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And I think the most interesting thing to me is just how little historical

memory we have.

The next time there's a panic, we won't remember just how stupid the last one

was. Critical voices have to care about history.

We have to care about the way in which things got controlled in the past,

because that's when the damage gets done.

And if we don't keep that historical memory, We will allow them to do it

next time.

You are the only country in the Western world that has this draconian

censorship. And it's a disgrace to this country, and it should have been changed

years ago.

I would like to talk about censorship at length later.

Well, this will have to be cut.

The Prime Minister made it quite clear yesterday that she was behind the bill

and that the government was behind the bill and that she wanted the bill to

through the House as rapidly as possible. The video industry on the

welcomed the coming of the Video Recordings Act because it brought a

of sanity and order to an otherwise pretty anarchic situation.

The market was unregulated in the sense that there was a lot of material being

supplied for sale or for hire prior to the Video Recordings Act that had never

been... through the bbsc and in some cases would not have been classified by

bbsc and there was no age restriction or regulatory regime out there it

designated the british board of film sensors as it then was as the body which

would be responsible for censoring and classifying video it then became the

british board of film classification even though it still carried on a

censorship function the name change was requirement the Williams committee

actually mentioned classification as did the VRA of course the irony is that the

name change occurred exactly the same time that the video nasty scare had led

perhaps even stricter censorship regulations video content is to be fine

this way the video retailers the rental shops now had a series

of

guidelines, they had a certification system in place so they knew that

garish the cover, the police had to leave it alone as long as it was

labelled up. And the industry was quite happy about it, they could just carry on

with their business without worrying about being arrested or selling

that was illegal.

The Video Recordings Act came into effect on the 1st of September 1985, the

board had a problem at that point. Not only would all new releases have to be

submitted to the board and classified from that point on, but there was also a

backlog of many thousands of titles on the shelves. Not all of them video

nasties by any means, all sorts of material.

and those had to be dealt with. We've had to classify every video in the shops

by tomorrow.

So midnight tonight, the job has to be done.

It was quite intense, and clearly James Furman, as the director, he had to

obviously preside over a vast upswing in the number of works coming in. Things

like... Mary Poppins, there was no trouble with that. But they had to sort

review quite a lot of things, including review things that they'd already

passed. How many more videos have you to do? Your deadline's tomorrow.

Well, I'm going to go to the office after this programme tonight.

Now, this was headed up by a very interesting person at the time, who was

Furman. James Furman had taken over as the secretary of the BBFC at a time

when...

It certainly was in trouble. It was being accused by many people, not just

Whitehouse, of being overly liberal.

This job came up and it was suggested to me that they were looking for somebody

who knew his way around the cutting room and also was interested in knowledge

all about social problems and that was really how I happened to end up here.

I knew James Furman. I advised him quite often. He was very...

insecure, he was a Canadian, not a terribly good director himself, who

that he could direct better than those who were chosen by studios.

I did 18 years as a television director, so I had quite a wide experience of the

arts and drama and documentary, because I specialised in both.

I'm being used.

Yes, I'm afraid you are. You see, this man is a devious fellow.

Amoral, I should say.

possibly quite criminal what a nerve how dare he yes i dare say he would dare a

lot he believed that this made him sensitive to the interest of filmmakers

that he was aware of you know how cuts could work he'd actually had um work

he'd worked on censored by i think television companies but even if it's

good film it's an interesting problem and i love being a troubleshooter,

problems. He involved himself very, very closely and very, very deeply in day

-to -day decisions about the classification and censoring of films

a way that I don't think his predecessors really had done.

I've done a job which is interesting, challenging, entertaining.

And useful.

He became the real figurehead for the organisation. All the rest of the

examiners were very much shrouded in secrecy. We don't know anything about

we don't know what they do, we don't know who they are.

I was a probation officer at the time, but I had also set up and was running a

rape crisis centre and a women's refuge, so I did a lot of broadcasting about

violence against women and that sort of thing. So I was taken on eventually in

1983.

And I worked there part -time because it was a part -time job, in my view, quite

properly. I think to do him credit, Jim Furman was very keen to have people on

the board who were sceptical about censorship, which I think is as it

because I think you have to beware the over -enthusiastic censor. I don't think

in any way we're a revolutionary organisation, but I think in the way

tamper with some images.

We do, we do operate a kind of reformist stunt. Thurman was very, very good at

playing the PR game, going around doing a lot of public events, a lot of public

speaking. One of the things that James Thurman liked doing was at conferences

put on presentations, clips of things that had been cut, and it was pretty

hard viewing.

Stop it!

And James Thurman would say, this is the difficult job that examiners have to do

and here are some of these difficult titles, particularly in the area of

violence, which he was very concerned about.

Perhaps a bit too close to it for comfort. And he would show you some of

works that were released and things that had been cut.

Of course, I was there like a shot. And I'll never forget it because Furman came

out and he sat on the stage at BAFTA and he said, right, I'm going to show you

some clips from movies.

And everyone was sort of reeling in shock. It was things like Brutes and

Savages, it was Mark of the Devil, it was Savage Man, Savage Beast, it was,

know, films like that.

And, of course, everyone was sort of going, oh, my God, how terrible. And

he did an amazing coup de theatre. He actually said, well, now I'm going to

you the uncut versions of the clips you've seen. Of course, everyone nearly

passed out because what we'd been shown was considered so bad.

But then we were shown the uncut version.

And then he showed it again with the actual guy's knob being cut off. And I'm

not joking, everyone was walking out.

And these, even to me, just seemed like, oh, my God, we can't allow these things

being done.

Just after breakfast, a whole string of cups to sexually violent materials was

quite difficult to stomach, actually. And even I came out pro -censorship. It

was unbelievable that this would actually get to you in the way it did.

And I often felt this is the way MPs must have seen this. Like, if you go in

with this whole sort of, like, trailer reel of, like, uncensored footage, it's

bound to have this accumulative impact. There was a great deal of sophistry and

dishonesty employed by the BBFC. It was a way of making it...

very clear in quite a categoric way that this was the kind of material that we

poor census had to see and that we were protecting the nation from. It was very,

very, very clever propaganda.

something i realized at the time what he was doing only two days later i

realized the trick of what that was and i thought my god i actually fell for it

and the fact that i could fall for it meant that a lot of other people could

it was from that moment on i realized i would never trust the sensor again

mainly because of what he did that night and they were very concerned in

particular that people who they regarded as possibly unbalanced might kind of

watch the gory or sexy bit over and over and over again and this might in some

way or other do them harm.

Good evening. 14 people have been killed by an armed man who went berserk in the

centre of a small town in Berkshire and the countryside nearby.

The town is Hungerford. The police moved in swiftly and in large numbers when

they realised the scale of the tragedy that was unfolding.

This evening, after a six -hour siege, the man, Michael Ryan, shot and killed

himself. And in the wake of the Hungerford massacre, which...

Inevitably, the press managed to blame on movies.

It's something that actually caught my eye on his forehead.

Actually, it was a headband.

So, I mean, from my impression, there were people who were saying he was

Rambo. Don't push it, I'll give you a war you won't believe.

Because God knows what damage he's prepared to do this time he's fighting

his life.

The reason why the press got hold of the Rambo tag was he'd worn a bandana.

On that very, very, very, very slim pretext, the press went to town, as they

always do, on blaming the movie.

Michael Ryan was dressed like Rambo.

The media put these two things together as though there was something intrinsic

and essential to this piece of material, to this film, that was really going to

tip people lemming -like over the edge.

Well, I think that accusation about Rambo was totally misguided.

There was no evidence that the Hungerford killer had ever actually seen

Rambo films or owned a video.

It's possible always to make links, and there may be connections, but the

connection is rarely cause and effect.

There is no correlation whatsoever between violence on the screen... I

Mrs Whitehouse you would disagree.

Well, we start with violence to the truth, if I may say so.

Again, it's that merry Whitehouse brigade. There are people that are

anti -violence of any sort in any movie.

You know, I say to these gentlemen, have your fun, and I don't want to preach,

but I think you're really also to ask yourself what sort of effect this kind

macho business of violence is going to have, particularly on the young.

And people say to me, are you not worried that people will look at your

and be inspired to do things or that something will come from that? And I

well, you can't...

You can't make films for the 0 .0001 % of people who are crazy. You make films

for everybody and for yourself.

Art can't be controlled by the taste buds of the lunatics.

Are you telling me that 200 men against your boy is a no -win situation for us?

You send that money, don't forget one thing.

A good supply of body bag.

Jim got terribly exercised by Hungerford.

Terribly exercised. I'm sure he was being pursued by...

