Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 451 - Panic on the TV! Do Violent Movies Create Violent Children?

Episode Date: April 21, 2025

Today we talk about moral panics. Specifically, the "Video Nasty" moral panic that happened in the UK in the early 1980s, and then again in the 1990s, when there was widespread fear that by kids watching horror movies with titles like Cannibal Holocaust, Flesh for Frankenstein, I Spit on Your Grave, and The Last House on the Left, they would literally be turned into rapists and killers. Was there any justification for this panic? Can hyper-violent or hyper-sexualized media in general erode the morality of children? Merch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com Timesuck Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious PrivateFacebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch-related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast.Sign up through Patreon, and for $5 a month, you get access to the entire Secret Suck catalog (295 episodes) PLUS the entire catalog of Timesuck, AD FREE. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch.

Satanic orgies with mutilated dead bodies. Undead surgeons performing vivisection on screaming children. Living corpses gouging out the eyes of the innocent and slurping up their intestines. Rape victims disemboweling their attackers and carving out their genitals. Deranged cannibals murdering pregnant women and eating their unborn fetuses. Dismembered limbs, rotten flesh, decapitated heads, demonic nymphomaniacs, homicidal nuns, flesh-eating hillbillies, and much, much more. That's the type of gore you'll find in a true video nasty.

In the 1980s, the term video nasty was used in the UK to refer to horror films deemed to be excessively gory, violent, and or sexual. Films criticized by the press and eventually banned by Parliament for being well so gosh dang nasty. The video nasties were considered by many not to just be films made in poor tastes. They were considered to be legitimately evil, immoral and above all truly dangerous. Their distribution across the country in the newly invented form of the video cassette posed an insurmountable threat to social order itself in some minds. And they put at risk the very moral integrity of Britain's citizens.

They threatened to tear apart the moral fabric of British society. Oh. My. Heck. If a vulnerable child, God forbid, happened to watch a video nasty, that film would corrupt their precious, impressionable soul. They could damn themselves to hell. They could be inspired to become murderers and rapists and cannibals exactly like the kind of people they saw on TV. And soon, before long, the entire UK would be brought to irreparable ruin.

Or would it? The truth is, the moral panic surrounding the video nasties was generated, maintained, and amplified almost entirely by various politicians trying to get re-elected into Parliament, and journalists and editors trying to boost their tabloid sales. Week after week, year after year, the press published sensational articles with headlines like The Rape of Our Children's Minds, Protect Our Children Now, Ban Video Sadism, Sadism for Six-Year-Olds, and The Video Rapist, Boy Attacks

Women After Seeing Video Nasty. Today we're going to investigate the video nasty saga and unpack how political agendas and fear-mongering newspapers led to the censorship of various horror films in Britain for years. We'll explore how susceptible society can be to moral panic in general, and figure out if vulnerable children really do tend to turn evil after watching low-budget slasher movies. Uh-oh, I watched so many slasher flicks during my developmental preteen and teen years without any adults around even help remind me that I was watching fiction, and that the slashers were not to be looked up to and emulated. Am I now today the walking talking evil embodiment of a video nasty?

E-Gad. All that and more in this axe wielding, blood splattering, child possessing, here come the cannibal holocaust, don't go into the basement, whatever you do edition of Time Suck. This is Michael McDonald and you're listening of Time Suck. Happy Monday and welcome or welcome back to the Cult of the Curious. I'm Dan Keltz, the master sucker, guy who will now forever be horrified whenever he hears the name Peewee. And you are listening to Time Suck. Hail Nimrod, hail Zofina, praise be to good boy Bojangles and glory be to Triple M.

Before jumping into the episode today, I just want to thank each and every fan who came out to any one of the three shows I had for the Nashville Comedy Festival. You were the best crowds. You made the headline in a show for the first time in 14 months. A lot of fun. I got more and more comfortable each set. Loved meeting all of you at the meet and greets afterwards. And just could not have asked for a better way to leave the stage for a while. Not sure how long I'll be gone.

Podcasting is keeping me plenty busy these days. I want to do more fictional stuff. Hello nightmare fuel and hopefully more down the road on the paranormal side of things. You know over on the scared to death side of things at some point. And there are only so many hours in the day. I got to protect myself from myself. I want to do too much. And thanks to all of you for understanding. Love what I'm doing here at Bad Magic. Most rewarding work in my life and I want to keep it feeling fresh. So thank you again and now infotainment time. First things first today. Let's flesh out the definition of a video nasty. In his 2021 article, Are We Insane? The Video Nasty Moral Panic,

London England's Brunel University Professor of Screen Media and Journalism in the Department of Social Sciences, Media and Communications, Julian Petley states, In a nutshell, a video nasty was most likely to be a low-budget horror film produced in the US or Italy that exploited the lack of a rigorous regulatory system for how rental video cassettes were circulated in the UK. Of that loose definition, the most important thing to remember is that a video nasty was a horror film released specifically on video cassette. From the moment VCRs went on sale in 1978 all the way until 1984, the video nasties spread like a virus, unhindered across Great Britain.

There was nothing and no one that could stop the epidemic, nothing that could prevent these so-called evil films from being placed in the hands of the impressionable youth. Because legally, the impressionable youth were allowed to watch them. And that was because of a loophole in existing British censorship laws. You see, the video nasties were not shown in movie theaters or played on TV. Instead, they came in the form of the videocassette, which was at the time a brand new invention. So new, in fact, that there existed no legislation that could be applied to it or its contents. There were, of course, laws in place to regulate film and TV content.

Very strict laws in Britain back then, actually. But they were specifically made for film and TV and not very strict laws, written back then actually, but they were specifically made for film and TV and not for VCRs. It wasn't until 1984 that Parliament enacted legislation to regulate video cassettes called the Video Recordings Act, also known as the VRA. However, the VRA was not passed out of necessity for regulation nor was it based on any actual evidence. As Martin Barker put it in his 1984 article, Video Nasties, Freedom and Censorship in the Media, the Video Recordings Act was entirely based on a quote, vast fog of myths, pseudo-evidence

and direct lies. Of all the exaggerations, distortion of facts and downright lies that the media spun about the video nasties, the biggest myth of all was that they are not just films that are inappropriate for children, but that they are pseudo-magical entities that have this power to transcend the confines of the VCR and invade the vulnerable soul of the viewer and corrupt them from the inside out, possessing them with evil incarnate. Is this your work, Lusifena? Or were you a convenient scapegoat? What I just laid out may sound like an exaggeration but believe me it is not. To fully understand the video nasty moral panic, we first have

to understand what a moral panic actually is. How it works, who is involved, and what it leads to. After that we'll hop into today's fairly bulky time suck timeline where we will explore how the invention of the home video directly led to the rise of the video nasties. Check out a few of the video nasties themselves to figure out what exactly was so nasty, a nasty boys, about them. Meet the moral entrepreneurs, politicians, and newspapers that fueled moral panic and reveal how exactly each of them benefited from it. Then after the timeline we'll look at some studies to find out if horror movies, very graphic media, can transform impressionable

youth from a good law-abiding young citizen to a bloodthirsty sadistic monster. You know I think you could apply this same logic to video games, heavy metal music, you know hip-hop hop, whatever comes under the radar of these moralists. In essence, moral panic is mass fear that some new thing, usually a person, group, subculture, or trend is deviant and poses a threat to the moral order of things. Moral panics are generated by the media and led by elite groups of community leaders, quote, intent on changing laws or practices. Are you a deviant, you dirty little piggy? The concept of moral panic was first

developed by renowned South African criminologist and professor of sociology Stanley Cohen in the 1960s. Cohen taught in England and would found the Center for the Study of Human Rights at the London School of Economics. Smart fellow who cared a great deal about truly understanding human behavior in order to make life a bit better for us all, a bit more logical, grounded in fact and not just gut instincts and feelings. Early in his career in the 1960s, two conflicting subcultures, the mods and

the rockers, were growing in popularity amongst the youth across the UK. And according to the media, the burgeoning social groups meant the imminent downfall of traditional British values, and eventually would lead to a pseudo-Mad Maxian society where violence was the norm. I am gravely disappointed. Again, you have made me unleash my dogs of war." As a quote from Mad Max 2, the road warrior, if you're confused. For some context, the mod subculture in Britain was centered around clean cut fashion and jazz,

soul, Motown, and even ska music. They also apparently often rode scooters because they were very cool, okay? The contrasting rocker subculture was conversely centered around leather jackets and rock and roll and they drove motorcycles because they were very naughty, alright? They were dangerous naughty bad boys. Probably never even went peepee in a potty like they're supposed to. I bet they even jaywalked on a regular basis, which is a great way to get impressionable

kids who look up to you killed by the way. Yeah, no one has the stones of vigorously condemned Jaywalking anymore except this guy. I said it I'm taking a very controversial stance on a hotly debated polarizing topical issue right now Go ahead and unsubscribe if you can't take the Jaywalking heat anyway Cohen was fascinated by the way that the media portrayed rockers, and sometimes the mods as well, as true deviants, that represented everything wrong with the country, and he decided to study youth culture to find out how bad or not it was. I love it when someone tosses around the word deviant, by the way.

Well, there certainly are deviants. I feel like most people who use that term seriously and speak it with alarm can be defined by another term that also starts with the letter D. Dorks. Fucking dorks. In 1972, Cohen published his findings in the book Folk Devils and Moral Panics, wherein he revealed how the media fueled a distorted and disproportionate social response to youth subcultures through sensationalization and fear-mongering. In addition to dismantling myths about how both the mods and the rockers were going to bring the great nation to ruin,

his book Cohen also broke down how moral panics work. According to Cohen and virtually all the sociologists that have succeeded him, there are three major players in every moral panic. Moral entrepreneurs, agents of social control, and fucking dorks. I mean, folk devils. Moral entrepreneurs are small groups of people, often elite in the sense that they have, you know, the status to get their message out, who have taken it upon themselves to define deviants

for society at large, and determine what is acceptable in society and what is not. So uppity fucking dorks. When a new trend or subculture or thing comes along, or a preexisting one comes into the limelight, moral entrepreneurs are the first to label it as a threat to the social order, because it offends them personally. And what they do not want for themselves, they also do not want for anyone else.

Uppity control freak dorks. The moral entrepreneur sees themselves as a sort of crusading reformer, fighting the good fight to combat social evil. Society must be set right, and they're just the person to do it. And how do they do it? Well, in order to enforce their own moral standards on society, the moral entrepreneur incites fear. For example, in both the US and the UK, there is currently an ongoing debate about the inclusion of diverse types of relationships in children's sexual education. Specifically the inclusion of homosexual relationships. Some people are super pro in this changing curriculum.

They believe that inclusive sex education has a lot of benefits like promoting and accepting space for all students and giving all students the tools to have safe sex in the future. Also not feel like the rest of society hates them for following the natural impulses they were born with. On the other hand, some people are very against this change. England's Christian Institute, for example, has argued that, quote, at a time when there is growing alarm at the sexualization of children, by the way, moral entrepreneurs always think there's a bunch of extra sexualization of children going on. This change could lead to the sex education industry which promotes explicit materials having much greater influence. In this case the argument being made by the Christian Institute is that sex education is an industry

which deals in providing children with inappropriate pornographic content to ponder over and if children receive an LGBTQIA plus sex education the industry will have an even greater grip on the minds of the innocent. In other words, their argument is that a diverse sex education will corrupt children. They'll be groomed, their morals weakened, the traditional values of society, you know, destroyed, and eventually the community's moral fabric will be completely eroded, and before you know it, Sodom and Gomorrah, here we come, every butt will be fucked. The streets will be flooded with the cum of the wicked and your sweet, sweet Nana will drown in it. Gosh dang.

Now, let me make one thing clear. For those of you who are still listening and haven't smashed your phone into a wall just to get away from my vile, felt, and warped deviant perspective, moral entrepreneurs aren't all bad. And I'm not even saying the folks at the Christian Institute are all bad. They just have a very different view than many others around them do. Certainly have a very different view than I do. The point I'm trying to prove here is that moral entrepreneurs incite fear of a certain thing by tapping into general anxieties held by

the public. Such as, in this case, protecting the children. There's always going to be people worried, as they should be, about keeping children safe. And, you know, there's gonna be a fear that there's these threats to them out there. And moral, you know, entrepreneurs are really good at making some, something that's not even a threat seem like a very, very important threat. And we must protect the children right now. It's a popular battle cry of moral entrepreneurs. Again, sometimes legitimate, but often not. The moral entrepreneur presents a single thing that they do not like as the manifestation of all social evil in order to scare others into getting on board.

Uppity, control freak, fear-mongering kind of fucking dorks in my opinion. But moral entrepreneurs alone can't really incite a moral panic. For that they need the help of the media to get people's attention, spark concern over their fears. Because the media has always played a massive role in constructing how we perceive our social reality. As Professor Cohen puts it, media is one of our, quote, main sources of information about the normative contours of a society. It informs us about right and wrong, about the boundaries beyond which one should not venture, and about the shape that the devil can assume. And the media

is able to generate and amplify moral panics by doing two important things, exaggeration and symbolization. When writing a story about the moral entrepreneur, or about what the moral entrepreneur believes to be a social evil, the media uses hyperbole to distort the facts and make the evil appear to be an even greater threat than you could ever imagine, sometimes far, far greater. The scale and prevalence of the threat is also inflated to make it seem like the problem is everywhere. The media also presents the social evil in a stylized and stereotypical fashion and portrays it as a shockingly radical departure from everything you've ever known and loved. Those damn video nasties are going to turn your sweet sweet baby boy into a brutal serial killer who's going to rape and murder innocent young

women with a smile on his now wicked face before he fucking eats them. We must protect little Johnny from these depraved, evil, low-budget, poorly written slasher flicks. According to one study, these newspaper stories are people less by real characters than by emblematic heroes and villains. Here's the symbolism. Personifications of good and evil. Acting out roles in a symbolic drama. Specific anxieties tend to become generalized and rolled into one overarching panic about the breakdown of law and order and the end of life as we know it.

And that brings us to the last character in the melodrama of the moral panic. The folk devil. The folk devil is that person, group, or subculture that has been identified by the moral entrepreneurs as being deviant. The reason Cohen dubbed these things as folk devils is because fear surrounding them is almost always based in fantasy, like folklore. Fundamentally, the devil being blamed is not real. It's made up. But just in case Cohen is wrong, what if he's a deviant?

I should cleanse this podcast of any and all possible evils discussed thus far with some sacred striper. To help in the doubt. Oh, that feels good. Feels better. Feels better in this room right now. Go on, get out of here! Folk Devil is a convenient scapegoat for a variety of society's problems.

