me. This was a serious film

the style of Hector Scorsese or Polanski.

The driller killer is coming.

One thing I'd like to say about the trailer for the film, which you'll see

this DVD, is that it includes a very brief bit of footage which is not

in the film.

It's a close -up of Reno, the character played by Abel Ferrara, saying, it's

only a window, Dalton.

Just a window.

And this obviously comes from the scene towards the end of the film in which

Reno invites Dalton Briggs, the art dealer, to his apartment.

And obviously at some point the film had included a section in which Dalton

notices that the window of the apartment has been broken. Because earlier in the

film you saw Reno through his phone through the window.

So that's something that's an interesting extra in the trailer.

See Jimmy Lane as Reno Miller, a man driven to the very edge.

And then beyond.

The Driller Killer is coming.

Just a window.

Made in 1981, Evil Speak has the dubious honour of being recommended by Anton

LaVey, that's head of the Church of Satan, as essential viewing for

Stanley used the power of man to call on the powers of evil.

The film stars Ron Howard's younger brother, Clint, who's also known as the

of TV's Gentle Ben, in a rather less gentle role as a bullied military cadet.

He's the kid everyone used to pick on.

Who gets his own back when he finds a way of summoning up Estabar the demon

through his computer.

And he then unleashes an army of wild pigs on all those who've tormented him.

And all hell broke loose.

There's quite a lot of gory stuff in it. There's a football game using a severed

head. And there's a very good exploding head at the end as well. And there's a

very sadistic scene where the bullies slaughter poor old Clint's puppy.

It's quite a fun movie. I think the Satanist stuff would have to be taken

pinch of salt. But if you're into it, well, it's got Anton's recommendation,

give it a try.

Everyone's known a boy like Stanley Coopersmith.

You speak.

He's the kid...

Everyone used to pick on him.

Screwed up for the last time, Cooper dick.

You see, everyone thought Stanley was a joke.

An outcast with no one to turn to.

You guys broke my catapult. You're going to pay for that. No one except man's

most advanced machine.

Stanley used the power of man to call on the powers of evil.

I, Stanley Coopersmith, command you!

Oh, my God.

And all hell broke loose.

creatures with your strength and force.

Let them avenge me.

Remember that little kid you used to pick on?

Well, he's a big boy now.

Okay, what was the only British film to end up on the Video Nasties list?

Time's up.

It was Expose, which was passed with slight cuts in 1975 by the BBFC, but

on video. Here's the original gatefold sleeve.

Very rare for the day, as you can see.

Many people didn't like that. That's why it's actually quite rare, and this is

one of the most sought -after tapes to get in this particular packaging.

Directed by James Canham -Clark.

He was the director of also two...

Sexploitation films, Let's Get Laid and Hardcore, which is one of the reasons

why Britain's number one sex symbol, Fiona Richmond, appears in the movie,

especially in a sort of like a psycho -influenced shower scene.

But the real reason why this got pounced on by the DPP was because of the rape

scene with Linda Hayden being attacked by two thugs. Those two thugs are played

by Carl Howman of Brushstrokes TV sitcom fame and Vic Armstrong, who would later

on become, well, James Bond's biggest stunt coordinator of choice.

Original title is The House on Straw Hill.

It's got quite an arty look about this movie. There's some really nice shots in

this.

Very much of the day, of course, but you can see a definite Euro sensibility

going on in the background.

And that's one of the reasons why Udo Kier, the German star, appears in it as

the lead author.

Udo actually told me many years later that Exposé taught him one of the

lessons he ever had in his life.

there was a point where Brian Smedley Aston, the producer, one of the reasons,

by the way, why two of the characters are called Smedley and Aston, came to

and said, look, we haven't got any money, we can't pay you, would you

take the Japanese video rights instead?

Well, of course, Udo should have said yes, because he would have made a

but he didn't. He stuck his gun and said, no, I want to be paid.