I do think there is a problem in the gradual increase, step by step, drip,

drip, over the 80s, of slightly more violence in films, even in junior

films, is a worry, because kids nowadays are becoming acclimatised to more

violence than kids 20 years ago.

And I think on the whole, that is not a healthy phenomenon.

I remember him saying, slightly wildly, at a board meeting, that this meant that

we had to...

Cut everything back. Cut everything back. The censor board director says his

chief concern is the type of violence that obsesses modern filmmakers.

If we let this stuff through, there will be more Michael Ransom. Who are you?

Oh, it's nightmare.

The precise weapons that we're most worried about, Rambo knives and

uh i've become the badge of masculinity in these films and that's quite worrying

too at the behest of james was very heavy on the sight of knives

in some of the later rambo films which i'm sure were cut quite heavily very

can i have it and what became known as the rambo knife was one of these

so yes at the time the violent content of rambo 3 and the presentation of

The Rambo knife and other weaponry was significantly cut.

The BVA decided that they would put in place the Video Packaging Review

Committee, VPRC.

So getting rid of disreputable sleeves like Driller Killer and all they saw as

disreputable sleeves was all part of the thing. They could tell, you know, we've

got a body now that's going to ensure that all our sleeves look the same and

bland. You had to...

It was a voluntary thing with a little bit of coercion in the sense that if

you... The implication was if you weren't part of it, the big retailers

stock your films. That was the stick, you know. A number of retailers at the

time, I think, amongst them, WH Smith and John Menzies, used the VPRC logo,

which appeared on packaging, as a kite mark, in a way, a sign that it had been

vetted, and wouldn't stock titles which...

hadn't been approved by the VPRC.

And the committee used to meet every Monday and we would look at all the

that had been submitted.

They would look at the cover picture, the pictures on the back, and also the

text, surprisingly.

And some that may look a bit suspect or not quite right.

would be referred back by the BVSC to the distributor.

And it worked within the classification system in that companies who are signed

up to it have the final classification certificate withheld until their

packaging is approved.

And I sat on that from time to time. So we had to turn all those down. No blood,

no knives, that kind of thing.

Tell them to take out the shot on the bottom right.

I thought it was a bit much, really, of the BVA asking us to sit on a...

on a committee that's censoring their own It could explain why the covers then

also became so important to collectors because you're not going to get covers

like that anymore.

Get a video out and you're in for a good time.

That kind of idea that you can be an adult and adults can go to the cinema

we're all responsible because suddenly it came into your own house and it was

suddenly available to rent and come into your home. It suddenly changed the way

people viewed everything.

And of course also you can't control the age of the audience in the home. You

need to be sure that the film you choose is suitable for the audience at home.

In the home. Now, that meant two things, implicitly. It meant that the

BBFC must take into account that the film might be watched in a home with

children, but it also meant that the BBFC must take into account the fact

the film could be watched in extract.

So, for example, you could skip to a part of a film that you'd heard about.

Right. you know, the gory bits or the sexy bits and replay them over and over

and over again.

The fact you can pull something and have an experience with a scene, you know,

on a one -on -one in your bedroom is something else that worried them. That

to be borne in mind because if you're in a cinema and you watch a film, if there

is something a bit dodgy in it... It's parked.

You're watching a horrible scene in a movie. You can pay again and come and

watch it again, but to have it in your home and just, in isolation, keep

watching a scene over and over again, that really scared them. If it's at

you can freeze frame it, you can go back, you can repeat it, and it can,

particularly for young people, have an effect on them.

I thought on that very point, because when we used to watch a horror film and

there was a gore scene, the first thing we did is stop and rewind it, stop and

rewind it. But after that five times, you work out how it's done. You can see

where the fake head appears.

You can see the blood tubes. And I think it diminishes the effect.

Like the first time you see it, it's like, wow, shocking, horrible.

You watch it six times, it just becomes what it is. There's various elements to

this gore scene.

And so for me, that whole argument just made no sense at all. It has freed...

the moving image. It's really given it to the people, which is why I think

repressive societies such as the one you have here like very much to control the

image. It makes perfect sense to me that censors go crazy over video and want to

censor it much more than cinema, than film, because it represents freedom.

So you might get a film passed uncut in the cinema.

but cut on video.

So yes, that is a problem. So our standards are certainly stricter on

they are.

on film but video is is now the bulk of our work the board determines the

classification any film gets from a youth certificate up to a restricted r18

it's that notion that you can age grade i just find nonsensical but it's also

the fact that once you get past 12 what do you want if you're 12 you want to

watch a 15.

if you're 15 you know you're getting ready to watch 18s it's just waiting for

people to try and break the rules in my years of being there anyway

was that there were very few rules, that everything was up for grabs. Video

certificates are there to give you the chance to make an informed choice.

There were very few absolutes, though my recall is that there were only two.

One was fuck at 15.

If you ask me, there is no motive.

Well, I didn't fucking ask you. As if anybody said fuck in a film, it would

automatically put him to 15. I think that's not the case anymore.

Do you think you could just say one sentence without the word fuck in it?

may also contain sexual swear words.

And the other one was drugs, if there was any drug use.

This will tend to make you very high.

I think probably drug references too.

It is called the Campbell World Code.

would automatically bump it up to 15.

Or contain scenes of sex, violence or drugs, which, while not particularly

graphic, are unsuitable for younger teenagers.

I don't think anybody has any difficulty with censorship for children, or

censoring for children, trying to contain and constrain what children see.

Their more controversial issue, of course, was censoring for grown -ups.

for listening. Enjoy the film. My organisation is opposed to censorship

adults, that is, people over 18.

We also take the view that the supposed welfare of people under 18 should

not be used as an excuse to censor material intended for adults.

This film has been classified 18, which means it's for adults only.

And one of the things that was a particular no -no for James...

all the way through, really, with this business of sex and violence together.

James was particularly against either sex in a violent context or violence in

sexual context.

And the best example is probably rape. When I came to the board, we had a great

many films which treated rape as entertainment for a male audience, and

audience was expected to enjoy it as a sexual spectacle.

And I said, but rape isn't sex, rape is violence.

To avoid fainting, keep repeating to yourself, it's only a movie.

What the board tends to be looking at when it comes to a work featuring sexual

violence is what the sexual violence is trying to do. Is it eroticising it?

For example, is it portraying it in a pornographic way?

The pornography of violence is indulging in physical...

and mutilation and torture.

Our policy towards rape scenes is that they should never trivialise the rape or

endorse the rape, nor should they make it erotic.

And originally that was our only criterion, bad rape scenes, but one day

our male examiners said, hey, look, don't just think that men can get turned

by erotic rapes, they can also get turned on by rapes which...

in which women are made to suffer and made to be humiliated, that can be a

-on for some people.

I saw a film with Jim Furman and two other senior colleagues, both of whom

women, called The New York Ripper. And it is singly the most

damaging film I've ever seen in my whole life.

It was simply a relentless catalogue of...

the eponymous anti -hero, villain, cutting women up.

And the filmmakers were feasting on what women's bodies looked like when

they were cut up. At the end of that film, which was clearly never, ever

to be passed, there was no way that that level of unremitting

sadistic... attacks on women was ever going to be passed

at

the end of the film all four of

us sat in the cinema and three of us were quite quietly weeping

and we actually all of us went into into Jim's office just to recover

because it was it was the most

It was being in the presence of a film which was

gratifying a particular desire.

I've always thought that the difficulty, not the difficulty, but the question

for senses, the dispiriting thing about seeing a film of that nature is not that

it was made because it could be made and left in a cupboard, but that there's an

audience for it. I think that says something about the viewing audience.

The story that the print was escorted out of the country by police is just an

urban myth, but basically Jones told the distributors that not only would they

not be getting a certificate, but that the print would have to be removed from

the UK, otherwise they would be running a risk of being prosecuted for

possessing an obscene article with intent to supply.

We're very worried about exploitative rape scenes because people can watch

over and over again in the privacy of their bed -sitting room,

and freak out on them, and it can feed the fantasy of rather disturbed people.

I spit on your grave.

What you are about to see did happen.

The whole BBFC examining team used to watch I Spit on Your Grave periodically,

and they used it as a training tool for new examiners to say, this is really not

what's acceptable, what can you see here?

And I think that's quite interesting because it shows a lot about the way

they were working in that period.

Every day, on every street, in every city, women are

insulted, abused, threatened.

And I think one of the interesting things about extreme filmmaking is that

takes current scare topics and deals with them directly.

So I think there's a real difficulty with saying with these films, are they

misogynist or not?

Because what they do is point the camera at misogyny and say, let's discuss it.

Let's show it. Let's think about it.

Let's generate the powerful emotions around it. And that's what makes them

extreme. They put you in the situations produced by misogyny

and invite you to look at the film and to look at yourself at the same time.