For example, when the US experienced a rise in juvenile delinquency in the 1950s, the press and moral entrepreneurs were quick to blame comic books of all things, which in addition to superheroes depicted tales of criminal masterminds, right? A little joker, murderers, illicit romances. His 1954 book about the comic book folk devil, titled Seduction of the Innocent, German-American psychiatrist Frederick Wertham, wrote, this is an insane quote, I think Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic book industry. Dear God. Yeah, sure, I get it, Hitler did some bad shit. But compared to comic books?

No, he's a real daisy. What the fuck, Frederick? What were you thinking when you said that, you lunatic? Former Suck Subject Stanley, the late great comic icon, wrote of Dr. Wortham, he said things that impressed the public and it was like shouting fire in a theater, but there was a little scientific validity to it and yet because he had the name Doctor, people took what he said seriously and it started a whole crusade against comics. I love Stan Lee. Side note on Dr. Wortham,

after a very noteworthy career, his hard-on for continually blaming comic books for anything bad the youth did, pretty tame comic books like Old School Batman and Robin and Superman, totally derailed his career later in life and made him a laughing stock to many. He finally stopped railing against comics, being the source of most societal ills when he was aggressively heckled and booed while speaking on a panel at the 1970 New York Comic Art Convention. His views on comics were never supported by his peers and ended up really isolating him. Anyway, as you can see, societies are subject to moral panics every once in a while.

No matter who or what the folk devil is, the anatomy of the moral panic never really changes. The video nasty moral panic was no different than prior fear over comic books. As the authors of See No Evil Banned Films and Video Controversy published in 2000 wrote, The moral panic that led to the crusade against the so-called Video Nasties was a cyclical one, fitting in a pattern that can be traced back through campaigns against comic book and cheap paperbacks in the 1950s, Hollywood gangster and horror films in the 1930s, and the penny dreadfuls and penny theaters of the Victorian era. Each of these inspired a clampdown of some form or a complete ban, the primary motivation of which was always cited as

being the protection of juveniles. Okay, now that we understand some of the background, it is time to meet today's folk devil. The video nasty. The low-budget horror movie that made the uk's uppity control freak fear-mongering kind of fucking dorks tremble in their high-waisted ill-fitting khaki cargo pants. Shrap on those boots soldier we're marching Marching down a time-sucked timeline. Our timeline begins in 1912 with the establishment of the British Board of Film Censors, aka the BBFC. The catalyst of BBFC's formation was a controversy surrounding a horrendously offensive movie called From the Manger to the Cross, a movie that depicted the life of Jesus. Not kidding. The film was directed by Sidney Alcott, written by American actress Jean Gontier, who also starred as the Virgin Mary. Jean was a big pioneer of the film industry,

by the way. She performed in 87 films, wrote screenplays for 42 produced films, all between 1906 and 1920, and directed The Grandmother in that time span but then she stopped Cold Turkey walked away because she was fucking exhausted. Burnout had completely lost her passion for making too many movies in too little time. Fascinating, unconventional, unconventional. Whipsmart meat sack if you want to look into her further. Anyway, immediately upon its release at the Queen's Hall in Langham Palace London from the manger was an instant success and with all types of people.

Israel Zangwell, British author and leader of the Zionist movement, stated that the film was an artistic triumph, and priests who attended found nothing to be offended by, though some did question whether it was sinful to profit off of the life of Jesus in any way. Which feels like a little hypocritical since they literally prop it off Jesus Christ every single day through Ties. Anyway, that being said, it was a member of the English clergy

who actually fought to have the silent film preserved and re-released to the public years later. People were generally pretty pumped about the film and due to audience demand from the manger to the cross was actually shown at the theater for a staggering eight months straight which was a long time even back then. So where did the controversy come from? Well the public outcry about the movie was started by a shit-stirring tabloid that we're gonna

be hearing from a lot today, The Daily Mail. The Daily Mail wrote a scathing review of the movie tearing it to pieces and begging the question is nothing sacred to the filmmaker. This article was then followed up by many other Daily Mail articles condemning the film industry in general and its permissiveness. Articles begging for somebody to do something to stop all the blasphemy. And thus the British Board of Film Censors was born. The BBFC was created by a group of film industry professionals in Britain who knew that if they didn't impose some sort of censorship on films, then the government would.

And nobody wanted that. For the first four years of their inception, the BBFC had no tangible list of standards that movies needed to adhere to in order to be shown in Britain. They were just kind of banning movies or cutting specific movie scenes on a haphazard whim based on how they felt about it. How fun for filmmakers, right? To pour a bunch of time, passion, money into a film, and then never know if the BBFC was going to allow it to be shown until the film was already fully produced. In 1916, the president of the BBFC, T.P. O'Connor, published a list of 43

violations that meant automatic censorship to either the entire movie or parts of it. So now at least there were guidelines. You know, shitty, way too strict. Why would the BBFC think they had to protect the public from all this, you know, like the UK was only populated by literal children and dumb children to that guidelines, but guidelines. Some of the infractions that could get your film banned included references to controversial politics. Seems very subjective. Offensive vulgarity, also subjective. Impropriety in conduct and dress, all of this is subjective. Men and women in bed together, okay that one's that one's pretty objective. Gruesome murders, nude figures, scenes holding up the king in contempt or ridicule,

or ridicule, oh my god. Excessively passionate love scenes. Subjects dealing with white slave trafficking. Not slave trafficking, just white slave trafficking. Abdominal contortions in dancing. Scenes laid in disorderly houses. And my personal favorite quote, Scenes are subjects dealing with India in which British officers are seen in an odious light and otherwise attempting to suggest a disloyal to your British officers, native states, or bringing in to disrepute British prestige in the Empire.

Hear, hear! The British prestige must never be brought into disrepute! A disorderly house, by the way, was an actual term in English criminal law. Referred to a house in which the conduct of its inmates is such as to become a public nuisance or a house where persons congregate to the probable disturbance of the public peace or other commission of crime. So a movie similar to the tv show Shameless would have never been allowed to be watched, nor would any movie that had even I guess a few scenes shot in a frat house. One more thing, who was deciding whether or not a love scene was excessively passionate? And one more thing, who was deciding whether or not a love scene was excessively passionate? Uppity, control freak, fear-mongering, affection-hating fucking dorks.

From 1916 until 1932, the BBFC published an annual list of prohibited images and themes, continually updating what they deemed proper and palatable. They would classify approved movies into just two categories or ratings. U meant that a film was especially suitable for children. And A meant that a film was generally suitable for public exhibition. On January of 1933, the BBFC was forced to add a third classification to account for the sick new spoopy films emerging out of America. H, for films which are likely to frighten or horrify children under the age of 16 years

We must protect the children Even the ones that are super fucking mentally weak and doomed to fail in the real world who cannot possibly psychologically recover from a scary movie Over the years the BBFC's rating system would continue to change But we don't need to go over each and every one of them for today's purposes. So let's jump to 1959, when Britain upped the ante on media censorship with the Obscene Publications Act. On August 29th of that year, the newly approved Obscene Publications Act formally went into effect in the UK.

In broad terms, the purpose of the Act was to criminalize the distribution and circulation of quote, obscene articles. Now you may ask yourself, what exactly is an article? And what qualifies it as obscene? Well according to the act, an article is anything quote, containing or embodying matter to be read or looked at or both, as well as any sound record and any film or other record of a picture or pictures. So basically an article is just a piece of media. As for determining whether or not

an article is obscene, well that's a little more complicated. The act states that an article shall be deemed to be obscene if its effect is to 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. Additionally, to deprave means to make morally bad, to pervert, or to debase, or corrupt morally. To corrupt means to render morally unsound or rotten, to destroy the moral purity or chastity, to pervert or ruin good quality, to debase, to defile." Wow, that's uh, that's giving a lot of fucking power to a piece of media.

I had no idea that watching, say, a really graphic horror movie could render me morally unsound or rotten and completely debased and defiled. Also, should I be worried about how many of you have become debased, defiled, and perverted? How many of you have had your good quality ruined? Had your moral purity and chastity destroyed by listening to this very podcast? A podcast hosted by an admitted bad boy who doesn't always go peevee in a potty like a good boy as I mentioned earlier? A rapt scallion who sometimes walks outside and pees in the yard even though the bathroom's actually closer?

A hoodwink who enjoys feeling a slight breeze blow across my balls from time to time? E. Gadd, folks. EGAD. Am I the scary basement you need to be running out of to save your very soul? Anyway, under the Obscene Publications Act of 1959, to distribute, circulate, sell, let on hire, give, or lend a piece of media that, from a wildly subjective standpoint,

posed a moral danger to the country's innocence was now a criminal offense. Man, what melodramatic language. These more or less really are the dorkiest fucking dorks who ever did dork. Who are the country's innocents, by the way? I strongly assume children. But who else? Your sweet nana, who finds pro-vanity abhorrent? Your mama's boy uncle, who still lives at home, not because he can't afford to live alone,

but because he doesn't have a spine strong enough to withstand Mama's guilt trips. Who's being morally destroyed by something as silly as a horror movie or a comic book? In order to have a publication prosecuted under the act, it must first be seized by police then sent to the director of public prosecutions or DPP. If the DPP finds sufficient evidence that it is likely to deprave or corrupt, then a prosecution is brought against its publishers. 1963, the first home video recorder goes on sale in Britain. Surprising, right? I thought the technology came way later. The Telcan, short for television in a can, was distributed by the UK Nottingham Electric or Electronic Valve Company. And though it was revolutionary, it didn't do that well with consumers.

Why not? Because in order to play it, you had to plug it directly into your butthole. Oh yeah, it was powered by a combination of enzymes and bacteria that can only be found in your colon and the kind that only exist way up in there, at least a good six inches past your rectum. So while super cool that this player did not run up your electricity bill, it wasn't exactly, you know, comfortable for everyone. Especially because most commercial lubes would short circuit it. The only lube they did not for some reason was margarine. And a lot of British consumers didn't enjoy lubing up the power cord with a whole bunch of room temp margarine. Then shoving that cord at least six inches up their asses and I'll stop now. Probably took that disturbing nonsensical visual a bit too far per

usual. And since I've pulled you out of the narrative already, how about we take this week's first of two mid-show sponsor breaks? Now if you don't want to hear these ads, if you want to help us with donations each month and more, sign up on Patreon and become a space lizard. I'm back and now let's jump back into the very beginning of Britain's home video era. But for real, why didn't it work? For a couple reasons. Start with the price. The video recorder cost 1337 British pounds in 1963, equivalent to $42,980 today. So just a bit spendy. That is hilarious. I was going to get a new car, but I guess I'll have to wait.

I got a VCR instead. Additionally, the Telcan came in a kit that was apparently super fucking hard to assemble and could only record 20 minutes at a time. Who thought that thing would sell? Despite the general lack of public interest surrounding them at the time, the invention of the Telcan and other VCRs in the late 1960s through the early 1970s was massively important because it sets the foundation for the impending home video revolution. As the years went on, VCRs became far less expensive, could record a lot more minutes,

and eventually in 1979, they exploded in popularity and got so nasty. But we're not quite there yet in our timeline. In 1965, the National Listeners and Viewers Association, NLVA, was founded by conservative activist Mary Whitehouse. The non-profit organization, which was only recently dissolved in 2021, was founded on the belief that the country was going to shit due to the explicit blasphemous and offensive movies being shown in theaters and on television.

Mary sounds so fun. I bet her and I would have gotten along great. This group openly denounced, quote, the propaganda of disbelief, doubt and dirt that the BBC projects into millions of homes through the television screens and leads to, and it led to countless campaigns against all sorts of shows and movies they thought were corrupting the youth. One movie she was furious about will be 1976's Network. Mary wanted it censored because it had profanity from women in particular. They were cursing. At the 49th Academy Awards this movie also received ten fucking nominations and won four. Best actor, best

actress, best supporting actress, and best original screenplay. In 2007 this filthy film was placed 64th amongst the 100 greatest American films as chosen by the American Film Institute. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin who wrote A Few Good Men, Moneyball, Social Network, amongst so many other heralded films wrote in 2011 that no predictor of the future not even Orwell has ever been as right as Chayefsky was when he wrote Network. But you know, Patty Chayefsky wrote words like fuck and shit into that screenplay, and Mary didn't want anyone hearing that movie as Patty wrote it in merry old England. Of the many moral entrepreneurs that we will meet here today, Mary Whitehouse was the most

formidable, the most effective and outspoken of them all. She was well read, well spoken, passionate, had an incredible ability to animate her audience by appealing to their sense of importance of preserving traditional values. She was a self-valorizing every woman, so to speak, who when faced with the fact that there was no evidence whatsoever that permissive movies were poisoning society and corrupting children, would say that even though she was no scientist, no scholar, she knew the difference between right and wrong and explicit movies were wrong. Never been a big fan of that kind of person. You know the person who's like, you can throw all the facts and figures and studies you'd like at me.

You can quote experts and tell the cows come home, but I know the difference between right and wrong. has come home, but I know the difference between right and wrong. Not necessarily, shithead. Feelings always are inferior to facts. Always happen, always will be. I feel like ignoring evidence and merely going by one's gut is one of the biggest, most common mistakes we humans regularly make to the great detriment of ourselves and our societies. In addition to being relatable, eloquent, and inspiring, she was certainly a force of nature. Mary Whitehouse was also really, really good at scaring the shit out of people. The basis of her morality campaign, which she fought for nearly her entire adult life, was that horror movies were the quote, extremism of evil. And people who allowed such movies to

be seen in the UK were responsible for the moral collapse of the country. Wow, hyperbole much, Mare Bear? And because fear-mongering works sadly very well, Mary Whitehouse successfully recruited countless supporters for the NVLA. As the authors of one study put it, radicalism is the keynote to the NVLA's work. Theirs is a total disenchantment with, and critique of, the existing social world, the complex and disturbed world out there, which they see is more and more likely to engulf their own world of Christian truths. If Mary Whitehouse didn't just fight the good fight against horror movies, she also campaigned against other so-called evils she felt were causing Britain's moral decline.

These evils included explicit poetry, feminism, the sexual revolution, the homosexual agenda, computer technology, liberalism, profane language, and indecent theatre productions. Did I mention that Mary seemed to truly abhor just about any form of sexuality? You should look her up online. She exuded the sexual energy of a fucking Hummel figurine or an oven mitt. She had five kids and I bet she fucked quietly in the dark to get pregnant with each and every one of them.

Also explicit poetry and computer technology. Pre-internet tech, I should add. That was causing moral decay, people working on fucking spreadsheets. To be fair, while Mary has largely gone down as a closed-minded bigot, in a lot of ways she really was quite ahead of her time and an impressive proponent for what she believed in. For example, in the 70s she wrote to the Attorney General to petition for a law to be made to ensure that juries were 50% female, also fought hard against the exploitation of children

in pornography, campaigned against domestic abuse, and all in all went head to head with a lot of powerful men in parliament, enduring death threats, verbal abuse,, even physical assault to do so, but she never gave up her fight. So you know kudos to Mary for that. Don't agree with a lot of what she believed in but okay. All that being said, Mary Whitehouse's greatest fight was fought against horror movies and when the video nasties finally emerged in the 1980s, they became public enemy number one for her. Similarly horrified by the permissive popular culture of the day, which deproded to depravity and perversions of all kinds, gosh dang hippies, in 1971, English evangelical missionaries Peter and Janet Hill began a grassroots movement called the Nationwide Festival of Light.

