The term “video nasty” was first coined by the United Kingdom’s Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) for movies that were often distributed by video cassette and contained extremely violent or offensive content. Often many of these movies were extremely low-budget and were produced in Italy and the United States, countries that had less restrictions regarding censorship in the 1980s.

With the arrival of the video cassette, seemingly “obscene” films from the violent to the erotic were able to flow freely through the market without any legal intervention to curb the extremely violent or sexual, basically anything that could possibly break the rules of the Obscene Publications Act of 1959, the most recent movie and video content legislation in the United Kingdom.

The Act defined obscenity in such a way to allow for wide interpretation, decrying anything that may “tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely, having regard to all relevant circumstances, to read, see or hear the matter contained or embodied in it.” The major fear was the ease of purchase of video cassettes and the obscene falling into the hands of innocent children sleeping in their bunk beds. These new rules from the DPP made films that had already been screened in theaters, such as “The Exorcist” now banned under BBFC rules.

The censorship was eventually relaxed with the passing of the Video Recordings Act, allowing for many films previously banned found their way onto video but are of course, highly hypocritical, with modern movies featuring extremely brutal violence and set, such as the “Hostel” and “Saw” series’ but older films such as the slasher “Maniac” and “Silent Night, Deadly Night” only recently getting approval after numerous editing cuts.