Therefore, I think it's very hard saying, do these films easily get

as misogynist or not, precisely because they mark themselves at the extreme.

In 1986, James Furman said in one of our annual reports...

that the board would now be adopting a policy of advising distributors against

submitting particularly problematic works.

Things like I Spit on Your Grave were never submitted to us because they'd had

so many convictions that the company knew we were not allowed to pass.

Film footage had been found obscene, repeatedly.

However, when people did press ahead with those works, the level of cut

introduced did tend to be what I think most horror fans at the time would have

seen as pretty draconian.

No. No, not that.

The higher up the classification categories you go in the BBFC, the more

find films that cut. You would actually expect that when you get into the kind

of adults -only categories, namely the 18 and the 18R...

that the films would be more or less left alone.

But no, the films which are left alone are in the lower categories, and the

nearer you get to adults only, 18 and 18R, the more cut you in fact find.

Do you not think that the category 18 is too vague?

Should you not have a category that guarantees you muff?

You do have consumer advice now. If you buy a video, you'll see on it exactly

what it contains.

An 18 film will certainly have an adult theme and might well contain strong

scenes of sex or violence, which could be quite graphic. The 18 category will

still be pretty liberal. In fact, more liberal than most countries in this

world. You would have horror movies with gaping holes. They gutted the horror

movie.

And I think on the whole, we set a standard for society which people

It's controversial, obviously, and there are people who won't agree with us.

And everybody has things that they don't like, everyone has things that they do

like, but Furman had quite strong prejudices about very specific things.

So when it came to the martial arts movies, James was particularly worried

certain kinds of weaponry.

Two in particular were nunchuckers.

Throwing stars.

Look at this.

Yes, that's my ninja star.

If we ever were to see these, they had automatically to be cut.

He was worried that people might buy these weapons and then imitate what

seen on screen.

It came under the title of imitable techniques.

And what we ought to be cutting is behaviour that we believe will influence

people to behave badly themselves.

Any schoolboy.

who was around in the 70s, early 80s, probably fiddled around with homemade

nunchakas. Yeah!

Put them in a drawer, didn't play with them again.

The point where you get films like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles being

It was a string of sausages.

And next time I'll use mustard!

It's things like that that people forget.

The BBFC just didn't like chainsaws.

Films with chainsaws then were liable to be cut or banned. In fact, there was a

film called Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers.

Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers.

It's a comedy that'll leave you in pieces.

They changed Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers to Hollywood Hookers. And if you saw the

box to that, they just painted out the word chainsaw.

Is this absolutely necessary?

I mean, what was that going to do? Someone held up a copy of Hollywood

Hookers. Is someone going to suddenly go both sides and then run straight down

to B &Q and buy a chainsaw?

We're out of gas.

You idiot!

Crossbows, I think, was another problematic implement.

I did so want to see you bleed to death.

The BBFC in the 80s was very, very sensorial.

It was draconian up to a point. The 40 films, for example, House of the

Cemetery, Umberto Lanzi's Eaten Alive, you know, stuff like that, they were

heavily cut, even more so than the precepts, which were cut from the next

version. I can't stand it anymore.

A company sprang up called Elephant Films and they started putting some of

films out on video in the early days of classification. But he said there's no

point because the DVSC were cutting them to the point of, you know, it was

worthless. There was no horror in them at all.

I remember going down and asking the video shop, it said, when's Friday 13th

Part 3 coming out? And he said, oh, we don't know. And those films were held

back until about 1985, 1986, because I was so worried.

about being prosecuted they didn't release these films on friday the 13th

already pre -cut but heavily cut and i think they were cut quite significantly

for british video certainly friday 13th part four jason's reign of terror

is over fighting the 13th the final chapter you know

jason's demise his face sliding down the machete that was cut i mean quite why

again you look at it now it's quite difficult to understand the hysteria

these things but that's what it was like growing up in the post video nasty

hysteria another of my favorite films at the time was the reanimator film and

the bbfc edit of that again it really didn't see the joke of when the the guy

with the severed head is holding his severed head and giving cunnilingus to a

naked woman on the table i remember at the time a friend of mine jez and we had

this joke because we were both collecting videos at the time and we

always moaning about stuff in the video shots being cut or censored

So for a joke, we sort of started hiring.

I think you'd get one hire for free every now and then. And we'd take a tape

home that we knew was censored.

And we'd tape over it with the uncut version.

So stuff like Demons, Reanimator.

There's probably people out there who say, no, I did, I rented Reanimator and

was uncut. And everyone's like, no, it was cut in the UK.

It was like we were considering ourselves as Robin Hoods of gore.

Redistribution of gore to the uninitiated.

It would be annoying sort of seeing a film that blatantly had a scene cut out

it. It was like, you know, what happened there? We were just about to see a head

cut off and now it's on the floor. But they're obviously being cut not because

they're dangerous, they're being cut because they're offensive.

And that's a very different thing because then you come down to an idea

well, what is offensive?

What offends me might not offend you.

In a lot of cases, what we're talking about is material that wouldn't

necessarily...

necessarily be dangerous for the majority of people, but which might be a

problem for particular people.

They obviously thought they were better or more suited to watch this stuff than

people on a housing estate.

And the great quote that really revealed that was the one from James Furman, I

think, was it in relation to Texas Chainsaw Massacre, when he said...

It's all very well for intellectuals in Hampstead to get excited about these

kinds of movies, but I'm worried about the effects of them in a housing estate

in Manchester or something.

And Furman was quite blatant about that. That statement told you everything you

needed to know about his attitude at class.

I had what I might describe as political or ethical problems with the

idea that if it was going to nice, educated, middle -class people, they

take, you know, a stiffy.

or bad language, or bad behaviour, whereas working -class people in

mainstream cinema couldn't.

I thought that that was classist.

that it was deeply, mortifyingly disrespectful.

When you're told that by your government or by any authority figure, it's like

them saying, we can watch this because we're better than you, but you're just a

fucking prole, so you can't watch this because it will destroy your mind.

The principle, it was never put into words, but the principle was that if it

going to have the sort of audience, art house audience, which could be relied on

to...

to understand the images or the language or the ideas because they were middle

class and educated and so on, then we could be slightly more permissive. You

don't actually know what's best for you. We do. So we'll monitor what you can

watch and what you can't watch.

And I think that's why the tape scene thrived for so long, because there were

too many people saying... Whatever.

I'm not going to... I don't believe that. So I do think those double values

there and I was always uncomfortable with them. There was no attempt on the

of the BBFC to offer a rational argument about why this scene rather than this

scene was considered acceptable or unacceptable.

And if you tried to prize any information out of them, they shut down.

When you look at the archives, you're told that you have to be very careful

you can't cite the names of examiners, that you have to protect their anonymity

if you use...

their papers in your work and if you cite them in your work. So there's still

this sense of secrecy, I think, around particularly that era, the Furman era.

You weren't allowed to see their working.

You know, you couldn't see their notes about why they'd made a decision.

And the suggestion seemed to be that, you know, if we let people in on that

process, then every Tom, Dick and Harry's going to be marching in here

oh, well, you were inconsistent.

Did you really kill your mama?

I guess I did.

On occasion, he did actually not simply censor films that came before

him, but re -edit them.

The famous case of the John McNaughton film, Henry, Portrait of a Serial

which originally, when it was passed by the BBFC, was actually re -edited by

James Furman.

He actually re -ordered some of the materials because he was concerned about

manner in which it implicated or placed the viewer.

in a position where they could potentially identify with the killers.

What are you doing?

I want to see it again.

He was always nipping and tucking and cutting, which was irritating and I

not the job.

Actually, we're doing some good.

Not in a tremendous way, not being Prime Minister.

So he had very firm ideas about what the audience should see.

And I think that goes back to the earliest days of BBFC, this sort of idea

paternal organisation.

We know better than you.

I think, frankly, that as the board got bigger, he felt...

less and less in control of his census, he increasingly would jump in and make a

unilateral decision.

And there were certain videos and films which James just really wouldn't pass on

video. They weren't exactly banned, but they were kind of like put in the

cupboard and the distributor was told, this is not quite the right time to

this to us.

What he said to the distributors was, this is...

Probably what will happen is what will happen to it if you were to submit it,

don't submit it.

So we're censorship by stealth, really.

Classic examples would be... The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Which Furman banned on the grounds of sadistic violence.

The Exorcist was another that James Furman just said, no, Britain's not

this film. On the subject of The Exorcist, Warner Brothers just couldn't

conversation with the BBFC.

The Exorcist.

The movie you've been waiting for.

My view has always been that if suitability for viewing in the home

anything, then we have to be aware that a film in which the principal character

is a 12 -year -old girl, that almost inevitably young teenagers, probably

teenage girls, will watch it.