Like the NLVA, the Nationwide Festival of Light claimed Like the NLVA, the Nationwide Festival of Light claimed that mass media was responsible for the moral degradation of society and they were thus outspoken against the cinematic filth that was infesting the public and advocated for stricter censorship for all movies and TV shows. They were also importantly very concerned by the fact that Christian morality seemed to have, in their view, disappeared from British civilization altogether and they were dedicated to restoring the Queen's country to her rightful place of former glory. Basically, they wanted a theocracy. They wanted to make Britain Christian again. Mary Whitehouse was one of the foremost members of this movement, not surprising,

and she was key to the festival's success. Throughout 1971 the festival held, mostly inconsequential demonstrations across the UK in order to quote, mobilize the silent moral majority who they felt were too afraid to speak for themselves. On September 9th, 1971, one such festival of light demonstration held at Westminster Central Hall in London was disrupted by the Gay Liberation Front, aka the GLF. As members of the festival were discussing the evils of the entertainment industry, the lights of the hall suddenly went out. And then, out of nowhere, a bunch of nude gays ran into Westminster Central Hall, dicks

already hard, dripping with lube, and they commenced massive gang ass rape at the Festival of Light in its entirety. Every member! They turned it into the Festival of Gape, and then by the end of the evening they turned it again into the Festival of Felch. It was such a depraved and immoral affair that by the time the felching was complete they had summoned the devil himself. The great beast arose inside the darkness, horns, goat legs, pitchfork and all, and he

shouted out, This is the world that I want. This is where I shall turn all of England into with my video nasties and other filth. No one will be free from Satan's felching. And then he did this really uncomfortable evil laugh. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha of time for someone to laugh exuberantly alone, especially when no one even told a joke. No, of course that didn't happen. Oh, what happened? After all the lights went out, was out of nowhere, and dressed in radical drag, members of the GLF descended upon the hall's upper balcony blaring horns and playing music.

According to one source, quote, mice were released into the audience. Lesbian couples stood up and passionately embraced a dozen GLF nuns in immaculate blue and white habits charged the platform shouting gay liberation slogans and a GLF bishop began preaching an impromptu sermon which urged people to keep on sinning. So you know they they were disruptive. In my opinion pretty funny. But you know they were disruptive but can you blame them? If you don't think what they did was okay, let me ask you this. What if some group protested your very existence? Think about that.

What if some group told you that because you loved another adult or because you were attracted to another adult of your same sex, that made you evil? Or at least your choice to do that was evil. What if some group was formed to oppose you being you because they thought you were by your very nature part of the moral decay of society? Would you then feel you were in the wrong to aggressively disrupt their meeting? I don't think you would. I certainly wouldn't. In my opinion, if you're gonna go public with your hate and try to disenfranchise an entire group

of the population, you have earned some disruption, confrontation, even some violence. Because the very nature of your protest is violent. You're trying to erase people. Despite the mice and the sacrilege and the hugging, the Festival of Light movement carried on. The movement culminated a few weeks later on September 25th, 1971, with 35,000 people joining together for One Big Nationwide Festival of Light Conference at Trafalgar Square in London. During the gathering, leaders of the festival made their proclamation to the government, which stated, "...the present trafficking in sadistic and obscene material and the ridiculing of purity

in family life are placing in peril the innocence of children, the dignity and equality of women, and the true fulfillment of human personality. The health of society is now endangered, and those in authority in national and local government must act at once. Holy shit. The health of all of society was endangered. The stakes could not have been higher! Also, what exactly is the true fulfillment of the human personality? Is the goal of being human to be uppity, control freak, fair margarine,

affectionate, hating dorks? The dork is fucking dorks. Whoever did dork? Is that the fulfillment? In 1972, something terrible happened that nearly permanently damaged the health of British society. The American porno film Deep Throat written and directed by Gerard Damiano and starring Linda Lovelace, was released on June 12th, and luckily no one in the UK saw it. At least not legally. That filth was banned upon release in the UK by the British Board of Film Classification, the BBFC. Not just banned for children, banned for everyone. The banning of Deep Throat is one of the most prominent examples of how the UK's legislators and censorship bodies work together to prevent media they deemed obscene

from distribution in the British public. For context, Deep Throat follows the story of Linda Lovelace, a young woman who has never achieved an orgasm. Frustrated by her inability to reach the finish line like damn near everybody else, she seeks the help of the psychiatrist. Much to the shock of the psychiatrist and to the delight of the audience, the doctor discovers the reason Linda can't come is because her clitoris is located in the back of her throat. Oh, gosh dang, how wild! He then explains that in order for her to get off, she'll need to find some way, some is there a way, to stimulate her throat clit. Could she find some selfless man willing to do so with his his generous dick?

Will she be able to find that man? Is there a man even out there willing to let his this very attractive woman suck on his dick and suck hard and deeply so she can stimulate her throat clit into orgasm? In the end, spoiler alert, Linda does meet a fine young caring fella whose dazzling personality makes her happy and extra long penis sexually satisfies her and she marries him. The film concludes with a line, the end and deep throat to you all. Deep throat was a significant film for a couple of reasons. First of all, it was one of the

very few pornos to boast a high production value, complete with set, costume design, quality cameras, as well as an actual plot and character development. The second reason Deep Throat was so important was because it was also one of the first pornos to receive overwhelmingly positive mainstream attention. Most pornos at the time were met with an insurmountable criticism from the public and therefore had to remain in the shadows of underground media. All in all, Deep Throat built a foundation of what would become what was called the Golden Age of Porn and was one of the driving forces behind porn becoming mainstream. Gained a cult following in the US and when the BBFC ban is released in the UK, many Brits of the younger generation were, suffice to say, pretty fucking bummed out and limp.

However, even though there were some people who opposed the strict guidelines, Parliament and the BBFC, God, it's so fucking hard not to call it BBC, BBFC enforced in the case of Deep Throat, it appears they actually made the right call. Years later in 1980, Linda Lovelace published an autobiography titled ordeal in it

She shared her side of the deep throat story explaining that she had been prostituted out by her abusive husband Chuck trainer and that he had forced her into the adult entertainment industry and Subsequently the movie deep throat at literal gunpoint in her book She wrote when I told Chuck trainer I would not become involved in prostitution in any way and that I intended to leave, he beat me and the constant mental abuse began. I literally became a prisoner. I was not allowed out of his sight, not even to use the bathroom, where he watched me through a hole in the door.

He slept on top of me at night. He listened to my telephone calls with a 45 automatic eight shot pointed at me. I suffered mental abuse each and every day thereafter. He undermined my ties with other people and forced me to marry him on advice from his lawyer. My initiation into prostitution was a gang rape by five men arranged by Mr. Trainer. It was a turning point in my life. He threatened to shoot me with the pistol if I didn't go through with it. I had never experienced anal sex before and it ripped me apart. They treated me like an inflatable plastic doll, picking me up

and moving me here and there. They spread my legs this way and that, shoving their things at me and into me. They were playing musical chairs with parts of my body. I've never been so frightened and disgraced and humiliated in my life. I felt like garbage. I engaged in sex acts and pornography

against my will to avoid being killed. The lives of my family were threatened. While testifying against the adult film industry at the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography in 1986 in the US, she said, when you see the movie Deep Throat you are watching me being raped. It is a crime. That movie is still showing. There was a gun to my head the entire time. So even though the BBFC in Parliament seemed excessively strict when it came to what can be considered obscene, I think that's you know possibly a great example of how their policies were sometimes good.

And I say possibly, well, I'll finish with this thought. They not only prevented footage from alleged actual rape being distributed to Britain, they also protected an alleged rape victim from being further exploited. And I only say alleged, there's just a little hesitation here because no criminal charges ever came against Chuck Traynor and people on both Chuck and Linda's side to the accusations stood up for each strongly

and Linda had released two very pro pornography autobiography or autobiographies in 1974 inside Linda Lovelace and the intimate diary of Linda Lovelace and then was in and out of porn in the late 70s sometimes not getting work because she was high or drunk on set. Other times refusing to be nude after previously agreeing to be nude because she had recently found God and then she would later want to do porn again but but not do well on set and then find God again and then back and forth. Apparently very hard to work with. She was a very troubled person and I think the argument is was she troubled because

she had been raped and coerced and beaten and pimped out? It's very possible. Or you know, did she feel shame over what she had done because of religious judgment that came later and then changed her life's history because she felt that porn was bad, you know, because people were pressuring her to exaggerate or make up details about the porn industry. Well, some think that's also what happened. All that being said, reading into it all a bit more, I'm inclined to believe Linda Borman aka Linda Lovelace when she said she was abused to to some extent. Okay, on the heels of Deep Throat, though not necessarily because of it, a new wave of extreme horror cinema like the world had never seen began dominating the

media landscape. Here we go. This new horror was more violent and gory than ever before, and suffice to say it freaked a lot of people out. And by a lot of people, I mean Mary Whitehouse and the folks at NVLA in particular, although I have to wonder if any of them even sat down and watched any of these movies. The first of this new wave of ultra horror to hit theaters was not a low budget affair, it was a clockwork orange, a classic film.

Premiered in UK cinemas January 13th, 1972. And it was a massive commercial and critical success, considered one of Harold the director Stanley Kubrick's best. The British Board of Film Censorship approved the film's release, but with an X rating, meaning only people ages 16 and up were allowed to see it, and yet the movie still received a lot of backlash from the media for its ghastly depictions of juvenile violence. The secretary of the BBFC, Stephen Murphy, defended the group's decision to approve the film, saying that Clockwork Orange is one of the most brilliant pieces of cinema not simply of the year but possibly of the decade.

According to multiple experts, by this moment in time the press had come to realize that film censorship had acquired news value, and thus began to siphon directly into the mouths of the public what was essentially sensationalized bullshit about the terrifying dangers of horror movies. And a smear campaign against this movie was launched. In one article published by the Daily Mail on August 24th, 1973, the author cited a report that had come out of the London School of Economics about social disobedience amongst children ages 12 to 17.

The Daily Mail article referred to this report, which had absolutely nothing to do with Kubrick's movie, as the first to study the clockwork orange society in this country. Essentially what the newspaper was doing was erroneously alleging a connection between the horror movie and a slight rise in disobedience amongst youth. As the tabloids began without evidence to spin more and more narratives about the harm horror movies can and will do to the vulnerable amongst us, many politicians began to do the same because so many politicians care far less about truth than they do about popular sentiment. Truth sure as shit does not always get you voted into office.

But aligning your announced values with public sentiment, whether that sentiment is based in fact or not, oh that has worked time and time again. As Sarah Cleary, author of The Myth of Harm, Horror, Censorship, and The Child wrote, seizing the opportunity to align themselves with the moral and the good, politicians also became increasingly vocal about the issue. For example, Maurice Edelman, a Labour Party member of parliament, once stated that when, quote, a clockwork orange is released, it will lead to a clockwork cult which will magnify teen violence. Did Maurice really fucking believe that? Or did Maurice just assume that his voting base would believe that?

It should be noted here that whenever politicians in the media spoke out about Clockwork Orange and how it was, quote, unparalleled in its concentrated parade of violence, viciousness, and cruelty, as one reporter for The Sun wrote, that was left out key details from the movie that would contextualize the parade of violence, viciousness, and cruelty, as one reporter for The Sun wrote, that was left out key details from the movie that would contextualize the parade of violence. Objectively, the plot of Clockwork Orange is one big metaphor, meant to probe questions about morality and critique the practice of aversion therapy, a type of therapy that was at the time being used on gay men and lesbian women across the UK. Writing for the Saturday Review, director Stanley Kubrick himself, who also adapted the screenplay

from the novel of the same name, a novel described as dystopian satirical black comedy set in a near future society that has a youth subculture of extreme violence, he described the movie as a social satire, dealing with the question of whether behavioral psychology and psychological conditioning are dangerous new weapons for a totalitarian government to use to impose vast controls on its citizens and turn them into little more than robots.

It wasn't the immoral slasher flick slash torture porn the media and politicians made it out to be. However, as we'll see quite a few times throughout this episode, such nuances of narrative and theme are never looked at by the moralist entrepreneurs and tabloids and politicians calling out for a horror movie's banishment. A nuanced view of the world does not suit their agendas. What the tabloids and the politicians did time and time again was to present a literal interpretation of horror movies. To them instead of a representation of the evils in society, horror movies were the embodiment of evil itself, capable of having a wicked borderline magical effect on its viewers, making them evil too.

As Sarah Cleary, author of The Myth of Harm, Horror, Censorship, and The Child, put it, they blamed the mirror for what it reflects. That's a great observation." One of the greatest examples of the media fabricating connections between real-world crime and violent horror movies took place in July of 1973 when a 16 year old named James Palmer bludgeoned to death a 60 year old homeless man. A rumor surrounding James spread that he might have seen a clockwork orange shortly before the murder. A rumor, one probably created by a tabloid journalist. The tabloids and the national press alike immediately began exploiting this juicy news

story based in fucking nothing. On July 4th, 1973, The Times published an article titled, Clockwork Orange Link with Boys Crime, part of which read, The violent film of Clockwork Orange was in the mind of a boy aged 16 as he beat an elderly tramp to death. It seemed as if, momentarily, the devil had been planted in this boy's subconscious. The irresistible conclusion is that it was the influence of a Clockwork Orange. Oh boy.

