Summary: Video Nasties! The term brings to mind a lot of memories. The fondness of nostalgia to think of those video discoveries on rental shelves with the exciting cover art and titles with promises of the forbidden. But also the reminder of the heavy hand of censorship and the damage that can be done through paranoia and fear mongering. The video nasties film festival (our road to covering the entirety of the film catalogue labeled as nasty) kicks off with an episode dedicated to the history of the movement to enact the Video Recordings Act and the origin of the infamous "list". 1983 has proven to be an unfortunate pitfall of history for fans of horror, those of us who seek to be challenged by the offerings of the genre, as it marks a place and time where the lobbying efforts of a select few managed to criminalize the ownership of a movie. So it's a brief overview of the how's and why's of the video nasties and our first entry of the film festival: Maniac (1980), a true example of the low budget independent grunge horror/exploitation era of the late 70's / early 80'. The list as it stands today is comprised of 72 titles but it changed weekly for close to a year so our coverage will begin by covering the 'outliers' that stood outside of the 72 at the time of its publication (New York Ripper next week). So feel free to participate in our challenge to watch and discuss each and every title once known as a Video Nasty! Listener voicemails help us round things out with commentary on horror video games, horror anime, Harry Potter reaction and a modern Nasty Hobo With a Shotgun. As always we welcome your comments: horroretc@gmail.com Voicemail (206) 337-5324 WWW.HORRORETC.COM