And it is a very, very terrifying experience.

We had an annual debate about The Exorcist, which he...

He would never allow, at that point anyway, to go out on video.

And he was unbudgeable.

Furman was becoming too much censorship, as James Furman thinks it is, and

nobody else. And he unilaterally made decisions about cuts, sometimes

shocking rights owners by, on one occasion I can recall, taking a pair of

scissors to the film.

the 35mm film print that he had, and actually cutting it with a pair of

scissors. There were times when Jim seemed to be on a bit of a mission.

We would say to him, look, if you're taking that view, then nothing over PG

ever going to be passed, which is nonsensical.

I forget what the proportion was, but it was something like 40%, maybe it was

more, of homes in this country at the time didn't have children in them.

To say that grown -ups in their own time couldn't watch material because there

was a danger of there being a child in the vicinity somewhere was idiotic.

And yet here, again and again and again, we're censored. We're not allowed to

see what the rest of the world can see.

He had an idea, I think, that there was some material that...

Almost by existing, particularly in the home, was going to cause a sort of moral

decadence about New Borden society.

I think Jim had become extremely giddy on his, not to say intoxicated by his

past. I made visions of ecstasy.

I was very conscious of not wanting it to be so rude that it would get cut. I

didn't want it cut.

The board still has work submitted which occasionally...

They have no option but to reject.

Visions of Ecstasy features the erotic visions of a 16th century nun.

And I remember filming it and somebody said, oh, you know, this might be a bit,

you might have a bit of trouble with this because I had obviously the scene

Christ on the cross.

The British Film Classification Board says the film is not obscene, but it may

be blasphemous, offensive to Christians, and therefore subject to criminal

prosecution. And they said, oh.

We can't release, you can't release this, or we can't give you a

We think it's blasphemous.

And I remember sitting there, like, stupefied. Blasphemy was quite topical

that time, because you'd have the fatwa against Salman Rushdie. The original

call for Salman Rushdie's execution came almost a year ago, from the late

Ayatollah Khomeini, after the publication of Mr Rushdie's novel, The

Verses. And you'd also have Madonna's Like a Prayer video, which the Vatican

declared blasphemous. I, with this small film, suddenly found myself in a...

the center of a very big news story. In the wake of the Salman Rushdie affair,

Britain's 800 ,000 Muslims are pressing for the blasphemy law to be extended to

cover all religions.

The last temptation of Christ had come out, which hadn't been banned, but

obviously a lot of people felt it was blasphemous. The film, which is based on

novel, has provoked controversy in America, where Christians say it's an

attack on Christ.

A dream sequence depicts Jesus fantasizing about making love to Mary

Because of this, the film classifiers consulted a lawyer to check the film

doesn't break the British blasphemy laws.

It's a subject that could easily be treated badly.

We felt it was treated acceptably. That seemed fairly clear to start with. We

had checked very, very carefully on blasphemy and we took the best legal

we could get. Last night, senior officials from the Church of England

film privately.

Their verdict, it offended their faith, it offended their religion.

Last Temptation has been passed for general release without cuts and the

certificate means it can be seen by anyone over 18.

Furman and the BBC, I think it continues.

has this thing. If it's a worthy film, it can get away with more sexual

explicitness often than an unworthy film, if you want to call it that, that

would have.

In a way, he was victimised because, you know, he was an easy target, whereas

something like The Last Temptation of Christ was something they couldn't

possibly ban. So, well, let's just go for this small film by this little guy.

came along at a time when, and I think Furman actually used those words, that

was...

was prepared to do something about blasphemy. At the time, the board had to

consider the law of blasphemy and blasphemous libel.

They said, had I used a wooden representation of Christ, it wouldn't

blasphemous. And at the time, it was felt that the work with this scene in it

transgressed the law at the time.

But my lawyer's argument, and my own personal one, was that...

Blasphemy was a criminal law, and therefore the BBFC weren't the people to

define blasphemy. It also hadn't been used as a point of law, I think, only

twice in the 20th century.

Civil libertarians say the law, which dates from the 17th century, should be

wiped from the statute books.

The offence of criminal blasphemy is archaic.

unequal, it's anachronistic and it's unacceptable and it should be abolished.

The board can't simply set aside a law if it exists and if the board feels

is a likelihood of it being found guilty under that. It's your work that a state

body, a civil servant is looking at and deciding that...

It's not that somebody can look at it and say, oh, this is rubbish, not my cup

of tea.

That's different. Everybody's got the right to do that. But it's when somebody

says, actually, for whatever reason, you can't show this film.

Nobody can see this film. Video is a publishing medium.

And if you ban something on video, you're saying that no one in the country

a right to see it in their own home. And that's a big step to take. It's not

like having a record banned from Radio 1. You can still play it. When a film's

banned, it really is banned.

recordings act is quite draconian you know if you are caught deliberately

flouting the law they want to you know you can get fined up to 20 000 pounds

could you could go to prison 50 videos banned since the act began

but

there are things which we believe should not pass for various reasons

I think it was a case that followed in the wake of the Hemsford massacre from

1990, where I think the headline in the turn was, a voice in a video nasty

encouraged this killer to do this.

It seemed to be at a time that, you know,

if you had done a crime, then somebody would say to you, why not blame the

nasties?

Can you Michael Myers his ear in this town?

Halloween 4.

And the film was Halloween 4, but that term, video nasty, still had that kind

currency for people that they could mention that term and immediately their

readers would know what kind of film was being referred to. Maybe nobody knows

how to stop it.

All with BBFC certificates, getting scapegoated.

Two children were taken away tonight to be locked up indefinitely after they

were convicted of the murder of two -year -old James Bulger. The judge said

killing was an act of unparalleled evil and brutality.

It was always said that Child's Play 3 was considered a factor in the case.

Well, we start tonight with a finger that points at videos like this.

Did it and other video nasties play a part in the killing of little James

Bulger? Is there any real hard evidence that there is a connection between this

terrible murder and video nasties?

Yes, indeed.

The trial judge himself pointed to the link between videos and the events that

led to James Bulger's tragic death.

I remember exactly where I was when the news...

hit headlines that a judge had blamed the video industry the idea that john

venables may have been influenced by violent videos was fueled by the judges

remarks today he said it isn't for me to pass judgment on their upbringing but i

suspect that exposure to violent video film may in part be an explanation

Now, following the judge's comment that violent videos may have played a part in

the crime, attention's turned to this. The Home Secretary's already under

pressure. I will reflect on what the trial judge said in this case.

An off -the -cuff remark by the judge had a massive impact on the political

media environment in which we were suddenly operating.

There's been talk of video nasties inspiring the boys.

Certainly Venables' father rented this film, Child's Play 3, which has striking

similarities with James' murder, including the leaving of a doll on a

line. The Bishop of Worcester continued the theme of the James Bulger case and

videos.

What in our society have they imitated with its video nasties?

And have they been fed with bad stories through rubbishy films?

Child's Play 3.

Look who's talking.

It did seem to pick up a life of its own, really.

And I actually got involved in a talk show about it. Let me just bring in Alex

Chandon here. You actually make horror films. I know that at least a couple of

them have not had a certificate in this country.

We haven't given them a certificate.

I didn't want to do it because I knew it was going to happen. I knew it was

going to be quite horrible.

Do you not feel a huge responsibility?

No, not really.

Because I'm not making the films for children, I'm making them for adults.

but children are watching them, aren't they? I don't know. So I knew it was

going to be pretty anti -horror films.

I haven't seen any children that are watching my films. But this is

You simply can't say that you're not making them for children. Because you

been a child. Yeah, and I watched horror films as a child, and I'm completely

all right. I went and there was lots to say, and I just thought every time I

kind of tried to butt in there, you know, the MPs and the Tory women have

better trained at argumentative conversation.

No parent can watch their child every single minute of the day. I have three

children and I know very well that you just go into another room and they put

something on. I think that we have to be very clear. It's utterly unrealistic.

My friend was in the audience and there's a scene where...

David Alton, I think he's describing this kind of films and he's saying

films, necrophilia. It's involved things like necrophilia.

And someone laughs in the audience and you just hear a titter. Would you want

your child to see those sorts of things? And David Alton stops and he goes,

look, there's people laughing, there's people laughing.

Some people are laughing because some people say they would. And the camera

cuts the close -up of my mate in the audience, which for me was a massive

highlight. But the important thing was to get to the bottom of the facts and

to...

find out whether there was any truth in this.

Neil Venables, his father, did rent out Child's Play 3, which shows a demonic

doll being killed, but denies the boy ever saw any violent videos.

And there was no evidence that the boy who killed Jane Baldrige ever saw

Play 3. Is it just coincidence that it features a childlike character

with blue paint before meeting an appalling death by a railway track?