Before moving forward, why did the author refer to that poor guy as a tramp? And who was killed, you ask? A defenseless old tramp. That slutty hobo was murdered. Guessing tramp was a common slang at the time for homeless. Still sounds weird to me today. Despite the media's claims, during his trial, James confessed that he had literally never seen A Clockwork Orange. Like not once. Didn't even read the book. That Times article was complete

and utter sensationalist bullshit. That truth however did not deter his barrister Roger Gray from continuing to use the defense that James's soul was soiled by exploitive horror movies in general. Essentially claiming the devil made him do it. Following James's trial whenever a criminal defense lawyer tried to blame their clients crimes on exposure to explicit media it was known as the Clockwork Defense. Six was known as the Clockwork defense Six months after its arrival Clockwork Orange was pulled from Britain not by the British Board of Film Censors, but by director Stanley Kubrick himself

The media had gotten the public so worked up that he and other members of his family were getting fucking death threats from lunatics Who were convinced that his evil movie was destroying society? were getting fucking death threats from lunatics who were convinced that his evil movie was destroyed in society. A few months later, at the end of 1973, the erotic drama film Last Tango in Paris, starring renowned American actor Marlon Brando and French actress Maria Schneider became the first film to be prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act in the UK. The private prosecution was brought against the film's distributors by an outraged citizen named Edward Shackleton. Edward Dork Shackleton. Upset over the film's explicit sexual content and language. The film had

actually already been vetted and classified by the British Board of Film Censorship who determined the 10 seconds of one of the sex scenes needed to be cut in order for it to be released in Britain. The producers obliged, the 10 seconds were cut, and The Last Tango in Paris premiered in UK theaters with an X rating. However, the fact that the BBFC didn't outright ban the film entirely incensed a few ardent moralists like Mr. Shackleton. But unfortunately for him, his case was collapsed when the court found that the cut version of the movie didn't actually violate the obscene publications act. collapsed when the court found that the cut version of the movie didn't actually violate the Obscene Publications Act. This is because Last Tango in Paris aired more on the side of erotic art rather than exploitive pornography and the act

explicitly states that when considered as a whole an article is exempt if it was published in the interest of science, literature, art, or learning. March 14th 1974 a fresh new threat to the nation's innocence comes in the form of the now classic horror movie, The Exorcist. Like Clockwork Orange, The Exorcist was approved for release and given an X rating by the BBFC, and much like Clockwork Orange, following the release of The Exorcist, the tabloids published a barrage of fear-mongering articles about the dire threats the movie posed to the nation's children, and unsurprisingly both the number of politicians and moral entrepreneurs became outspoken opposers

of the film. Members of the Festival of Light and the National Listener and Viewers Association picketed outside cinemas where the exorcist was being shown, handing out pamphlets for support groups to moviegoers, telling them that after they watched the devilish film, they would undoubtedly need psychological help. At one cinema in Birmingham, the festival handed out leaflets to dissuade entrants from watching the film. The leaflets proclaimed, Fear. Fear is contagious. And no fear more so than the awesome dread of disembodied evil. And if we become gripped by this type of fear, our minds are open to the psychological suggestion

that we too are at risk of invasion by similar powers of evil. We are not immune simply because this is 1974 and we are in Birmingham. We are not immune because our reason tells us such things that cannot happen. Or it tells us such things cannot happen. And we are very vulnerable indeed if we half believe they might. Oh my goodness! To hell with the devil! If we half believe they might. Oh my goodness! Yai yai yai yai yai!

So they thought that this movie was going to create an epidemic of demonic possession. If that was true with all the horror out there in the world today, wouldn't most of us be demonically possessed by now? Despite the outspoken moralists who admonished the movie, most people were big fans, including you might be surprised to learn many Catholic priests. Particularly in the US, clergymen praised the movie for its accurate representation of the devil as an actual being, you know what they considered accurate, not just a metaphor. Laypeople too were enthralled with the movie, hence its enduring position as one of the greatest films of all time over 50-some years later. The film besides being terrifying, pretty layered, has a lot to say. In his book Horror, A Thematic History, and Fiction in Film, Dr. Daryl Jones offered his analysis of the exorcist's

complexity, stating that the most disturbing feature of the film is the way in which a young girl's body becomes a site of contested possession and control for all of the film's competing interests, the devil obviously, but also the various clinicians who attempt to treat Reagan and the exorcist themselves. However, like I said earlier, the tabloids and moral entrepreneurs were not interested in contextualizing the gory violence of the film within its symbolic narrative because if they did that they wouldn't be able to write such fabulously sensational stories about the correlation between real life incidents and the movie.

For example, when 16 year old boy, a 16 year old boy by the name of Jonathan Power, collapsed and died the day after seeing the exorcist in theaters, his cause of death was implied very heavily by to being literally scared to death by the film. The truth was actually that the teenage boy had pre-existing medical problems relating to his heart. However, very few newspapers reported that detail because obviously not as exciting as the devil killed him. Shit like that always cracks me up. Let's say that movie had actually scared this kid to death. Would that be evidence that the movie was truly dangerous? Or would that have been evidence that Jonathan had some seriously intense mental health issues or very weak heart?

Right, he could have ended up being scared to death by any number of things. I mean if the movie truly was lethally dangerous, why weren't hundreds or thousands or even millions of people being scared to death? I mean the movie was the top grossing film in America for any movie released in 1973. Millions of people saw it in the theaters. It was breaking attendance records in some markets and yet only one person was scared to death. Sounds to me like a problem with that person, not with the movie. A few months later during his trial for the murder of a nine-year-old little girl, 16-year-old Nicholas Bell told the court that there was something inside me. It has been in me since I saw that film The Exorcist. I felt something take possession of me. It has been in me since I saw that film The Exorcist. I felt something take possession of me.

It has been in me ever since." The Sturbag's clockwork defense soon fell apart when he admitted to the judge that he made all that up and had never even seen The Exorcist. However, Sarah Cleary pointed out, the fact that such a defense was even entertained, never mind validated in the courts, spoke volumes of the climate in which the video nasty controversy emerged. 1978, now big year in this story. Before we find out how big it was, let's take today's second in two mid-show sponsor breaks. Thanks for listening to those sponsors, and now let's return to 1978, find out why 1978 was such a big year in the story. It was the year the home video craze in the UK officially began.

By the end of the decade it would become one of the most popular forms of entertainment media in the country if not the most popular. The two most common VCRs during this time were the Philips N1500 and the Sony SLC7 Betamax video recorders. The Philips N1500 was actually first released to the public in 1962, but it took almost a decade for it to really take off because its cost of £600, which equates to roughly £22,000 today, was steep, and it was fairly unreliable due to how thin the tape format was.

The Sony SLC-7, on the other hand, was an instant success when it first launched in Japan in 1975 and then equally popular amongst Brits when it made its way there in 1977. Now it's because the C7 had features that had never been seen before in VCRs including slow motion recording, picture search, and an end of tape alarm. It was also super expensive, cost 640 pounds when first released, but it was just so damn cool that I guess that very steep price was worth it for a fair number of people. And then by 1982, just a few years later, new and improved models were selling for less than half that, down to 300 pounds, and that price would fall rapidly from there in the ensuing years.

With consumer-grade VCR spreading across the country, film no longer was just for professionals in Hollywood, movies no longer confined to the cinema, there was a whole new market for movies and a much lower financial hurdle to jump for aspiring filmmakers. As we've already seen at this time there were laws in place to regulate the content and distribution of films but these were videos, an entirely new unheard of thing. Even though today we might think of the two as synonymous, back then the video was an entirely new invention and one that seemed to take over Britain overnight. By the end of 1978, again despite that steep cost, the home video market was flourishing.

Seems like everybody had a video recorder in their house or knew or worked with somebody who did and with no censorship or regulation anybody who wanted to was selling videos to the public. According to Steven Gerard Doheny's master's thesis, just how nasty were the video nasties? Videos could be bought or rented from almost anywhere. Newsagents, garages, even butchers and barbers. Dorks, beware! Those damn video nasties are everywhere! For the most part, in those early years, major distributors steered clear of the fledgling video industry because they feared losing their theatrical audience. And because of that the video market was largely dominated by small independent distributors. To quote Professor Julian Petley again, what cannot be overestimated here is the shocking impact of

the sensoriously minded of the sudden availability sensor sensoris sensoriously like like censorship in a domestic medium of a range of images which the combined forces of the Obscene Publications Act, the police, and the BBFC had for decades done their very utmost to shield from British eyes. Another thing to remember about the domestic video craze is that at the time, besides there being no internet, there was no such thing as all-night TV. So the video was the only way for someone to watch a movie or anything past midnight when TV broadcasts ended.

Something we take for granted now, the ability to watch whatever we want, whenever we want to watch it, within the comfort of our own homes, was a new reality for people in the UK. In 1979, the UK video distribution company GoVideo sent out a fake letter of complaint about their own movie to moral crusader Mary Whitehouse. Their plan was to generate free publicity for the film called Cannibal Holocaust. That is a shocking title.

They wanted Mary to be outraged and they wanted her to do her best to censor the film which would then you know get a shit ton of people to watch it. And initially their plan worked masterfully. As soon as Whitehouse caught wind of the film oh I guess she was horrified she began denouncing both its uh and its video brethren for the dangers they posed to the innocents among us and the more she denounced it the more people bought it. Cannibal Holocaust went from being a foreign film that no one had heard of to selling out in every video retailer in the London metropolitan area within a matter of months. However, despite its initial success, Go Video's plan eventually did backfire two years later,

when the media got more involved and the video nasty moral panic really began to set in. And Cannibal Holocaust was singled out as the paragon of VHS depravity. Let me play you the original trailer for this video. It's pretty sweet. Cannot stress enough how low budget it is. I'll read all the dramatic on-screen words that the narrator doesn't narrate. Cruel, barbaric, authentic, the most brutal and savage film in modern history. The cameramen who shot this film were later devoured alive by cannibals. The law of the jungle. Eat. Or be eaten. These film cans tell what happened to the Americans who journeyed into the Amazon to shoot a documentary.

Cannibal Holocaust. Rip out. Barbecue. Devour. How long can you take it? New York City is only a day away from the green inferno of the Amazon jungle. Four Americans plunge into the savagery of the Amazon jungle to film a documentary. They never come back. Are they still alive? If so, where are they? Cruel.

Bruisel. Savage. Shocking. Authentic. Actually filmed in the Amazon jungle. A bunch of horrible images of people Think of a film! Cannibal Holocaust Uh, yeah, so that's intense, you know? And to be fair to the censors, you know that movie, it is brutal.

Cannibal Holocaust, an Italian exploitation film. It was directed by Ruggero... Ruggero Diodaro! And I don't know if that's how you say his name. by Ruggero Diodaro and released in Italian theaters February 7th 1980. Cool piece of trivia about this film. I think this is very cool actually. This is the first movie to use the found footage technique. They pioneered that almost two decades before the American psychological film The Blair Witch Project would later do the same. You know and a device you know very commonly used today in horror films. The plot of Cannibal Holocaust, to expand on the trailer, is that a crew of filmmakers

has gone missing in the Amazon rainforest while filming a documentary on a local cannibal tribe. Anthropologist Harold Monroe leads a rescue team to save the documentary crew only to discover their skeletal remains and their film reels displayed on a local tribe shrine. The footage reveals the documentarians assaulted natives, staged atrocities in order to get good shots for the film. Upon arriving in the village, the documentary crew slaughtered a child's pet pig, heard of some of the natives into a hut,

which they then set on fire to make it look like a massacre committed by one of their own. The male members of the crew also raped and murdered a local girl, then impaled her dead body on a wooden pole near the river While then filming the girls corpse the crew claimed her her tribe had killed her for losing her virginity The tribe then hunts down the crew in order to avenge the young girl Which was raped and killed who was raped and killed they eventually capture and kill each and every member of the crew and the leader Mark films the whole thing including their female script writer Faye as she gets stripped naked, beaten, gang raped and beheaded. So maybe not the best one to sit around and watch with the whole family.

But should it have been banned or heavily censored, so heavily censored it wouldn't make any sense. In 1980, what would become one of the most notorious of all the video nasties hit the shelves in Britain, I spit on your grave. Directed by Israeli-American film director, screenwriter and producer Mir Zarchi, I spit on your grave. It's great time. It's about Jennifer Hills, an aspiring author from Manhattan who rents

an isolated cottage by a lake to finish her first novel. And it is nasty. Major spoiler alerts ahead. While on her countryside retreat Jennifer is targeted by four local men Johnny Stillman, Stanley Woods, Andy Czareński and Matthew Duncan. One day the men attack Jennifer while she's out on her boat. They drag her to the shore, they gang rape her and leave her for dead. The rest of the movie follows Jennifer in the days after her attack as she takes her revenge on each of her assailants

killing him off one by one. She murders Matthew by enticing him with the promise of sex to a tree behind her house where she then hangs him, throws his lifeless body into the lake. Next, Jennifer lures Johnny to her car where he tells her that the rape was her fault because she was wearing revealing clothing. Jennifer pretends to agree invites Johnny back to her cottage to join her for a hot bath. Once she has him exactly where she wants him, Jennifer takes out a knife and slices off his fucking cock and balls. She then leaves the bathroom locking him inside to bleed out and the rapist screams as he dies and then soon Jennifer can't hear him

over the sound of her favorite opera music she plays. Jennifer takes out the final two assailants when they take their boat to her cabin to look for their missing friends. After shoving Stanley overboard, Jennifer plunges an axe into Andy's back as he tries to escape. To avoid drowning, Stanley grabs onto the boat's idle motor. The motor begged Jennifer not to kill him. She replies with the same phrase he used over and over again when he raped her. Suck it, bitch! And then she starts the motor.

Oh, fuck yeah, bro! Its sharp rotating propellers disembowel the rapist and she speeds off happily into the horizon So you know it's good that she gets some revenge I spit on your grave was actually first released in the US in 1978 under the name the day of the woman Two years later the film was rebranded and repackaged to be more attractive to consumers more shocking And again, yeah, very graphic movie. You know, the gang rape scene feels like it'll never fucking end. It's a lot. Number of film critics today consider it one of the worst movies ever made. Film critic Roger Ebert called it a

vile bag of garbage. It was included in a 2010 Time magazine list of the top 10 ridiculously violent movies. Also remade in 2010, and the remake spawned two sequels and a sequel to the original I spit on your grave deja vu was released in 2019. Currently does not have a critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes because almost no critics have agreed to review it. Nicholas Bell from Ion Cinema did. He didn't care for it. He wrote unfortunately there's not one redeeming element of this perilously woe-begone and utterly tasteless sequel, which is simply cashing in on a last grasp of notoriety thanks to the continual reputation of the first film. Has an audience approval score of 12%.

The original somehow has a critical approval rating of 50%, audience score of 40%. Would you probably enjoy watching it? Statistically unlikely. Should censors make it illegal for you to watch it if you do want to? I don't think so. Returning to the timeline now, from the time they began circulated in 1978 until about 1981, there really was no panic about the horror videos, now suddenly available in Britain. A shock, surely, but not panic. It wasn't until the British Advertising Standards Authority, the ASA, began receiving complaints

about some horror movies in 1981 and the media wrote about it that the first inklings towards inactual moral panic began to show. In an article titled Blood and Gore Video of Adverts Go Too Far, published by the Coventry Evening Telegraph, the author wrote, Video film advertisements designed to appeal to degraded tastes have been condemned by the advertising standards authority. It is warned of a worrying trend towards sadism and violence in the booming video market. The ASA's findings have been backed up by the video merchants in Britain, but they say this

is what the people want. The article goes on to explain that the ASA had received three complaints about an ad for the video film SS Experiment Camp that appeared on the back of a popular magazine. The advertisement depicted a mostly naked woman wearing a thong, hung upside down on a stake, superimposed over the face of a Nazi general, and the caption read, Horrifying experiments in pursuit of the master race. SS Experiment Camp available at all good video dealers. SS Experiment Camp is an Italian Nazi exploitation film directed by Sergio Garone, originally released in the US in 1976. The ASA reviewed the offending advertisement and determined it should be pulled from circulation as it breached the advertising standard code.

