The Home Video Boom saw the mass import of a new breed of horror film, sick and disturbing video material known as Video Nasties. Here’s where it all began! In the beginning there was no enforced film classification system like they had at the cinema. The industry had just started and no real regulations were […]
Exploring the DPP List of 72 video nasties. Although there were a total of 72 films on the list at one time or another, only 39 films were prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act (OPA), Dealers could be fined or jailed and the film itself would be declared obscene if the prosecution was successful, meaning […]
The video nasty media frenzy was a moral panic driven by Mary Whitehouse’s National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association with the backing of the tabloid press and politicians. They accused low-budget horror films, such as The Driller Killer and Cannibal Holocaust, of corrupting children and causing violence. Video Nasty was a term coined in the United […]
Movie posters are perhaps the most evocative and immediate artefacts of cinema history. For many collectors, owning an original movie poster is more than decoration, it’s a tangible link to a film’s premiere, the marketing campaigns, the era, and the cultural moment. But when you dig into the hobby, you discover that not all posters […]
Its been a busy month for Its Only A Movie! After sourcing a haul of VHS horror tapes and European Cinema Posters recently, we’ve been trying to catalogue them all so we can add to the website! A few rare pre-cert video tapes such as Absurd, Island of Death, Death Trap and the infamous Faces […]
There was a time when walking into a local independent video shop felt like stepping into a battlefield. Between the neon-coloured lights and comedy covers sat the “back room”, home to the infamous video nasties list. In the early 80s, before the Video Recordings Act 1984, the UK was the Wild West of home cinema, […]
The best 80s horror films of all time could be found in every video shop in the early 1980’s.
Part 3 focuses on the video shop raids in the 80s that shook the UK video industry to it’s core… After an article in The Daily Mail first listed 52 films officially labelled as ‘video nasties‘ by the Department of Public Prosecutions (DPP). The DPP list of video nasties was published, and dealers could be fined […]
Video Shops Part 4 showcasing the history of our video shop in Stockport, Cheshire. It’s just after my 7th birthday in 1985! Things had become clearer for the video industry after the Video Recordings Act (VRA) was passed. The British Board of Film Censors became the ‘British Board of Film Classification’ and were responsible for the […]
The second part of our journey back to the opening of our 1980’s video shop. The history of our video rental shop from 1983 to 1985 features new competition and a new partnership! It’s Halloween in 1983, Uptown Girl was topping the music charts, the ZX Spectrum was recently released and business was on the […]
There were a lot of VHS horror movies released in the early 80s, but probably one of the more famous ones was released on VHS tape on the 24th February 1983… The Evil Dead. A classic 80s gore-fest featuring some stunning cover art by Graham Humphries, it was a massive hit amongst the customers. Word […]
Part 1 of a story from the early 80s, when our family opened a pioneering 1980s video shop in the heart of Stockport, UK.
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