And this time, he's looking for a new recruit.

There were a number of factors, social factors, which could have informed their

acts. And they thought it was incredibly irresponsible to have scapegoated that

particular film. In a quite perplexing manner, I still don't quite understand

why they went for that particular film.

I think they had to pick up populist movies to compare it to, to create the

in the readers. So Chucky, I think, was obvious because it's a doll and so you

can make the connection to kids.

Chucky's back.

I mean, there were so many extreme headlines in

the media.

Of course, it led to that very, very famous headline, burn your video nasty

the sake of our children.

You just had to put your fingers in your ears for a bit while they got it out of

their systems because it was all...

Based on ignorance and fear.

Okay. Well, maybe we should just get rid of them all together There was a video

store just this week that decided to burn all their videos which

I mean, it's going back to sort of Nazi Germany, isn't it? I mean, that was

going on to a degree, I think, in the original kind of video nasty era, this

notion of people being encouraged to burn videos. But this was kind of front

page in the sun. Everyone remembers that headline.

I remember seeing those headlines for, like, certainly Charles Play 3 is the

classic example of a film that was completely vilified, a very mainstream

It's incredible that they could have got away with that. And we have Robert

Morgan here, who also runs a video store. Do you not think you should just

a bonfire of all your video nasties?

Not really, because I don't think it's that sort of thing we really need to do.

I mean, at the end of the day, it has to be an 18 -year -old person who actually

takes the film as the board had classified Child's Play 3 18, meaning

It wasn't considered suitable for anyone below that age. I was reviewing for

Empire at the time, and we had Child's Play 3 in.

And, yeah, I'd given it its video review, two stars, yet another one. And,

course, the thing we criticised it for is how mild it was.

How... ordinary a horror film and yet because of this big tabloid kapopple was

going that was like an unsayable thing and i think that it's quite wrong that

don't pillory the producers of this pornography because most people who make

movies like to be thought well of by society and yet these people who make

horrible films are getting away with it and masquerading as being decent members

of society i remember

The comments made by Dessa Gorman, the fact that she was trying to hold up a

mirror to Hollywood and say, you're the creators of this filth. And I think the

people who produce these things, like these children murder things, which were

tied up with a Bolger case, should also be publicly pilloried. Those kinds of

fears were really coming out of the mouths of people who weren't very well

informed, didn't actually watch much themselves.

were sitting in their ivory towers in parliament not leading the kinds of

that most people lead and therefore not terribly well qualified to comment on

the state of the creativity and and what people what kind of films people should

be making i remember don mancini telling me and he's the writer of the child's

play franchise about how upset he was being sort of you know

allied to this particular murder case, and he was absolutely distraught. But

what I don't understand is why the studio involved didn't fight it all the

They would have got some publicity out of it themselves in the same way that

tabloids were misrepresenting it. Of course, the reality is it's much cheaper

accuse filmmakers and people who put out videos of promoting violence. It's much

more expensive and much more difficult to look closer to home about the real

reasons those things happened in the first place.

Well, they want to divide things into the good guys and the bad guys.

you know, where they're the good guy and somebody else is the bad guy doing

something and they're going to really stick it to them. We knew that the

response would not be to, oh, my God, we are wrong, you're right, this is really

bland. It would be that, OK, the bar...

for what's offensive is now set on the other side of Child's Play 3.

David Alton had already raised the matter with the Prime Minister two days

Mr Major's response?

The principal responsibility, of course, lies upon parents in the home. We heard

earlier on that we don't need any additional regulations because we can

parents. What we've clearly heard now is that we can't trust parents.

Well, I know that David Alton was trying to push censorship further than it ever

had been before.

It made Liverpool MP David Alton intensify his campaign against explicit

ultra... violent videos he enlisted the support of child psychologist dr

elizabeth newsom the david olsen camp was looking for evidence to support

theories. Dr. Newsom wrote a short background paper for MPs outlining the

research, which she argues now supports the notion that there is a link between

child violence and video.

The Newsom report actually wasn't a new piece of research.

It was desk work that had been done reviewing existing pieces of work. My

modest measure is to sort out those, like Child's Play 3, which contains

and gratuitous scenes which should not be available. in anybody's home. I think

he was genuinely of the view that unless you ban these things then society would

actually collapse.

I think it was that apocalyptic.

The amendment seeks to introduce a new category of not suitable for home

entertainment. Alan Jones, do you think there's been a moral panic here?

Absolutely. I think it's very naive and facile to even say that watching horror

films has any cause and effect whatsoever.

I'm of the age group who actually went to, who snuck into X films when I was

like 12 or 13.

It's the same for kids today. It's a rite of passage to see this sort of

It's like something that you're egged on to do.

It did me no harm. It enriched my life. I would say see anything. I'm against

censorship in any form whatsoever.

The government has proposed strict new laws to control the sale and rental of

violent videos to protect children. Common sense dictates that you would

protect your children. Well, if you ask a question like that, yes, who would say

no, we don't want to protect our children?

It's not about censorship, it is about protection of society and creating an

order -decent society where we don't elevate the cult of violence.

The Old Amendment, as it became known, related to concerns over inappropriate

role models.

They would have banned.

Any video which might set a bad role model for a child would be

disturbing to a child and I pointed out that that would ban Schindler's List.

Opponents of the amendment say films such as Schindler's List, The Godfather

many classics would effectively be banned from home viewing. His proposed

amendment to the Video Recordings Act would have effectively banned anything

that was not...

suitable for children from legal distribution.

I campaigned very hard against the David Alton amendment.

I would absolutely have to give Jim his due countering Alton.

and his cohorts was a very important thing that he did. And it was ridiculous

that the censor was the one who was talking about freedom.

Actually, the amazing thing about this whole debate is I'm actually siding with

James Furman over this, although I hate what he does in principle.

You know, I think what he's done this week has been very good to defend the

issue. I don't understand why...

We are the most censored country in the whole of Europe at the moment.

Other countries have more liberal censorship.

Their crime rate is very low. I don't understand why it's only here that this

an issue.

If James Furman is seriously saying that he and the British Board of Film

Classification can't tell the difference between Schindler's List or Toad in

Toad Hall and something like Child's Play 3, then it makes you wonder what

they're doing in that job in the first place.

Finally, I persuaded the Home Office to investigate all the claims that films

like Charles Plethora had been responsible for criminal behaviour.

The Honourable Gentleman may be aware that the British Board of Film

Classification are presently conducting research into this very matter.

And they were disproved totally.

These films had not been the subject of any criminal proceedings, nor had any

video.

being involved in criminal proceedings for influencing behaviour in a criminal

direction. David Alton's proposed amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill

voted on tomorrow, but the British Board of Film Classification has described it

as misconceived and overreactive.

Fortunately, there was a deal brokered. The leaders on both sides of the House,

Michael Howard, who was then Home Secretary, and Tony Blair, who was at

time opposition spokesman. So it was a kind of cross -party deal.

They took up this point that I had made in all the papers at the weekend, and

David Alton was persuaded to withdraw his amendment.

And that was...

that was really campaigning against a moral panic.

But the Home Secretary wants to redraft and put it in his own words to achieve

precisely the same objective. I don't quarrel with that. The Criminal Justice

and Public Order Act defined harm and codified it in terms of

specifying the types of material that would be likely to result in harm.

or the BBFC had an additional duty to ensure that material that was released

suitable for home viewing given the potential audience, so in other words,

children. Those who supply videos in breach of an age classification will

the possibility of up to six months in prison, while those who supply

unclassified work will be liable to a maximum sentence of two years

as well as an unlimited fine.

Which meant that...

In the end, the industry could carry on functioning, but there was more caution.

And on our part, we agreed to put more information onto the back of the

packaging. So we had consumer advice about the content and what inside the

content made it unsuitable for children's viewing.

Movies that we'd grown to love were suddenly torn to ribbons and left in

unwatchable sort of fragments.

That's the end of it, surely? But of course it wasn't.

Because all that happens is that if you tell people they can't do something,

they'll find a way around it. It just sends everything underground, that's

it does.

To protect society from the extremes of the video makers, new laws came into

being. But some argue banning films has fostered the illicit trade.

Others say the law is not working.

So congratulations, you in the censorship lobby. You enabled the

of all this material to all these eager young minds who went out and got... It

became such a big deal trying to find uncut versions of films over the next 10

years. And also to ensure that the demand that's there doesn't boil over

black market. That is probably why primarily the horror black market

because the BBC was just cutting so much that it left fans with no choice but to

seek their enjoyment elsewhere and that wasn't the British video shop. And that

black market I believe will be so big.

that back will come the real nasty pornographic films and the video

the violence and the filth in them. It stimulated creativity and social

networking and built friendships and created a whole new network of people

were determined to get around this obstacle.