Here's a summary of the film's plot. The plot concerns non-consensual sexual experimenting with female prisoners at the concentration camp run by Colonel von Kleben, a Nazi officer who needs a testicle transplant after being castrated by a Russian girl. So that's not exactly highbrow. You can order the DVD from a variety of places online. You can even stream from some questionable looking sites online if that sounds like something you just really need to see. Around that same time, the ASA also received 11 complaints about an ad for the video film

The Driller Killer, which appeared in four different magazines. The ad depicted a man drilling a hole through another man's skull and was graced with the caption, The blood runs in rivers and the drill keeps tearing through flesh and bone. The movie it was promoting, The Driller Killer, directed by American filmmaker Abel Ferrara, follows the story of a New York artist and his descent into homicidal madness.

The film's main character, Reno Miller, lives in Union Square with his girlfriend, Carol, and her lesbian lover, Pamela. I'm already curious, I'm already interested. Already behind on rent, struggling from creative burnout and unhappy in his relationship, Reno is pushed over the edge when a No Wave band moves in next door. No Wave, by the way, was a short-lived avant-garde music genre briefly popular in the late 1970s in downtown New York City. It was a response to the post-punk commercialized New Wave music that was popular at the time.

Instead of being concerned with, you know, all that cliché bullshit people like, like melody, rhythm, chords, lyrics, a good voice. Versus no wave musicians were interested in things, you know, just like noise, harsh dissonance, atonality, which is music that lacks a tonal center. Very, very Yoko Ono-ish. Let me share a sample. This is the 1978 song, I Woke Up Dreaming, by Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. I can't breathe Won't you just please release me Okay, not gonna lie. I can see how having a band like that rehearsing next door a lot would cause somebody to snap and start murdering people. Anyway, this No Wave band plays their noise all day and all night and it drives Reno literally insane. He goes on a rampage across New York killing any and every homeless person he sees with his handy drill,

which of course powers with a portable battery. Like the ad for the SS experiment camp, the ad for Driller Killer was pulled from circulation by the ASA. In that same evening Telegraph article, the owner of a video store in Coventry stated, I agree with what the ASA is saying, but it is a fact of life that the more salacious the cover looks, the more tapes will sell. It is what people want. I'd play a clip from the movie, but it doesn't translate to just audio. You just hear shitty music, sound of a drill, sound of somebody getting drilled screaming. That same year, 1981 still, to avoid state intervention in the new domestic film market, the newly formed British Videogram Association, they'd just been founded the year before, began negotiating with the BBFC.

Within months, the two entities had reached an agreement, come up with a self-policing code of practice and classification for video distributors to follow voluntarily. However, that wasn't enough of course to appease the media or the moral entrepreneurs. On May 12, 1982, the first ever national press story about the insurmountable threat of domestic videos ran in the Daily Mail. In an article titled, The Secret Video Show, the author warned, more and more children, well used to video recorders in school, are catching on to the fact that their parents' machine, the VCR, can give them the opportunity to watch the worst excesses of cinema sex and violence. The problem arises because video is now the fastest growing part of the home entertainment industry and yet is too young to have developed its own controls.

With that, the media storm about the horrors of horror videos had begun, and a true moral panic was set into motion. On May 23, 1982, the Sunday Times published an article titled, How High Street Horror is Invading the Home, written by journalist Peter Chippendale. This is the first time that the term video nasty was used in the press to describe the graphic video horror movies. The intro of the article reads, High Street Nasties, the films that are helping the video boom in Britain.

Uncensored horror video cassettes, available to anybody of any age, have arrived in Britain's high streets. They exploit extremes of violence and are rapidly replacing sexual pornography, as the video trade's biggest money spinner. Chippendale goes on to explain that the Nasties are far removed from the suspense of the traditional horror film.

They dwell on murder, multiple rape, butchery, sadomasochism, mutilation of women, cannibalism, and Nazi atrocities. The article identifies four of the many video nasties available to children. The Driller Killer, SS Experiment Camp, I spit on your grave, Cann holocaust and snuff Snuff was originally released in New York City on January 16th 1976 crushed at the theater outgrossed one flew over the cuckoo's nest for three consecutive weeks in New York City loosely based on the 1969 murders committed by the Manson family

They got a lot of publicity because it was marketed as being an actual snuff film where some of the actors literally die on... well one actress literally dies on film. In the film's final minutes the camera pulls out to show the crew shooting a scene and the director can be seen flirting with the female crew member. They start kissing, doing some heavy petting. The crew starts filming them. Oh boy! Then the director suddenly assaults the woman out of nowhere, proceeds to torture, kill, and disembowel her, and the crew assists him and just keeps filming. And the film then ends with the camera running out of stock. You know, pretty graphic and shocking if you

think the woman is actually being brutally murdered. I don't know, I don't know how you would think that after watching the ending, which is now considered tame enough to be shown uncensored on YouTube. Not totally sure how anyone can see this and think the death was real. Let's start with the acting, really not good. Like really, really not good. The practical effects much worse than the acting. Like preposterously fake by today's cinema standards. Like not even good enough for like a haunted house you would go to in October somewhere. Like whatever effects they're using at your local, you know, city's haunted house, way fucking better than this movie.

In his article about snuff and similar video nasties, Chippendale pointed out that it's not just the fact that these films are gory and violent and inappropriate that makes them so dangerous, it's the fact that they're, and videos come with dangerous new controls. As Chippendale wrote, video viewers use the freeze frame, slow motion, and rewind buttons on their recorder to revel in the gory bits of the nasties as often as they'd like. While hundreds of newspapers are hopping on the bandwagon now to condemn the video nasties and speak out against the moral decline of traditional family values, one of the more shocking publications to do so was the weekly magazine

Titbits, which thanks to its featuring of pinup models, some more or less considered to be a soft porn mag. Great name, Titbits, has nothing to do with boobs by the way. Founded back in 1881, journalists who worked for it would go on to found the Daily Mail and the Daily Express. On August 7th, 1982, Titbits published an article titled The Vile Side of Nasties, in which they warned that quote, Butchery, cannibalism, and rap. Ha! Ha ha!

What a crazy fucking thing to throw in there. Butchery, cannibalism, and also hip-hop are taken over from the sex movies. A vast number of ordinary families feed happily on butchery, multiple rapes, castration, cannibalism, mutilation of women, and torture. Unless the obscene publications act is invoked swiftly against the video nasties, the problem will escalate." What does fucking rap have to do with any of that? It's weird that they mention that up top and then show no evidence of that. Apparently this isn't like, you know, black people making music or something. What problem are they referring to?

Is the problem watching movies that feature all that stuff? Or is the problem that watching all that shit leads to similar real world crimes? Because if viewing that stuff does not lead to any crimes, is there a problem? Although it may seem ironic that a magazine featuring pinup models would join the Moralist Crusade against horror videos, scholars agree it makes total sense. For two reasons. It's the same two reasons that most publications align themselves with the anti-video nasty campaign. A. It boosted readership. B. They didn't want to appear unconcerned about the issue. In choosing to advocate this anti-nasty stance, Sarah Cleary explains, the papers were not only creating a marketable story, but also airing on

the side of caution. Thus, the majority of the papers opted for the impression that they were on the side of the right, the moral right. Near the end of 1982, Tory Parliament member Gareth Warden attempted to introduce a bill to criminalize the sale and rental of exploitive videos to children under the age of 18. As Sarah Cleary pointed out, this was sort of a suspicious timing, she wrote, as the advocation of child protection policies has traditionally proved to be a popular and advantageous form of political profiteering, it's little coincidence that the necessity to intervene on what up until then had been a relatively harmonious relationship between video distributors, video vendors and the government happened to fall within the same period as the 1983 Tory re-election campaign. On February 25, 1983, the Daily Mail now published an article titled, We Must Protect Our Children

Now in which they condemned Parliament for rejecting Warden's Bill saying that it's obscene that the videos the kids collect and guiltily giggling groups to watch could not be shown in any British cinema to their parents. Totally agree. They should allow those movies to be shown on the big screen for their parents to watch. That's probably not what they were saying. This article marked the official start of the Daily Mail's Ban the Sadist Videos campaign. A campaign that would continue for the next decade and a campaign that the newspaper would make a lot of money off of. After all, what gets people to buy your newspaper better than a giant headline that reads, your

children are in danger of becoming murderers if they watch these movies. Parliament's doing nothing about it. Man, such bullshit fear-mongering hysteria inducing journalism based solely in exploitive greed. And speaking of that type of journalism, January 2nd, 1983, The Sunday Times published the article Seduction of the Innocent by David Holbrooke. In the piece, Holbrooke stated, Children are actually deliberately being shown films of buggery, rape, and mutilation. Many see them because they are lying around the home. This, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children believe, is a new form

of cruelty. The organization believes that permanent damage could be done to children's minds by such pornographic and sadistic material. One cannot but see such manifestations as forms of course seduction of the innocent. But what is more startling is the total absence of protest on part of teachers, parents, or the authorities. All that crazy grooming hysteria over the last few years. It's nothing new.

What a weird angle to take that these low budget horror exploitation films were being made specifically to seduce the children. Get the fuck out of here. They were made by filmmakers just trying to make a little bit of money outside of Hollywood. It's not that fucking deep. The paranoid, melodramatic, conspiratorial mind always wants to make shit so much bigger than it is. Like, like all those filmmakers were part of some satanic pedophile ringer. Members of the Illuminati. No, they were just struggling filmmakers. Maybe didn't have the best taste.

Trying to make a little money. Admits growing fear in the media and increasing pressure from Mary Whitehouse and the NVLA. On June 30, 1983, the director of public prosecutions released a list of 72 horror movies that he believed to violate the Obscene Publications Act. The list was meant to help local authorities identify which films were liable for prosecution under the act and were therefore subject to seizure. Of the 72 films, 39 were successfully prosecuted and banned. Though it wasn't its official name, the catalog of films was immediately dubbed the Video Nasty List. Not gonna go through all 72 of them, but here are some that are now considered cult classics. Flesh for Frankenstein, 1974, 1971's A Bay

of Blood, 1980's Cannibal Apocalypse, 1981's The House on the Edge of the Park. 1972's The Last House on the Left. 1980's Anthropophagous, AKA The Grim Reaper. 1981 The Evil Dead. 1981 Possession. 1980's Cannibal Holocaust. Very similar to Cannibal Apocalypse. And of course the classic film I Spit on Your Grave, released 1978. Curious about these? Well, here's a few plot summaries, starting with Flesh for Frankenstein.

Baron Frankenstein dreams of restoring Serbia to glory, so he builds male and female monsters whose children will become the new master race. Determined that they be fruitful, he aims to equip the male body with the brain of someone possessing a powerful libido. Thinking local stable boy Nicholas will be perfect, he mistakenly gets the head of Nicholas's pious friend instead. Meanwhile Nicholas seduces the Baron's wife. Special effects for that movie even worse than the effects in Snuff. A house on the edge of the park's plot, pretty straightforward. Two low-life punks invite themselves to a party at a posh villa at the edge of a park. After being taunted by their snobbish hosts, they decide to hold everyone hostage

and subject them to various forms of torture and mayhem. Here's a quick scene of the main punk, a serial killer named Alex, getting shot in the nuts and screaming as he falls into the pool and oh what a scream it is still going not done Still going. Not done. Still building. Well, all right.

That was a nice slow mo, slow mo scream there. The Evil Dead is actually a great movie, my opinion. A lot of people's opinion. Especially for a low-budget video nasty. Ashley, Ash Williams, played by young Bruce Campbell. I love Bruce Campbell. His girlfriend and three pals hike into the woods for a cabin for a fun night away. There they find an old book, The Necronomicon,

whose text reawakens the dead when it's read aloud. The friends inadvertently release a flood of evil and must fight for their lives or become one of the evil dead. Ash watches his friends become possessed and he must make a difficult decision before daybreak to save his own life. So many good moments that movie. They just don't necessarily translate to audio. Like when you like when he puts the fucking chainsaw on the stump after he loses his hand. The original Last House on the Left, a rape and murder revenge film, marked the directorial debut of Wes Craven, guy who created the nightmare on Elm Street, Freddy Krueger franchise. Teenagers Mari and Phyllis head to the city for a concert, then afterward go looking for drugs. Instead they find a gang of escaped convicts who subject them

to a night of torture and rape. The gang then kills the girls in the woods, not realizing they're near Mari's house. When they pose as salesmen and are taken in by Mari's mother and father, it doesn't take the parents long to figure out their identities and plot revenge. And one more. Anthropophagus, aka the Grim Reaper, is about some tourists who become stranded on an island and are stalked by a gruesome killer that slaughtered the island's former inhabitants. And here's a little clip.

Get off! A flash of steel. An unearthly shriek. An icy breath. A knock at the door Omens of evil warnings of death an invitation to terror from the grim reaper oh No

I gotta say well the well the plots these movies are no pretty over-the-top pretty horrific You know a lot of them revolve around rape when you the scenes, they are in general so hard to take seriously. They're so cheesy, so poorly shot, written and acted. The effects are so terrible. It is hard to understand how people were so scared of them. Like, just really campy, really bad. I mean, you can find any number of far more graphic sex scenes simulating abuse online today and today's horror movies movies shown in

the theaters often feature much more disturbing depictions of violence. Mary Whitehouse might have literally died from shock had she seen any of the hostile or saw films. Back to our timeline now. On June 30th 1983 the Daily Mail published another article as part of their heroic crusade against the dangers of the home video. This one titled, The Rape of Our Children's Minds. No sensationalism there at all. In this uplifting, and not even a tiny bit alarmist piece, the author describes how violent crimes committed by Britain's youth were on the rise and claimed that the reason for this was because those youths had been quote weaned on a diet of rape videos that they had purchased from the video pusher the article also suggested that the threat posed by the epidemic of home videos was comparable to the threat posed by the rise of the Third Reich

totally ever since Hitler people have loved to compare shit not even close to Hitler to Hitler or to his Nazi regime. Here's a quote. Britain fought the last world war against Hitler to defeat a creed so perverted that it spawned such horrors and awful truth. Now Britain allows our children to be nurtured on these perverted horrors and on any permutation of them under the guise of entertainment. What? Was that dipshit, uh, actually saying that there would be no video Nazis if there had not been the Nazis?