They finally got the money together, but he said from that moment on, he was

always asked.

to sort of be paid up front by the producer and that's the lesson he

from expose

the documentary faces of death the cover states that this video cassette will

change your attitude to life it has a lot to live up to and if you've seen it

you'll know that it will definitely have a lasting effect on you in fact it was

around the time i first saw it in the mid 80s that i decided to become a

vegetarian so there you go it's essentially a mondo film that is it's a

documentary which purports to show extreme and taboo subjects such as

autopsies suicides

executions and there's some really strong animal cruelty in there too what

now know is that it was financed with japanese money primarily for their

after the success of the italian mondo film savage man savage beast the

producers wanted something much stronger than that that hadn't been seen before

and they got it for the first time in cinema history the greatest fear of all

mankind will be graphically exposed the main man behind faces of death It's

probably a guy called Conan Lee Collier, which is most likely a pseudonym, as it

would seem most people involved in the making of the film prefer to remain

anonymous, for obvious reasons.

The writer who is credited on screen as Alan Black is actually John Alan

Schwartz, which, to add to the confusion, many sources credit as a

real name.

In fact, Mr Schwartz popped up in a Channel 4 documentary a few years back,

was credited on screen as the director of Faces of Death, so who knows.

The other actor appears throughout the film in numerous stage scenes, some of

which are very convincing and have had people forward for years.

The film opens with some graphic footage of an autopsy, then cuts to footage of

a doctor leaving the autopsy theatre who goes by the name of Dr Francis B.

Gross, and he comes complete with dodgy glasses as well. He tells us that he's a

pathologist who has compiled a library of the many faces of death.

This doctor is played by actor Michael Carle. He tells us he's going to take us

around the world to help us develop an understanding of death.

In one brief moment, within the span of a heartbeat, your world could stop.

Some of the more harrowing Real News Real Fudgy sequences involve that of a

Diego plane crash with body parts strewn all over the place. It was obviously

too strong to show on TV.

There are also quite a few genuine accident scenes.

People jump into their deaths from tall buildings and stuff like that. A

parachutist whose chute just fails to open and he just bounces on the ground.

It's horrible.

The stuff that really affected me was the section which shows animals being

killed. There's seal cullings, the kosher killing of cows.

However, none of these scenes were staged for the camera. They were just

purchased from a natural history company.

Some of the other most talked about scenes were simply faked by the crew.

Among these, there's a scene of a monkey having its skull smashed open and its

brains eaten.

There's an electric chair execution, there's a Middle Eastern execution by

decapitation, and an alligator eating a man. You get the picture.

The end of the film takes us to a séance, and attempts to lift us out of

nearly depressive state with this really corny life and rebirth sequence is

quite silly.

Those with strong enough stomachs to make it to the end of the film might

noticed the revealing end disclaimer, which clearly states, Exiguous scenes

within this motion picture have been reconstructed to document and further

clarify their factual origin. So there you have it.

Faces of Death was released in Britain by a company called Atlantis Video in

September of 1982, and the tabloids were quick to pick up on its disturbing

content. Some even ridiculously singled it out as a genuine snuff movie,

including the tabloid newspapers and numerous gullible politicians who viewed

sections of it in Parliament.

Predictably, Faces of Death made its way onto the very first of the DPP's native

hit lists. That was in July of 1983, where it was to remain until the end.

Rather strangely though, the British video release didn't contain the full

version. For reasons unknown to me at least, the distributor chose to chop out

around half an hour from the middle of the film.

including a decapitation, a bizarre satanic sacrifice ritual, a scene of a

washed up on the beach drowned, a bear eating a man, and the famous electric

chair sequence which features on the cover. Viewers may have wondered what

hell happened to that scene.

If I were you, I would view this one with extreme caution, including its

-churning sequels. Meanwhile, here's the equally stomach -churning trailer.

In one brief moment within the span of a heartbeat your world could stop.

There is no way to predict when you will become one of them.

For the first time in cinema history the greatest fear of all mankind will be

graphically exposed.

Now a motion picture dares to take you beyond the threshold of the living where

you may discover your own face of death.

Explicit footage will expose one of the most repulsive forms of death.

witness as helpless creatures die by the butcher's hand.