I really did enjoy the, you know, the camaraderie, you know, that did happen

through the liking of horror films and I think it was because we knew it was a

bit subversive. There was a major network and a lot more information came

from... fanzine press. But the British fanzine was like the early days of punk.

Rock X Press and Sam Hayden were the big ones.

And then there were things like Yeuch, Pieces of Mary, Pretty Poison, Macabre,

think started around the same time. Whiplash Smile was around the same time.

I think anyone that did a fanzine was saying, like, fuck you after the video

nasties. I published a film in 87.

And that was one of the first of the UK fanzines. I think there was only maybe

three or four out before that.

And then the whole scene exploded.

We had a typewriter.

We hired a photocopier that we had at my mum's house. And we just sat there and

photocopied them and stapled them and then posted them out.

This is number one. It's free.

It's so bad.

Look at that logo.

By the time we finished, which was 93, we kind of progressed to this.

I remember getting trains all around the country to drop them off.

to, like, little comic shops.

If you could discover something that someone else didn't know, then that's

everyone else got, like, really excited.

Like the frisson that you'd get, you know, reading about it and thinking, oh,

God, I've really got to see this. If you found something, you'd keep it close to

your chest until you put it out in your fanzine. Getting hold of films that

nobody had heard of was the big deal. Sheer Filth was the first fanzine to

things like deathbed films.

And then the only way you could get those films was through trading in the

classifieds of the fanzines. People would put in requests, or they'd put in

lists of things they had to sell or to trade. Because everyone had a list. You

had to have a list of everything you got, and the quality is all graded.

Self -addressed off to one of the adverts in the back of the magazine who

me a list, and it had a big list of horror films and all sorts.

So I sent off for a few.

And I, well, got technically charged with a massacre and I couldn't see why

was banned because there's no blood or anything in it at all. It's just, you

know what I mean, banning something like that is stupid.

So I started getting bootlegs and I get people sent through the post.

It's kind of almost like a surreal experience watching those kind of

It's just kind of snow.

kind of snow with kind of like the old lumbering shape there was a certain

amount of kudos having these tapes mates came around and we all watched them and

you could barely see what was going on you get a copy they say was great and

you'd think that's about a third or fourth generation so you'd be asking

trying to get a better copy all the time it's always trying to improve your copy

i can't understand the reason for such cruelty if you could get a first gen

dupe of something you were like the king i mean a lot of people didn't care but

if you were trading them on again you obviously wanted straight off the

tape i'm going to tell you how it's going to be with gotcha's lifetime

tape what you want both night and day and re

-record not fade away re -record i used to have like a six video recorders at my

mum's, I'd go into town to meet my mates and I'd go, right, I'm going to be back

in two hours because I've just got to go and switch all the tapes over.

I mean, like, what are you thinking?

And my life was completely ruled by that. And I blame my dad because he gave

my first ever bootleg video.

Like he gave me a copy of The Exorcist when I was 13.

And he was a guy who got like two tape players.

He was like trading tapes down at the pub. So I was on a pretty rocky road.

Back in the 80s and 90s, it was possible for particularly determined people,

including horror fans, to get hold of this kind of material by...

importing videos and so forth but it was a fairly cumbersome process.

The trouble with that was you'd send off with something through the post and

more often than not you'd get a letter from customers saying sorry but the film

you've decided to import has been deemed obscene and will be destroyed.

Then you get these kind of like long letters five pages or something

everything that was in them and making it sound like it was some kind of

incredible perverse.

you know unbelievable things another thing we tried to do is like um get with

the tape an hour of tv from their country really boring mundane stuff and

put the uncut version at the end of the tape so you think our customers won't

bother winding past the first 20 minutes but sometimes they would there was a

lot of dutch tapes coming in obviously france was on a different system so that

was a problem uh the same with america and their ntc system so europe was very

much a mining ground for us i mean in fact i'd you know frequently get the

to holland the dutch Dutch originals, you know, the old VHS.

But they would get busted often on the way into the UK.

There was a thing where it was very clandestine, you know. It was like

hold of drugs or something.

We felt like... contraband smugglers at the time remember a couple of sweaty

moments walking in with a one -inch master of new york ripper and 500

and labels that duplicate them here you'd be sweating you feel like you know

drunk courier with a couple of horror films it was crazy one friend in

particular springs to mind he managed to circumnavigate customs um got through

and then stood outside and got all these tapes out to have his photograph done

under the sign and was promptly arrested

And people are fairly crafty in the way to try and bring it into the country,

the simple fact that they can just take it and have it on the spool.

You just open the case, you just open the screws, it's really easy, and then

just chop the reels. It's really simple, it takes about a couple of minutes.

In fact, a lot of the pawn shops in Amsterdam, they just sell you the reels.

They'll just chop the case and the sleeve away, and you take back one reel

taped, and it'll just fit in your pocket.

I'd spent a week in Amsterdam, spent a lot of time shopping for films, came

back, noticed that my bag hadn't come off the plane, same time everybody

When I picked it up, I got arrested by the customs.

They took me in for questioning, held me in a cell for 12 hours.

Ironically, one of the customs officers actually said, oh, Night Dreams, yeah,

that's a bit of a classic, isn't it? It's like, yeah, obviously not so much

classic that you'll allow anyone to actually own a copy.

Night Dreams is mesmerising.

Night Dreams is dazzling.

Night Dreams is outrageous.

Night Dreams is mind -boggling.

On the basis of some of the questioning, they then decided that I probably had

more of this kind of stuff in my house, and they'd go and have a look for that

as well. So they went to my house, took away maybe another 70 or 80 tapes, I

think, at the time. They didn't seem to really know what they were looking for.

They left some hardcore porn.

They took away films that had been released by the BFI that had PG

on the side.

At one point, they took Nudie Cuties Volume 1, left Nudie Cuties Volume 2,

was next to it on the shelf. So it was really random. And in the end, I think I

ended up paying them £120.

I got most of the stuff from my house back. They kept 12 films from my house.

They kept 12 films that they'd seized.

And that was it.

Despite the efforts of customs officers, it is inevitable that smuggled goods do

get through.

Once in this country, the video nasties are copied and sold.

Now down to trading standards officials to investigate this seedy business.

Film fairs, it would be held across the country. You'd have Westminster, Central

Hall, you'd have Camden. One of the most famous ones was Botford, which was run

by a friend of mine called Paul Brown.

and you'd basically get collectors from all over the country turning up and

you'd want to get in the doors first so you could get the bargain.

The best thing for the collector is to get into the film conventions before the

doors open because that's where all the really good stuff is. I miss those days

in actual fact.

It was a real journey really, it was a real adventure.

It's a very loose network of dealers, so collectors, so so -called enthusiasts.

It's very difficult to use words to describe the horror, torture,

And I can't understand people who get entertainment value from death, gore,

torture and horror. Going to various film markets up and down the country, we

got to hear about the incredible film festivals.

So there was Black Sunday and there was Nothing Shopping. So I thought, yeah,

I'm going to put a festival on. So we did this little festival called Nothing

Shopping.

Spend so much time watching them at home, maybe with a couple of mates, with

beer, but then to sort of watch them in a cinema that's full of, like, like

-minded people, that's all I wanted to do. And obviously the Talk Around the

Clock festivals, which were at Scala, which were massive endurance tests, you

know, start at 9 o 'clock on a Saturday morning and finish at 11 or 12 o 'clock

the next day, lunchtime, so people would be...

coming out onto King's Cross looking like, you know, having had most sleep.

King's Cross at the time, oh my God, man. I remember going to King's Cross,

went to Scarlet, we came down from Birmingham, we got there at like four o

'clock in the afternoon.

We literally step out of the station and within 20 steps we were offered drugs,

we were offered sex.

It was just like, wow.

I'm standing outside the Scala Cinema, which is officially the scariest place

North London. It was the site in 1987 of the first Shock Around the Clock film

festival, which was kind of like the Woodstock for the bizarro generation.

Shock Around the Clock, my film festival at the time, was like quite a

revelation to actually be able to show people stuff that was uncut, which they

couldn't actually see in their own homes. So there we were, or were, sat in

Scala, watching, OK, some of it was real dreck, but then... you know,

necromantic. Other films like this, you know, perhaps you wouldn't have got a

chance to see it elsewhere, especially in that particular time with that

atmosphere that was going on. It did bond us all together in a way, in a good

way, I felt.

Low -budget, sort of underground sort of films, and there's a lot of stuff here

you wouldn't see anywhere else.