As if the world had just been free from evil prior to Hitler? Did they think that the Dark Ages were just a joy-filled period of time where the average peasant lived in a continual state of happiness merriment and prosperity? You know, when inquisitors never flayed anyone's skin off or burned them alive for maybe but definitely not being a witch. On August 5th 1983, the Times reported further definitive proof that horror videos caused real-world violence and the article, Rapist was addicted to video nasties. The story is about the case of Christopher May or Mia

perhaps, who was found guilty of raping a woman earlier that year. Like the title says, the story claims that Christopher used to be a loving and considerate husband and friend until he began watching the video Nasties. Two of his favorites were The Thing and The Last House on the Left. The article mused over how much he was reported to have enjoyed horror movies, but neglected to address the fact that he had suffered a severe fucking head injury in 1979 That substantially damaged his frontal lobe and changed his personality Drastically and forever. Oh and he was under the influence of both hard drugs and alcohol when he committed the crime and this is probably important

He was a known domestic abuser have been abusing women before video cassettes ever showed up in England During the time of the rape he committed, Christopher Mia was actually on bail for one of the two previous assaults he'd recently committed, despite the police opposing his release from prison. So to anyone with half a working brain, pretty fucking obvious that the video nasties were not the problem here. Christopher Mia was the problem. And the only possible thing he could reasonably blame for his behavior was a damaged brain. In November of 1983, the then Lord Chief Justice was quoted in the Daily Mail saying,

it will not be long before these scenes in the video nasties are enacted in real life. Human beings are imitative, and the less strong-minded the more imitative they are. November of 1983, a committee known as the Parliamentary Group Video Inquiry, published a report providing factual evidence relating to the effects upon children of their viewing scenes of violence in video films. Well, they didn't actually provide that, but they said they provided that. Despite their catchy name, the Parliamentary Group Video Enquiry was in no way associated with British Parliament.

The name, as many scholars suggest, was simply a ploy to imbue themselves with credibility. The group did, however, have support within the government, specifically with one MP aka member of parliament named Graham Bright who was proposing a bill to crack down on the Obscene Publications Act in order to make it easier to prosecute videos. Graham Bright was backed by both the Festival of Light and the NVLA and his greatest supporter Mary Whitehouse who said that getting rid of the video nasties was a matter of protecting the health and safety of our children. After the parliamentary group video inquiry was first formed MP Bright was quoted in multiple newspapers and caught on live television stating that undoubtedly the research the group was conducting would prove that these films not only affect young people but dogs as well.

Yeah, we got worried about the fucking dogs watching these movies now. Holy shit. Dude said that with a straight face. Not being satirical, not being sarcastic. Low-budget horror movies with graphic depictions of violence and sexuality will fuck up your dog's moral compass. Careful Bojangles! Do you understand how fucking dumb and or insane you have to be to confidently utter shit like that? I mean for him to believe that, that means he thought that when not exposed to video nasties, dogs understood what things like rape and torture are and they just chose not to engage in those activities. You ever been humped by a dog? You ever seen that dog hump somebody else? Any dog hump somebody? You know, or another animal? Pretty sure they didn't ask for consent. I mean technically, you know, your dog raped you or raped your friend. My gold

retriever Sam, when I was in grade school, would try and rape my friend Ryan every time he came over to my mom's house. And sometimes he would for sure get knocked down and get raped by my dog. And Sam wasn't allowed inside ever. So I know for a fact he never watched any video nasties. At the same time, we had a basset hound in our neighborhood named Maggie, another outside dog, so she never watched the video nasties and yet she would still rape one of my neighbor's cats on an almost daily basis. I mean that dog loved to fucking hump the shit out of a cat. Such an absurd thing for anyone to say that horror movies can corrupt a dog's

mind. Fucking politicians. You do not have to be smart to get elected. You really don't. Sir Graham Frank James Bright said shit like that and was a member of Parliament from 1979 all the way to 1997. He was knighted in 1994. And he was mostly known for passing legislation, censoring videos and legislation, increasing penalties for anyone caught, dealing or using LSD, aka acid, or MDMA, aka Mollie, because he felt that the UK's burgeoning rave scene was again adding to the moral decay of Britain's youth. Fuck that dork. Fucking Graham Bright.

When the parliamentary group video inquiries report was published, it was deeply flawed and quote, overflowing with spurious material, presenting advocacy for Christian morality as proven fact and evidence. However, as Sarah clearly pointed out, fortunately for Bright, the alleged threat from nasties superseded any actual necessity for proof. The narrative that video nasties were harmful was so morally pervasive and culturally pervasive that research to confirm these effects was almost incidental. Still this report, riddled with errors and unfounded as it was

was enough to push Parliament to take action. On July 12th 1984 the United Kingdom Parliament passed the Video Recordings Act also known as the VRA requiring all videos to be reviewed and classified by the British Board of Film Censors before commercial release. As we went over earlier the BBFC was also in charge of classifying As we went over earlier, the BBFC was also in charge of classifying cinema films, as it was called back then, long before the streaming era, and the classification system they used for video films fairly similar. However, unlike with movie theaters, under the new legislation it was now a criminal offense to distribute, sell, or rent an unclassified video, aka a video that had not been vetted by the BBFC, or to provide a video to a person under the age stipulated in his classification certificate, be it for profit or as a gift.

But new films were not the only victims of the VRA's censorship. Every single film released prior to September 1st of 1984 also now had to be resubmitted for classification within three years. If a film was not resubmitted, it was pulled from the shelves. Between its inception in 1984 to when it was amended in 1995, the Act, or excuse me, there were over 1700 convictions under this Act. So much nasty. The VRA was a badly thought out, hastily implemented solution

to the perceived problem of the video nasties, and an example of a moral panic over an uncorroborated myth, how that can lead to real legislation. British scholar of media studies and anti-racism and anti-censorship campaigner Martin Barker declared in 1984 that the new bill holds out real threats of practical censorship disguised, of course, as moral protection. The VRA has also been described by experts in more recent years as being a botch of legislation and a law based on fraudulent justification and whipped up moral panic.

And it didn't end in the 80s. On February 12th, 1993, two 10-year-old boys, Robert Thompson and John Venables, abducted a toddler named James Patrick Bolger from a shopping mall in Maryside, England. Warning this, just because it's out of context for this episode. This will be a pretty brutal crime here. Very brutal. A two-year-old James's mom had let go of his hand for a few moments so she could pay for her items at the cash register. And while she was not looking, Robert approached her kid, led him away. Such a horrible thing to happen to a parent. In her 2018 book about the gut-wrenching loss of her son, James' mother Dennis Bolger wrote,

There has been so much written about what happened and so many opinions given, but I want to make one thing clear. I absolutely did not leave my baby outside the butcher's on his own. I would have never done that. He was with me and holding my hand as we went inside. The only time I let go of his hand was to pay for the chop side bought and he was standing right beside me. I picked out the meat I wanted, took my bag from my shoulder, got my purse out, opened it to count the money, and when I looked down,

James was gone. After leading James away from the mall, Robert and John proceeded to horrifically torture this little boy like he was not a human being. Like he wasn't even an animal, just some unfeeling doll that couldn't comprehend what was being done to him. They poured paint in his eyes, they shoved batteries in his mouth, they sexually assaulted him, they threw him into a canal on his head, they dropped a 22-pound metal railway plate on him while he laid on the ground, and so much more. Little James suffered so many severe injuries, 42 in total, 10 of which were skull fractures, that the authorities were unable to identify what actually killed him. The 10-year-old's doing that shit, then took the toddler's body, arranged on some railway tracks, hoping that his death would be ruled as a train accident. As they fled the scene,

a train did actually come and it cut James's body in half. His mangled remains were discovered two days later by some local boys playing football at a nearby field. Didn't take long for the police to identify Robert Tomspin and John Venables as suspects. They were actually caught on video walking away with this poor little guy. They were surprised to discover that the suspects were so young. On February 20th, 1993, both boys were charged with murder, detained at South Sefton Youth Court while awaiting trial. November 24th, 1993, now 11-year-olds John and Robert are both found guilty of Bulger's murder. They were tried as adults, which I 100% agree

with, in a crime this preposterously heinous, and due to an overwhelming number of death threats, both boys' parents had to move to different parts of the country and assume new identities. They were the youngest convicted murderers of the 20th century. Before sentencing them, the judge, Sir Michael Morland, said, Robert Thomson and John Venables, the killing of James Bolger was an act of unparalleled evil and barbarity. This child of two was taken from his mother on a journey of over two miles and then on the railway line was battered to death without mercy and then his body was placed across

the railway line so that his body would be run over by a train in an attempt to conceal his murder. In my judgment, your conduct was both cunning and very wicked. The sentence that I pass upon you both is that you shall be detained during Her Majesty's pleasure in such a place and under such conditions as the Secretary of State may direct, and that means that you will be securely detained for very, very many years until the home secretary is satisfied that you have matured and Are fully rehabilitated and are no longer a danger to others Both killers ended up being released to the age of 18 in 2001 But released on a lifelong license, which basically meant they were on parole for literally the rest of their lives John Venables would be charged with possession child pornography go to prison in 2010, get back out shortly thereafter in 2013, then return to prison again

in 2017 for possessing photos of children being sexually abused on his computer. He's currently in prison but eligible for release, which is preposterous. That motherfucker cannot be rehabilitated clearly, doesn't deserve to be. Uh, Robert Thompson has not been caught reoffending again and his current whereabouts are unknown to the public. Man, would you fucking trust somebody like that around your kid? I wouldn't give a shit if they do that when they're 10. There's just certain things that when you do them, I just think it changes you forever.

Would you want that kid to be in your neighborhood? Would you want, would you be okay with some vigilantes tying him to a railroad track and letting the train cut him in half? No, no, yes. In the wake of toddler James Bulger's horrific murder, a media frenzied suit, the media, like everyone else, was trying to make sense of the heinous crime and how two 10-year-old boys could possibly be provoked to commit it. Despite both Robert Thompson and John Venables coming from homes tainted by a myriad of complex issues that could negatively

affect an already disturbed child like parental neglect, emotional abuse, physical abuse, extreme poverty, all-around dysfunction, the media left all those details unproved. Not sexy enough for the narrative, right? Too common, too obvious. Instead, in their attempt to explain how something like that could possibly happen, the media exploded a minor non-detail of the case and identified the root cause of John Roberts' homicidal inclinations to be horror movies. Specifically one, Child's Play 3 Look Who's Stalking. When word got out that John Venable's dad had rented the third installment of the Chucky franchise on video a few months before the murder,

the movie quickly became the center of the case in the court of public opinion for fuck's sake. The real court had actually rejected the video as evidence due to the fact that John claimed he had never seen or even heard of the movie before. John didn't even live with his dad or even see him that much. He literally never saw this movie. Neither one of those little evil shit saw that movie. But that didn't deter the press. As Sarah Cleary put it, leaving little to the imagination, each and every detail of James Bolger's murder was reported and exploited in the press as narratives purporting apparent similarities between Child's Play 3 and the murder took hold of the public's imagination. Galvanized by circumstantial evidence, in quotes,

scavenged from the Bolger case, the press forged ahead with reports pertaining to the effects of video violence. According to the tabloids, the character of Chucky was a very real threat, and the only way to stop him from corrupting other children was to gather up the pitchforks and destroy him with fire. Man, Chous play three? Really? If that franchise was so dangerous, why weren't a whole bunch of other kids killed?

You know, beginning shortly after the first movie was released, November 9th, 1988. Despite how ridiculous linking the murder of James Bolder to Child's Play 3 was, on November 26, 1993, the Sun newspaper launched their editorial campaign, For the Sake of All Our Kids Burn Your Video Nasty. The front page of the campaign showed a picture of a metal trash can filled with burning copies of Child's Play 3. The caption begged all video store owners across the nation to burn copies of the movie so they could prevent another child from getting turned into a murderer.

The Sun presented mugshots of Robert Thompson and John Venables next to pictures of Chuckie the doll smiling broadly, his mouth dripping with blood. Fucking tabloid journalists. Such a gross category of humans. In an article titled, Chilling Links Between James's Murder and Tape Rented by Killer's Dad, the paper reenacted different details of James's death using stills from Chuckie 3, with captions under each photo explaining how the movie scene was connected to the murder. Some of the captions describing what happened to the toddler included, victim won't stay down, doused with paint, face slashed by scythe, and led away to destruction. The Sun was not the only tabloid to blame Chuck E. 3 for James Bulger's murder.

On the same day that the Sun launched their campaign, the tabloid The Daily Express published an article titled Corruption of the Video Generation by journalist Daniel McGorry or Mick Grohry. Above the title is an image of the horror movies on display at a video rental shop with a picture of little James's smiling face superimposed over it. The image is accompanied by the caption, visions of violence children have grown used to scenes of simulated slaughter and poses the question, was James Bulger's murder a video-inspired act of brutality? But again, his killers never even saw the goddamn movie.

The article is long, so we won't go over the whole thing, but here's a few pieces from it. Within minutes of television news showing clips of the lurid video James Bulger's killers had watched, but they didn't, rental shops were cleaned out of the copies of Child's Play 3. It was horribly predictable. What is really disturbing is that it appears most of their customers were under the age of 18. But again, if that fucking movie is so dangerous, how come none of those kids who rent that movie out around the country didn't also commit heinous murders?

That alone proves how ludicrous this argument is. Returning to the article now, 10 minutes after Robert Thompson and John Venables had left James on a railway track, they scampered into a video shop in Walton. They spent nearly an hour there picking up Child's Play 3 and other titles like it, boasting to others their age about the gore they'd already seen. We'd like to express our revulsion at this, but we have watched the slide happen and down nothing about it. Worse, we have encouraged it. Just ask the film companies which videos are their best sellers. For too long our children's leisure time has been spent simulating slaughter on

computer games and watching violent videos. We prefer to think it has done them no harm. But now the moral inquest, the soul searching has begun. The Maryside police who interviewed Thompson and Venable say they cannot see a link with Child's Play 3 or any other video. Psychologists similarly complain that blaming video nasties is too easy an answer as to why these boys did what they did. But are any of us so sure? Just look at the facts. Look at the Child's Play 3 video.

A youngster splattered with blue paint, stoned until it can't stand up, its face mutilated before being killed on a railway track. Surely these similarities are too stark to ignore, yet we still try to find excuses. If these videos played a part in James' death, then we all stand condemned. So better for us if the experts agree with our gut reaction that thousands of children have watched childs play in similar films but haven't then gone out and killed. That is true. But what else do they do that we don't know about? How violent and unreasonable are

our children? How many play truant, shoplift, mug, joyride, and rob, or just give up trying at school and become disruptive, disobedient, and cynical? We don't know the answer because we haven't bothered to look. The Daily Express knows the list of videos Thompson Invinibles watched in the days and weeks leading up to his killing. We are not going to name them because it glorifies these titles and might persuade youngsters to go out and rent copies. Should be noted that McGrorey's claim that Child's Play 3 sold out within minutes of people seeing the news story about it is unsubstantiated, and the claim that James's killer went to a video store after killing him is a straight up lie.

