Showing posts with label Video Nasty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Video Nasty. Show all posts

Thursday, 17 July 2014

That's Nasty... (The Video Nasty Challenge: 72 Tapes)

Thanks to the fine people on the Hammered Horror podcast, I have learnt that 2014 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Video Nasty moniker. In 1984 The Daily Mail headed a campaign to call for the ban of an ever increasing list of so far unregulated video releases ultimate leading to the Video Recordings Act instated in 1985 in the UK which stated that all film releases needed to be classified for sale by the BBFC. There were raids, black markets and public outrage lead by the likes of moral crusader Mary Whitehouse.

Sunday, 18 May 2014

Snuff 102

 



Snuff is cinema’s most controversial and disturbing concept. It originally got it’s name after a police raid on Sesame Street found a collection of videos tapes documenting Mr. Snuffleupagus’ years of abuse and murder. Unable to convict due to federal laws not applying to fictional species’ Mr. Snuffleupagus still works to this day and is suspected for the disappearance of scores of live studio audience members.

Sunday, 4 May 2014

Maniac

 
I’m going to kick this review off with a controversial statement. Re-makes are a good idea. I’m not saying all re-makes are good, or that all films should be re-made, but in some cases they can be great. Most genre films are so painfully unoriginal that they feel a title card away from a re-make anyway. Audiences sensibilities, the boundaries of what is acceptable and the technologies used to create them are always changing. So in the right hands, yeah, a Clash of the Titans re-make could have been pretty amazing. It wasn’t, it was a pile of steaming kraken shit, but it could have been. Here’s hoping the new Godzilla film will be testament to this. Let’s not forget, The Thing, The Fly and even Scarface were impeccable examples of the re-make being done right.

Saturday, 12 April 2014

Evil Dead Vs. The Evil Dead


Fede Alvarez had some gigantic boots to fill when it was announced he was going to be directing the remake of Sam Raimi’s 1981 classic horror, ‘The Evil Dead’. Striking the balance between staying true to the sometimes ludicrous ‘Evil Dead’ repertoire and keeping modern audiences happy was always going to be a struggle. I have to make it clear that I am a massive ‘Evil Dead’ fan. I first saw ‘Evil Dead 2’ back in 1999 when I was twelve years old on my first television in my bedroom on Channel 4 as part of a zombie double bill alongside ‘Zombie Flesh Eaters’ complete with introduction from Mark Kermode and I loved it. It was gory, funny, scary and just insane; I had never seen anything like it and was enamoured by the whole franchise to the point which I have read Bruce Campbell’s autobiography ‘If Chins Could Kill’ and seen all the films in all different incarnations with numerous commentaries.