Well, I'm here to show Bad Karma and Drillbit, these two short horror films

made. We obviously wanted to sort of...

be a bit taboo because we were pissed off that they were banning stuff dark

magazine did a film competition we entered the competition and we won it

that was really the catalyst for me my whole film career started from that

babe when i say killer zombie i mean the drink not the costume

and we were selling the

film from my bedroom through the fan themes and again the underground

Oh, that's nice.

Alex's films are just wall -to -wall gore.

And I think the reason for that is that those were the scenes that were sort of

censored from mainstream films.

We wrote, you know, what stuff

that the BBC don't like, you know, the blood on tits, yeah, erect penis, yeah.

The most ghastly things that you could think of.

Chainsaws up the R.

Pricks getting cut off his shears.

It was fucking great, actually.

We put that all in deliberately to say, fuck the BBFC.

And actually, when you watch it a little bit, the end goes, you know, where most

films have the copyright, we have, like, the year, and it says, fuck BBFC.

So that's kind of how we felt about it at the time. Videos was great, and

collecting them is a whole different thing. But actually seeing a horror film

any film with a massive audience is an amazing experience.

It's a load of fun, and it's great when these kind of popular movies, these cult

movies, get a screening like this.

You all want to watch insanely gory films which you can't watch anywhere

So now me and my mate Ultraman are going to watch nine hours of depraved movies.

That, although I didn't realise it at the time, that formed the genesis for

Fright Fest.

People were really after the underground stuff and, yeah, we would hide it. We

had a little back room that kind of became a...

legendary thing you had to circumnavigate lino to get into the back

first place but weirdly i never actually went into the infamous back room

because it took a while to get up to a certain level of trust and there was

always like things like reeds and stuff that they were worried about i mean i

used to find that if i stayed in there long enough that someone was going to

come in and order something that i wanted as well i wouldn't have to say i

wait in there and wait for someone to come in and go have you got guinea pig

i go oh yeah actually can i have a copy of guinea pig investigators say although

most of the videos involve actors a few have genuine victims i mean even when i

first read about it it was like is this real

and

so that became like a thought after

movie some of these videos claim to show scenes from real autopsies while others

claim to show actual murders so -called snuff movies chad balloon and beat red

magazine sort of a little piece about it and was it charlie sheen yeah reported

to the fbi because he was he was so convinced it was like a real life uh

movie since you've you've mentioned it snuff it is there has never been uh put

forward in a piece of evidence of a real snuff movie no it's just finding out

how far you would do it if the punter came in here that they asked for so

-called snuff video what would you say to them

I'd lock them in, go and get the police, and let them come and sort it out.

Because it's illegal, isn't it?

Basically,

we don't do snuff films.

All those stories about all these are really snuff movies, well, it was only

somebody who was so totally non -o -fay with Hollywood realised that it was

anything but special effects.

And if you couldn't see that most of it was special effects, well, then you were

a total moron. Well, I'm shocked and horrified.

that such material is available throughout the country.

And I just find it hard to believe that anybody can derive any entertainment

value from such videos.

It wasn't like some kind of sinister cult in the way that the media is made

to be. It was just like an organic collection of fans coming together.

The whole operation has a very, very sinister background and the people

involved.

you do have to question what sort of people would derive entertainment value

from this sort of material.

First of all, for perhaps becoming a horror fan, it was the moment that many

them found their interest in horror, and particularly horror video, but also

their first experience of being demonised for being fans of horror. And

because of that, it was...

key moment for horror fans of a certain age many of the videos sold at between

10 and 90 pounds originate from germany and finland they were pretty pretty high

fine and auto imprisonment available for people who actually traded in those

under the video recordings act supplying unclassified films can lead to fines of

up to 20 000 pounds offenses under the obscene publications act can result in a

three -year jail sentence.

I thought it was such an innocent thing we were all involved with, just

watching, like, these gory films, but then the threat of prosecution and

whatever that entailed, it became a bit serious.

Not showing at a video shop near you, one of 4 ,000 video nasties seized in

biggest raid yet on Backstreet Dealers.

The tapes were confiscated by trading standards officers posing as customers

18 towns and cities, smashing a video -nasty network.

You know, when they did the raids, when the police raids, and sometimes you'd

see it on the news or whatever, and they were just like, it was a lock -up

garage somewhere with a bunch of dodgy VHS, you know, videos in it. They're the

nastiest of all video nasties. Behind the crudely written labels, videos

nothing to the imagination.

And there was a period for a while where the...

Police were coming down particularly hard on collectors of these kind of

especially if they were at things like some of the film fairs. Last week, in an

operation coordinated by Lancashire Trading Standards, 3 ,000 films were

in raids across the country.

The films are getting more horrific and more sexual day by day, and the more you

feed people, you corrupt them and entice them to want something more hard, in a

sense, so therefore they meet the demand by producing most horrific films. I got

raided. A few times over the years, mainly at film fairs. The police say

been a dramatic increase in the amount of sadomasochistic and bizarre material

now available.

The trading standards and the police would turn up and bust people's tables.

you'd see over the other side of the room, all of a sudden, they'd close down

somebody's table and they had these big clear evidence bags which they'd load

full of VHSs and cart them out. And so the word would immediately spread, oh my

God, quick, hide everything, hide!

They're nasty, but they're certainly not cheap. Some of these tapes sell for up

to £100 on the underground market.

These tapes will be destroyed after being used as evidence, but more will be

duplicated by dealers with a home video recorder and an eye for a quick profit.

trading but then i started selling and that's when you get really paranoid

because you're like i probably shouldn't be selling this stuff you know to

people because you don't even know who's buying it i mean there was genuine fear

i think in the community like who's going to get raided or is the person

going to get raided and i've got one of my lists you know it's got your name and

address on it we'll be looking for his correspondence with other dealers his

contact orders any diaries he's kept or notebooks recorded delivery slips

Legitimate contact magazines like these contain legal adverts for various sexual

services. Pedophiles have used other such magazines to make contact and it's

believed violent videos are exchanged through similar channels.

There was a particular patch in the early 90s, about 93, 94, which was

the time of the increased hysteria about the...

murder of James Bulger and the introduction of the Criminal Justice

first light, trading standards officers and police move in on the home of the

suspected dealer.

Across the country, colleagues from other local authorities are carrying out

similar raids.

I did hide everything. I moved stuff out of my house. I hid stuff underneath

floorboards. I made my room look quite safe and innocuous. And I was really

expecting the knock on the door. I wasn't aware that people's homes were

raided.

Yeah, yeah. What do you use for copying the videos on?

Oh. Stem, too, yeah.

We'll go into that.

Yeah. How long are you going to take?

Well, as quickly as we can. Why, I've got to work. Mm.

Where do you work?

The British Rail. Yeah. Okay.

Well, we'll be as quick as we can. What time do you have?

Does this mean you're going to play my collection of videos?

Yeah. Yeah. At least. Yeah.

Really? I'm going to go and unplug your video, Carl.

Taking them? Yeah. Oh, great. You've used those for copying.

It was a very volatile time. I was in Manchester at the time and

seeing these people being prosecuted and raided and fined,

someone was getting a lot of money out of the fines.

We had James Anderton, God's cop, self -proclaimed God's cop.

I am recognised everywhere I go in this country.

That sounds boastful. It is not. It happens to be true. He clearly has this

that he is right.

And if you therefore disagree with him, you're not only just sort of misguided,

but in some ways you're evil.

Coming to your screens this autumn, a crime -fighting team with a difference.

Please! Anderton and God.

James Anderton is mad.

God is good.

We all know the great story about the chief constable of Manchester at the

James Anderton.

Two opposite working together to clean up the streets. Who claimed that God

spoke to him directly.

And only James Anderton can see him, because James Anderton is a little bit

barker. This, in my book, is the sort of thing that if Charlie Manson says it,

they put him away for life. If the chief constable of Manchester says it, he

gets... promoted to Sir James Anderton.

OK, God, you cover this entrance, the back, the side, the roof, the fire

I'll just stand here and run.

But he had a personal vendetta and ordered his troops to go out and destroy

menace. Anything without a certificate, he would go after, even if it was kids'

cartoons.

Anderton and God, the best crime -fighting duo since Torquemada and God.

Really quite a shock when you'd actually learned that people were being arrested

and being put into prison just for having a copy of some dodgy video.

I don't think you can really explain the shock when it really happens. You get

that gut feeling of, oh shit, something really bad is going on here. What have I

done? What's going to happen?

Am I going to get arrested,

which I did? Am I going to go to court?

Am I going to go to prison? All these things fly through your mind. A boy of

is among several adults being questioned. If convicted, they could

terms and fines of many thousands of pounds.

A few years after the customs raid, I got another raid, this time by

Police. That was a 7 .30 in the morning knocking on the door raid, where they

went through my house, took away...

