What were the Video Nasties?
A short introduction to the underground tapes

For me, the video nasties aren’t just films — they’re relics of a bygone era, when horror was raw, underground, and perceived as genuinely dangerous.

It all started with the home video boom in the early 1980’s. Britain was in a state of panic due to the mass import of disturbing, and uncensored horror movies from Spain, Italy and beyond. These tapes caused mass panic in society and in the media, and became known as the infamous video nasties.

These tapes came from a time when horror filmmakers pushed every boundary just to get noticed — or to get banned. Titles like The Driller Killer, I Spit on Your Grave, and Cannibal Holocaust were passed around like contraband, whispered about in school playgrounds up and down the UK, hidden behind counters in dodgy rental shops. That sense of taboo is part of what makes them so appealing to collectors. Each one is a piece of underground movie history, a reminder of when horror felt genuinely subversive. And for collectors like me, finding one of those big-box originals in the wild is like striking gold.

I’ve been collecting these tapes for years, and nothing beats holding one of those original VHS tapes in your hands, the musty smell of old vinyl, the history of the tapes. The cover art is an experience in itself — bold and graphic, often more shocking than the movie itself. They weren’t just selling a film, they were selling a feeling. A threat. A promise. You could tell just by the sleeve that you were about to see something you weren’t supposed to. But were the video nasties really as bad as they were being portrayed though, or were they just being used as a media scapegoat, to pin the blame on the current violence in society.

Where it all started >