Evidence aside, this article along with literally hundreds of others just like it and the Sons for the sake of all of our kids' campaign campaign reanimated the moralist crusade against the video nasties and just like in the 80s, politicians were quick to align themselves with the good in the fight against evil. On May 27, 1994, the Daily Express published a news article titled, Stop the Video Nasties. The full page spread featured a promotional poster of Child's Play 3 with the cryptic caption, demonic in all caps. Like the many articles before, this one claimed a definitive link between the murder of James Bulger and the horror movie. Here's a quote, a copy of the film about a demonic doll was in the home of

one of the ten-year-old boys who murdered James. It contained scenes of violence which were similar to the way James was lured away and killed. But again that's a lie. They're twisting the truth into a lie. A copy of the film was found in the home of John Venable's dad months before the killing when John wasn't fucking with his dad and didn't watch it. In April of 1994, Professor Elizabeth Newsom published a report on the negative effects of horror movies called Video Violence and the Protection of Children. We must protection of children. We must protect the children. Newsom was commissioned to write the report

by MP David Alden, who was petitioning to amend the Video Recordings Act of 1984 in order to make it stricter and have the punishments for breaking it be harsher. Alden was also arguing to have horror films effectively removed from any distribution of any kind for anyone of any age in the UK. Newsom's report was meant to provide empirical evidence that exposure to horror movies in children leads to violent behavior and quote

desensitization to compassion. However, what evidence the report had to offer was anything but empirical. Newsom pulled cases of alleged violence that have been reported on by the fucking tabloids, never used the fucking tabloids as a source, and referred repeatedly to unsustantiated and outright false details about James's Bulger's murder and how it was caused by Chucky 3. Sources matter. Shame on Professor Elizabeth Newsom. She was a well-educated person who should have known better. The report was not an appeal to Parliament's logic, it was an appeal to their emotions.

Newsom went so far as to refer to letting children watch horror movies as a form of literal abuse, child abuse. In the closing portion of the report, she wrote, Many of us hold our liberal ideals of freedom of expression dear, but now begin to feel that we were naive in our failure to protect, or excuse me, in our failure to predict the extent of damaging material and its all too free availability to children. Most of us would prefer to rely on discretion and responsibility of other parents both in

controlling their children's viewing and in giving children clear models of their own distress and witnessing sadistic brutality. However it is unhappily evident that many children cannot rely on their parents in this respect. By restricting such material from home viewing, society must take on a necessary responsibility in protecting children from this as other forms of child abuse. What else should be taken from parents' homes? Following this logic, let's play with this slippery slope. Definitely action movies, right, featuring gun violence. Any movie or TV show depicting any bad guy killing Killing anyone with a gun, that should be banned.

Kids could see that violence is being glorified. Want to emulate it, so it's gotta go. Really, any movie featuring violence of any kind, with knives, fists, etc. Probably should all be banned, just to be safe. Oh, and all profanity should be censored out of all movies. Because what if a kid saw one of those movies, then repeated it, and then got in trouble at school?

You know, and then that affected them and then eventually they get suspended and they get you know they drop out and their life falls apart all guns knives other potentially dangerous objects should be removed from people's homes right we got to ban all that stuff all together because kids could get a hold of it possibly and hurt themselves or hurt another kid sex all of it should be censored out of movies don Don't want kids having sex too early. Sex toys, all of those, well they should just be banned in general, you know, because some kid could find them, get prematurely excited about having sex, not understand it,

inadvertently, I don't know, sexually assault a classmate or something. Oh, and coffee is bad for kids. It can stunt their growth. Actually, it can't. That's a myth. But we should ban it anyway. Because people believe it. You know? So let's treat it as fact. And soda has caffeine, so let's get rid of that too. Too much sugar is bad for kids.

So we should at least ration how much sugar each home can purchase. Sharp corners. Those hurt kids all the time. Let's now make it illegal to have any sharp corners in your home. Or any small objects that could be a choking hazard for a baby. Ovens. Holy shit, ovens are dangerous. Fucking kid could burn themselves. Right? Same with fireplaces and barbecues. Gotta get rid of all that for everybody. Have I taken it far enough to make my point?

Sensory media on the premise that certain content might be damaging to some children is a very slippery slope. If you're that worried about your kids seeing something inappropriate on TV, don't let them fucking watch TV. But you actually don't need to worry about that because it's actually not a problem. According to one criminal law case study, the video violence and the protection of children report is wildly misleading. It relies on evoking the emotional sympathy of the reader rather than providing stats or other evidence to make its claim. As the author of the case study put it, children in society are used here to strengthen the argument through

individuals' innate need to protect and care for them in illegitimate use of feelings to make a case for a cause. Right? Logic. Facts. Controlled peer-reviewed studies. This is another example of why it's so important to base decisions and legislation in proven fact and not emotional speculation. Following the publication of the Video Violence and Protection of Children report, the media was flooded with articles celebrating the fact that at last, quote, experts finally admit horror films are a danger to children. But they didn't.

Not really. One person said that. In the article Video Nasties, the Violent Link, published by the Daily Express on April 1st, 1994, the author exclaimed, "'Top psychologists have finally admitted that violent videos corrupt children. They confess that they have been wrong all along

to deny a link between the nasties and real-life violence.'" The U-turn gave a huge boost to a campaign supported by 220 MPs to change the law on video classification, making it illegal to rent ultra-violent videos for home viewing. The irony that Newsom's claims were predicated on an erroneous link between a murder and an unwatched videotape was of course lost and did little to undermine the confidence of such assertions.

And again, top psychologists had not admitted that violent videos corrupt children. Professor Elizabeth Newsom, she was the one who put that report together, one person. Misinformation about the Bolger murder and the uproar caused by the Newsom report led directly to Parliament once again taking rash and ill thought out action. And in 1994, the Video Recordings Act was amended to make the penalties for breaking it more severe. A person who supplied or offered to supply a video recording containing a video work in respect of which no classification certificate had been issued could now go to jail for two years

instead of one or be fined 20,000 pounds instead of 10,000 or both. The amendment also expanded on the definition of video recording to include media available on CDs and compact discs. The law stayed on the books until 2010, when it was replaced with the Video Recordings Act 2010. And to this day, some video nasties still banned in their uncut form in the UK thanks to this law. Not age-restricted, just banned outright. Despite being released following the end of the video nasty era, Dennis Dimster's psychological slasher Mikey pissed a lot of people off in the UK, made a big fuss about it. The film sees nine-year-old Mikey murder his

adopted parents before moving on to friends and acquaintances. Not particularly graphic but whatever. However the film coincided the depiction of those murders not graphic. However the film coincided with the February 1993 murder of again toddler James Bolger by those two ten-year-olds. The public outcry led to the banning of Child's Play 3 and to the banning of Mikey. Despite having been positioned for an 18 certificate with no cuts from the BBFC, Mikey was seized upon by the tabloids Daily Mail which claimed it paralleled real life. The film only had a vague and shallow connection to the case so the BBFC

postponed its decision to grant a certificate, with the final official rejection arriving in 1996. And the film remained banned until just last month. In March of 2025, it was finally given a 15 rating for home entertainment. One of the most famous of the Video Nasties, R.L. Frost's Women in Prison Exploitation flick, Love Camp Number 7, Frost's Women in Prison Exploitation flick, Love Camp Number 7, originally released in 1969, features two officers from the US Women's Army Corps being sent undercover into a Nazi concentration camp. Once inside, they discover the systematic subjugation of female prisoners who serve as sex slaves for SS officers and are subjugated to regular humiliation, torture, and sexual

assault. First banned in the UK during the 80s. The film was subsequently resubmitted to the BBFC for consideration in 2002. However, the board's classification guidelines explicitly state that they refuse to classify content that makes non-consensual sexually violent behavior look appealing or acceptable or invites viewers complicity in such behavior. As Love Camp number seven features extensive scenes of exploitation and

sexual abuse in which the abuse abuses are portrayed Or portrayed can only be interpreted as being intended to arouse viewers rather than a cogent commentary on the abuse of the Holocaust The film was refused certification Certification and is still banned today But should it be not saying it's a great movie, but should be banned let's hop out of the timeline and talk about censorship and just also talk about like

the reality of these movies being dangerous or not. Good job soldier, you've made it back. Barely. Video nasty just one of many moral panics. And before breaking down why there was never anything to actually panic about, let me play a trailer for you from another old video nasty. Cigarettes. Chickens. Sheep.

Goats. Bestiality. circle jerks, corn holing, total depravity and debauchery was the norm on any given day in Pee-wee secret hideout. While World War II rages in Europe and Asia, a young Pee-wee Gaskins begins to develop his own rage in South Carolina. But no matter how things went, good or bad, I always felt something bothersome was stirring inside me. It's like I had this ball of plumber's lead rolling around in my guts. This based on a true story horror film as everything your parents are afraid of. Pets being killed, pets being fucked. We sat around, smoked cigarettes we had stole and bragged

about how much we knew about girls and watched our older boys and learned how to jerk off a conehole or fuck a sheep or go to chicken. People being killed, people being fucked. Marsh thought the hideout was better than hoes. He liked corn holding the younger boys and letting in corn hole him. So many raw dog butt fuckings. And he made me open my mouth for the sitting boys hard on and I felt Posh's soapy dick ran my ass. Quick as he finished another boy took his place. Beheadings, cannibalism and it all started at Pee-wee's secret hideout where boys turned into monsters. But even though we didn't hit her or do nothing to hurt her, she still cried and begged us

to stop. Now on home video, Pee-wee's Secret Hideout, prequel to Pee-wee Gaskins, The Devil's Son. Okay is against censorship as I am. If people were talking about censoring that horror based on last week's horrific episode, I would at least hear them out. So is there statistical evidence strongly supporting a link between video nasties or other sexually graphic or particularly violent media and something to legitimately panic over like an uptick in real-world violence, particularly in children. In short, no. No, there's definitely not.

I'll share more recent info in a bit and some stats, but let me start with an article from about a decade ago about all this. All the info I have will come from the US and not from the UK for this last little section. Not ideal since the video nasties moral panic was set in the UK, I know, but the video nasties that were not from the UK for this last little section. Not ideal since the video nasties Moral Panic was set in the UK. I know but the video nasties that were banned in the UK were not banned in the US. So if anything US stats should skew more violent and there should be a stronger argument for the violent influence of these devilish movies. And it's just been easier to find publications here based in the US for me than in the UK. In the 11th issue of volume 33 of the Psychiatric Times published on November 24th 2016

there was an article titled New Evidence Suggests Media Violence Effects May Be Minimal written by Dr. Christopher Ferguson professor of psychology Stetson University, Deland, Florida. And he wrote For many years scholars and professional organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association held as an article of faith that media violence causes aggression in children, although the general public largely spurred this idea. Claims were made at various times that of 3,500 studies of media violence, only 18 did not find effects that 10% to 30% of societal violence was caused specifically by media violence and that the effects of media violence on aggression were comparable to those of smoking on lung cancer. New research over the last decade has suggested that links between media violence and child

aggression are less clear than previously thought. How has our understanding of media violence effects changed? The notion that children will model what they see in media and become more aggressive if they watch a lot of violent media has intuitive simplistic appeal. This hypodermic needle model of media effects, so called because of the assumption that behaviors are essentially injected into hapless consumers, has been the default theoretical model of media effects for decades. This model also happens to fit well with moral advocacy efforts geared at opposing offensive aspects of media, for example sex, violence, rebelliousness. However, this approach also depends on some basic assumptions that are problematic. These include assumptions that imitation of behavior is automatic, universal, and purposeless,

that aggression is primarily learned as opposed to innate factors combined with stress, that viewers are passive rather than active selectors and processors of media, and that fictional media is processed by the brain in a similar manner to real-life events. By contrast, new theoretical models such as self-determination theory and mood management theory suggest that viewers actively select media to meet their motivational or mood goals. Neither the selection of media nor outcome behaviors are driven primarily by media content, but rather by a user's goals and motivations. From such models, we would expect to see that different users respond differently to particular

forms of media. Thus, a violent video game might increase frustration in one player, who does not enjoy the game, but legitimately relax another after a stressful day. And a non-violent video game could do the same. Indeed, this notion that the fit between media and individuals in pursuit of motivational goals is more important than objectionable conforms to more recent research. In realizing how our understanding of media effects is changing, it is important to place these transitions in light of the larger replication crisis in psychological science. Many of the ideas once thought to be true are now proving difficult to replicate. This has been

particularly true for an area of research called social priming that implies that humans automatically and unconsciously alter their behavior based on environmental cues. Once considered absolutely factual, more recent research reveals that older studies of social priming are difficult to replicate. Social priming is conceptually similar to the hypodermic needle approach to understanding media effects. Analysis of past research has identified several clear problems that lead to spurious results.

One was publication bias, the tendency for academic fields to publish only research that supports effects, and to suppress null studies Recent analyses have suggested for instance that the results of violent video game experiments are largely the product of publication bias Another common problem is the use of Understand excuse me another common problem is the use of un standardized outcome measures Standardization is a base value of scientific measurement, but findings suggest that standardization was absent in many tests of media effects.

This can lead to what is sometimes called the garden of forking paths, in which researchers may, even unconsciously, in good faith, select outcomes that best fit their hypotheses and ignore those that don't. Another problem commonly observed is citation bias in which researchers or professional organizations such as the APA or the AAP cite only work

that supports their personal views or organizational positions, which can make it seem that the evidence is more consistent than it actually is. Aside from arguably being an ethical issue, citation bias is linked to researcher expectancy effects that produce spurious results. Issues of citation bias have been documented as well for policy statements by professional organizations. So I know it's a lot. Skipping ahead over more of the technical jargon

now to reference some stats. Other studies have examined the impact of violent media in society, looking at issues such as youth violence or homicidal rates. Findings from studies that looked at the immediate effects of popular violent movies or video games indicate that popular violent media are associated with declines in societal violence. This is usually explained as a facet of routine activities theory. Essentially, the giving youth something non-criminal to do distracts them from the circumstances that lead to crime. It also essentially invokes the, if it ain't broke, don't fix it principle. that giving youth something non-criminal to do distracts them from the circumstances that lead to crime.