Huge amounts of tapes, paperwork, computers, you know, the whole thing

do. That was a lot scarier because, you know, you know that that's a lot more

serious than the customs situation.

It was apparently because a neighbour had complained.

They'd made a complaint that I was dealing porn. The police then followed

that. They also raided two other people on the back of my house raid because

they found letters, they found correspondence.

And again, that dragged on for about six months.

But I did get quite a lot of press coverage on the back of that because I

thought, you know, I'm going to go on the offensive.

I've got nothing to hide. I've done nothing wrong.

I'm going to actually talk to the Guardian and put my side of the story.

Coincidentally, this had happened.

A short time after the University of Birmingham had been raided for having

Robert Mafflethorpe books.

So it definitely felt like there was an attack on writers and researchers

because I was actually researching a book on porn films at the time called

Brother Long Blue. And obviously, if you're going to write about these films,

then you have to see the films.

So, you know, I had a legit reason for owning this stuff. Basically, when I

in to see the police, they were...

Somewhat on a back foot, they'd had complaints made to the Home Office about

their behaviour.

I don't know who by, but somebody who obviously had enough clout at the Home

Office to then get the Home Secretary to find out what was going on.

So I think they were quite happy in the end when it was all just dropped. Their

argument was, well, we think you've been swapping stuff with your mates.

Swapping is supplying, and that's not legal even now.

Doesn't matter if you don't charge for it. They actually did say to me at one

point, you know, you don't believe in censorship, do you?

And, you know, my barrister was definitely telling me, you know, don't

this question. But it's like, well, you know, let's just say we have a

difference of opinion.

As time went on, and as I think Jim felt less and less in control of his

censors, he became more ready

to override decisions.

But as of this morning, its director stood accused of being autocratic and

illiberal. James Berman, 18 years in the job, reluctantly entered the spotlight.

I keep a very firm grip on standards.

That's what I'm paid to do. If examiners want to be too liberal or want to ease

up on sexual violence or don't notice sexual violence, it's management's job

stop them. He became more willing to do things which I have to say I thought

and we all thought were...

controversial for example we when we had board meetings obviously they were

official meetings and we would have board minutes taken he would sometimes

sometimes not often but sometimes take the board meetings and alter the minutes

to fit something which more fitted him with an opinion or a position that he

felt we should have we confronted him about that And I think that it was that

sort of atmosphere which became less and less pretty amongst us that led to him

summarily sacking it all overnight.

According to this morning's Guardian, some of the part -time staff claim Mr

Furman has given them the boot.

Well polished to outsiders, but inside apparently tempers fraying.

You can really see that perhaps there's not a lot of harmony at the board in

this particular.

He justified that by saying that he felt that the new and improved board

should consist of full -time

I wasn't alone in not just feeling pretty angry that I'd been sacked, but

than that. In terms of the censorship process, I thought it was quite wrong

we did it.

full -time, because there was always that sense of an enduring dialogue going

between the work of the censor and the work that we did in our real lives. We

all had professions. I was a psychoanalyst, psychotherapist.

We think that the system that we've had for 20 years of part -time examining has

outlived its usefulness.

But it was a way, I think, of getting a film board, a bunch of censors who were

going to be more compliant.

He was so obsessed with the idea that...

He could do no wrong. You know, the BBFC was his own little fiefdom.

You know, he was, you know, untouchable. And he was basically hoisted by his own

petard, but he was. He was kind of... It was his ego, in the end, that destroyed

him. Must be the best job in the world, though. Just watching porn all day. I

know.

Well, you think you'd enjoy it, but you don't. But you've seen 25 years of it.

I mean, nobody can, you know...

Well, keep it odd for that long.

That's not the test I would apply.

Licensed sex shops can sell pornographic films once they've been passed by the

censor, and now it's the censor himself who says it's time to legalise hardcore

material. You've got to give the punters something, and mostly what they want is

sex, not violence.

And if we could just separate the two, I think we have a chance for a healthier

society. His decision to...

create or legalise pornography in his image, if you like, was what destroyed

him. If he hadn't done that, I think he would have stayed through until he

wanted to retire.

After seeing thousands of hours of pornography in his 23 -year career, the

censor says he's trying to restrict sexually violent films. But for non

pornography, he recommends a new film classification certificate.

His comments, though, drew immediate criticism.

Well, I mean, of course, it's down to Nigel that the whole R18 thing exploded

the first place.

My crime was to share these visions with you.

The truth.

The thing with the R18s and the whole firm's resignation, it came out very

simply, really. We were starting a new label, importing or trying to import

hardcore material or strong softcore material with a view to putting it into

BBFC. Nigel started importing all the Michael Nunn films.

I think we are going to enjoy this.

Customs had seized the material and said, you can't do that.

But this was coinciding with a time that the BBSC were beginning, as I complete

separately, to experiment, if I can put it like that, with stronger material.

How did I think of this before?

Well, this car is for a celebration.

He recommends some controversial reforms.

He says explicit pornography should be legalised. There should be a new R18

category more explicit than the current 18 certificate.

And sex shops should face tighter licensing but be allowed to sell more

material. But hardcore porn over -the -counter is a reform too far for some.

Furman's approach to this, to legalise stuff so that it can all be classified

and sold in sex shops, I think is entirely the wrong approach and

of step with the public mood.

But Furman had done that without any consultation with the Home Office, with

Home Secretary, with the police, with customs, with anybody.

But he had no right to do, because this went far beyond the BBFC's remit.

And as a result of that, of course, when Jack Straw became Home Secretary and

this all began in late, late 97, all hell broke loose.

Jack Straw is reported to have been upset by Mr. Furman recently

relaxing the rules on sex shop videos.

What he'd done forced some bigger companies than ours with deeper pockets

bring a series of challenges to the BBFC to clarify pornography.

David Sullivan has made a fortune from porn. He's backing James Furman. I think

Mr Furman's a very brave man, and I support him wholeheartedly. That process

took another two years, but sometime during the course of 1999, in the run

to 2000, they won.

Because I was at the BBFC Video Appeals Committee hearing for the R18 situation,

and... It was clear that they were going to lose.

Court censors explained how classification is based on concern that

could be exposed to pornography in their homes or when visiting others.

So trying to ban this stuff on grounds of child protection where their only

expert couldn't even confirm that anyone would be harmed by seeing the serial.

It was ridiculous.

But today, Mr Justice Hooper's words shattered that long -standing policy.

The judge decided the risk of the videos in question being viewed by and causing

harm to children is, on present evidence, insignificant.

Britons will now be able to watch the same kind of hardcore porn that's

available on the continent.

Pornography was legalised.

And Furman had created that. That was his doing. Today's surprise ruling paves

the way for licensed sex shops to sell hardcore videos previously banned.

At a stroke, Britain's rules on censorship have been shaken to the core.

hadn't messed around with it in his own way...

Those cases would never have been brought and pornography probably

been legalised. And it's all happened without public discussion or

debate. And as a result, Furman had to resign.

After 23 years, James Furman is retiring as director of the British Board of

Film Classification.

Furman, ironically, got fired for being too liberal.

It's ridiculous when you think about it because, you know, he was one of the

most illiberal people.

James Furman's signature on every cinema and video release will soon be

replaced. His successor will be appointed by Andreas Wittem Smith, the

of the Independent Newspaper. When Furman retires, you get suddenly the BBC

becoming, under Robin Duval, much, much more kind of accountable to the public.

The board previously didn't have published guidelines prior to 1999.

That changed the whole BBFC.

Furman's reign, because it really was, I think, it was like his fiefdom there,

was over.

And since then, the BBFC is...

been a very different animal, you know. The end of the film and era was kind of

marked, I think, by the BBC suddenly becoming much more accountable.

And, interestingly, those films, those kind of bugbear films like Texas

Massacre and The Exorcist, starting then to come out in the cinema and on video,

alongside many of the other video nasty titles. I think history moves on and,

you know, standards change inevitably.

Sometimes films become old -fashioned.

Sometimes.

Some society changes in a very big way.

What's more, it's argued the imminent arrival of video via the internet from

wherever in the world you choose threatens to make all video censorship

anachronistic hangover from the 20th century.

But because I'm an adult now, it's very hard for me to have that experience of

watching a movie and it be illicit.

And the pleasures that you had from the video nasties.

i think came in part in big part from the fact that the generation that i'm in

that you're in jake and neil marshall and all the other filmmakers that are

making films at the moment we were of a generation when we were children and we

were teenagers when that period was around i mean what's very different to

back then is just the access to all this sort of thing you know you really had

to um

You really had to go out of your way to sort of track these things down. The

films weren't available and you did have to go that extra little effort to find

them. I thought it was the perfect explosion of like a typically British

of culture.