It also essentially invokes the if it ain't broke don't fix it principle. Restrictions on violent media could actually have unforeseen negative consequences. The inverse correlation between violent video game consumption and youth violence is presented in figure one. This inverse correlation is fascinating. The chart shows the correlation between the overall sales of violent video games versus acts of violence committed by children in the US between the ages of 12 and 17 between 1996 and 2011. Essentially during years when more violent video games have been sold in the US like in 2010 where there were approximately six acts of violence committed by every thousand kids the overall violence is much, much lower than in a year like 1996 when there were at least, when there were the, excuse me, the least amount of violent games sold

for the year shown, but youth violence was at its peak with around 35 out of every 1,000 kids being charged with the crime involving committing a violent act. So the more video games being sold, the least act of violence over these years. To quote a bit more from this source, a frequent claim made by advocates of media regulation and censorship is that a scholarly consensus exists that the effects of violent media is harmful. However, several surveys of scholars have revealed this claim to be false. In fact, particularly for issues related to youth violence or assaults, only a minority

of scholars who study media believe that media violence contributes to violence in society. In conclusion, Dr. Ferguson writes, In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court in the Brown v. E.M.A. decision examined the research on violent video games and aggression. The court declared, These studies have been rejected by every court to consider them, and with good reason. The court went on to echo the concerns that many scholars have also voiced. In 2013, a group of 238 scholars asked the APA to retire its various policy statements on media violence because of the mismatch between these statements and the available, often conflicting data.

The era in which clinicians and scholars could confidently tell parents that media violence is harmful is now past. And I can go into many more studies and throw a bunch of numbers at you, but I think it's easier and more effective to look at crime stat publications in this case to make my argument. An argument I feel is pretty compelling based on the evidence. Right? First, a few quotes. To quote a report conducted and published by the Council of State Governments, the United States only nonpartisan association of state officials serving all three branches of government in all 50 states and the US territories from the fall of 2024 called, youth arrests and

violent crime are down, but other trends point to need for new policy approaches. And the quote is nationwide youth arrests for violent crimes are at historically low levels. How could that be true? Violent media creates violent youth. There's more violent media today than there's ever been before in US history by far, right? Thanks to the internet. To quote an August 14th, 2024 article published by sentencingproject.org, between the years 2000 and 2022, there has been a 75% decline in youth incarceration. 75% decline. How?

How's that possible with so much violent content out there? And now some stats from a report titled Crimes Involving Juveniles between 1993 and 2022 compiled by the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, the rate of serious violent crimes committed by those aged 12 to 17 has dropped from 44.9 offenders per 1,000 kids in 1993 to 5.8 per 1,000 kids in 2022. That is that violent youth offenses down 87% in three decades, which is fucking incredible. So it turns out all the fear over moral decay associated with violent media total bullshit. And that rate was a pretty steady and consistent drop from year to year.

It wasn't like it was really high and you know 2021 and then I just cherry-picked 2022. No it just it went down like 90% of the years roughly. I don't have that stat in front of me but looking I was like oh man it's just a pretty I mean there might be like a tiny blip up one year and then back down for the next several years kind of thing. So again if all these movies including video nasties were so truly dangerous, they actually led to shit like a pair of ten-year-olds brutally murdering a toddler, those stats would not exist as they do. They just fucking wouldn't. It would be the opposite. You know, going forward the amount of violent crimes committed by kids would just keep increasing overall, but it doesn't

because violent movies don't make kids more violent. So breathe easy if you let your kids listen to this podcast. Certain episodes might fuck them up in other ways, like, you know, give them a warped sense of humor. But none of these episodes are gonna actually turn them into rapists or killers. We don't need, you know, government pressure by moral entrepreneurs telling us what content is okay for us to consume. Those uppity control freak fear-mongering affection-hating dork can fuck right off. We don't need their guidance. We've never needed it. We never will. In these instances. We're fine without them.

Mic drop, Mary Whitehouse, you silly old bitch. You and Graham Bright can roll over in your graves all you want. Your moral panic and legislation didn't do shit, except keep a group of mostly terrible filmmakers from making money off of mostly terrible films. Time now for the takeaways. Time Shuck Top 5 Takeaways Number one, a moral panic is widespread fear that a person, group, or trend, referred to as a folk devil, is innately evil, and that it poses an insurmountable threat to the moral fiber of the community. Moral panics are based on false exaggerated depictions of the folk devil,

which have been presented to the public by moral entrepreneurs, politicians, the media, and dorks. Never forget about the dorks. Number 2 in VCRs and videocassettes. First went on sale in Britain, there were no laws in place to regulate them. Because of that, explicit, graphic, and gory horror movies were bought and sold freely without any restrictions. These films were dubbed video nasties by the moral entrepreneurs who saw them as the manifestation of all evil.

Some of the most famous video nasties include The Driller Killer, I Spit on Your Grave, Cannibal Holocaust, and The Evil Dead. The moral panic surrounding the video nasties was largely driven by sensationalist media, which alleged tenuous or outright false connections between real-life crime and horror movies. 4. In 1984, the Video Recordings Act was established by Parliament in order to regulate the budding video industry. As one source put it, the Video Recordings Act was the direct result of the video nasty

moral panic, a panic that was nurtured by moralists and amplified by tabloid newspapers. And number five, new info. Just as Stanley Cohen predicted in Folk Devils, no sooner did the video nasty moral panic subside that a new evil step forth to take its place as the greatest threat to morality the world has ever seen. And that was of course violent video games. In 2005 while promoting the Family Entertainment Protection Act, Senator Hillary Clinton stated that Americans must take action to quote limit the exposure of children to violent video games because experimental research and longitudinal research over the course of decades show that

exposure to higher levels of violence on television, in movies, and in other forms of media in adolescence caused people in the short term and after repeated exposure even years later to exhibit higher levels of violent thoughts, antisocial and aggressive behavior, fear, anxiety, and hostility, and desensitization to the pain and suffering of others. But no, Hillary, you're wrong. It fucking doesn't. Good example there of how moral crusaders and dorks don't just come from the right, they come from the left, too. They come from anybody who thinks pushing that bullshit, I guess, can help them sell more papers or help them get more votes. Time Shuck Top 5 Takeaways

Panic on the TV do violent movies create violent children has been sucked I would have titled it with something around the term video nasties, but I didn't think enough people would know that term I didn't before looking at all looking into all this That's pretty funny. Actually. I was as I was working on this I was also watching the horror movie Maxine which would definitely be considered a video nasties like a set in the 80s and they actually refer to video nasties in that movie. Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions team for all the help of making Time Suck. Thanks to Queen of Bad Magic, Lindsey Cummins and it was a good movie I thought by the way. Thanks also to Logan Keith helping to

publish the episode and designing merch for the store at badmagicproductions.com It was cool seeing a lot of fans wearing a lot of that cool merch at the Nashville shows. Thanks to Molly Box for the excellent research and also for proposing this topic. And thanks to the all-seeing eyes moderating the Cult of the Curious private Facebook page, Mod Squad making sure Discord keeps running smooth and everybody over on the Time Suck subreddit and Bad Magic subreddit. And now let's head on over to this week's Time Sucker updates. Updates! Get your Time Sucker updates! Okay, I said last week I would share updates from the recent Russian disinformation suck and I will.

But first, Super Sucker Dan Taylor hit us up at all points of contact with a message I could not sit on Dan wrote in wrote into amongst other places Bojangles at time suck podcast com with a subject line of suicide awareness dear suck master I want to thank you for continuing to suck I lost my son to suicide recently and it has been very helpful to lose myself in the cult of the curious. I put my great value brand beats in and the world almost seems normal for a while. Additionally, I have a birthday coming up and it would mean the world to me if you could

find a way to mention suicide awareness in an update. Hail, Lucifina. Keep on sucking. 3 out of 5 stars. Dan Taylor. Well, Dan, happy birthday. More importantly, so sorry to hear about your son and glad we can provide a little escape for you here.

And yes, with suicide, just to talk about suicide awareness, if you're feeling like you can't go on, why not at least call and talk to somebody? There are suicide hotlines in every country in the world. Just go online and find yours. It takes a few seconds. Talking to somebody takes a few minutes. You're not alone in how you feel. There are many others who have come before you who have truly thought they

could never ever be happy. Again that they couldn't go on. They were ready to end it all. But then they didn't. They talked to somebody. They didn't go through with it. And now they're out there and they're happy. So find them. Right? You can do it. More importantly, you are worth it. Uh, unless of course you're a child molester or serial killer, then I'm probably not the guy who's going to, you know, be the best one to help you. Uh, unless it's to push off a cliff that you're too nervous to jump off of, but seriously talk it out with somebody.

Let somebody else help you get out of your head before it's too late. And you leave a lot of hurt people behind, uh, who do want you to stay here despite what you might think in your current state. It's amazing how just like exact same reality can feel so so different with the perspective shifts and I struggle with like my mood and I'm sure depression not diagnosed I don't want to claim that but I everyone who's ever dated me has considered me you know, pretty intensely moody and I just feel it. And it is crazy how like my reality does not change and one day I can just feel so fucking glum and just feel like What is the fucking point of this, you know, life? That just fucking crazy game we all play.

We're just gonna die anyway. All these crazy thoughts and be like really down and then the very next day I don't know. It's just fucking sunny or maybe I got more sleep my blood sugar is different I'm like no things are great things are really great things are fine reality didn't change at all I woke up in the same world woke up in the same bed with the same family same body same career everything the same but just my perspective is different my attitude but just my perspective is different, my attitude is different, my mood is different, and everything seems awesome where the day before it seemed shit.

So I know a lot of you struggle much more than I do, and yeah, get some help. And now disinformation time. Starting with Savvy Sack, Sam LeDuron, who wrote in with the subject line of how to choose a candidate. I wrote, Master Sucker, there's a website called i side with dot com and no spaces letter I word side s I D E word with w

Ith I side with com that I like to use for elections it asks you where you stand on all the issues how strong do you feel about your stance provides a pro and con for each issue if you are unsure and for answering all the questions it will give you a list of all the running candidates and who you most align with and on what issues. You can use that tool for national and for local elections. I find it to be a good way to organize my thoughts on the issues and get the information I need. Thank you for filling my ear holes with Time Sucks, Short Sucks, Scared to Death, and Nightmare Fuel.

Still salty about Dick Bird. Vegas sucker. Sam. She. Her. Well, thank you, Sam Sam that's a great suggestion. I would add there's also another one called vote411.org so just the word vote VOTE the number is 411 vote411.org where you can help where you know learn about how to vote. You can find candidate information and there's also votesmart.org and ballotpedia.org. You can check those out if you want to read basic nonpartisan facts, not propaganda, Russian or otherwise, about political candidates and political issues.

Next up, Semper Fi sucker Trevor P. sending a message with the subject line of cyberwar slash io suck. Dan longtime listener love your comedy that in times I got me through some really dark days years ago thank you regarding the suck on the cyber war little background on me I'm an intelligence officer in the Marines and have a background in information slash influence ops I thought you did an incredible job with giving a basic down and dirty about what info ops is and what the Russians have been doing but it's not just the Russians the Chinese are incredibly good at it as well.

Highly recommend if you haven't already, listen to the book or read the book, Like War. Speaks more on the influence side than cyber, but still. Our adversaries are brilliant at getting into the cognitive space of our people, in part because they know how to use our freedoms against us. Yes, we have and we do IO as well, but we do have rules and laws and ethics that bind us. They aren't bound by the same constraints, and that's what people don't truly realize,

which makes it so much harder to fight. You mentioned that one Russian bot, who was basically a box of rocks, doesn't have to be smart to get a message across or leave an impact. Case in point, you brought him up. I think we as a nation are doing better at getting the message out of beware of trolls and being a influence, but it's still also crippling us.

I question everything I see and read now. Regardless, not saying my line of work and the things I've read make me a conspiracy theorist, but I do question the published narrative a lot now. I could speak on this topic for hours. If I ever got the chance to meet you, I could talk your ear off. Love the podcast. Thanks for talking about this hugely important and deep topic. And thanks for everything you do. The Mr. Roger sucks made me cry in the airport so fuck you for that. The best three out of five stars, Trevor. Well, thank you,

Trevor. Yeah, you brought up a great point about how the US trying to take the high road in combating Russian disinformation leaves us at a huge propaganda disadvantage. They get to say whatever the fuck they want, no ethical considerations whatsoever. But for good journalists to counter their narratives or for like you know senators, Senate hearings, investigators, etc. You know they got they're expected to cite you know important sources, make a compelling case for what the Russians or the Chinese etc. are up to. I do hope this issue is something more investigative journalists dig in too soon and they spread a lot more awareness about it.

This is maybe not a moral panic, but definitely something to truly be panicked about. Thank you for your service. And now from an OG sucker who's newly off of social media, in part to avoid social media, and the opinions of so many angsty people who might be influenced by Russians or otherwise, Kyle Terio sent in a message with the subject line of free from social media. Hatimesuckcrew, and actually Kyle I know I messed up your name, it's been a while since I've read it in the past so many times I'm nervous about it now.

It might be Thoreau, I think it's Thoreau actually. I don't know what I just did. Kyle Thoreau. Hatimesuckcrew just wanted to say the Russian cyberwar suck really spoke to me in a lot of ways. I'm fully on board with your stance on social media. First, I understand its potential and importance in people's lives.

I've wanted to be a member of the Cult and Curious Facebook group, but I haven't had Facebook in 15 years. I left because I couldn't stand keyboard warriors and most importantly, people I cared about starting arguments and posting dumb shit 24-7. I have no social media but on a snapchat I use to talk to a very small group of friends and family which I have never used to gain content from. I'm not saying this to pat myself on the back, I just believe that social media does a lot of harm to the unknowing, especially since a lot of

the stuff you said was from Russian bots about political affiliates I'd never heard of before. But the potential social media has for a small percentage of people that like you said can't put it down not doom scroll or shorten your attention span with ten second pointless videos do I still see them from time to time yes I'm not immune to memes but I myself don't do the social media stuff because it wasn't for me anyways love what you guys do like I said this EP or episode was amazing really made me think maybe you could do an episode on social media or the creation evolution of it. I'm a 90s kid and my childhood was not spent online and my kids will hopefully not have theirs spent online either.

Your loyal space lizard Kyle. Thanks Kyle. Yeah, glad you're free from anxiety and the depression that can come with doom scrolling. Yeah, the history of social media and its pros and cons will be a good topic. Some people get a lot of positive information and connection out of it. Others the opposite. And now for one more from not Feltcher, Jake Felper, who wrote it with the subject line of advice for meat sacks. Hello master the suck. In response to the recent episode on Russia's cyber warfare on the west I'd like to just offer my advice for anyone who feels like they are surrounded by nothing but

bad and frankly shitty news in these trying times. I'm somebody who lives with all kinds of anxieties. I'm 32, father of a sweet caring empathetic wonderful and sometimes wild three-year-old. I've been worrying about what the world might look like for him more and more these past few months. I've been worrying about my grandparents who have many health ailments and rely on things like Social Security and Medicaid. I'd call myself a humanist, not sure if that's the right term, but I care about everyone and I'm worried about a lot of people right now. It got to the point where it was suffocating me, so I made the decision to do something. Two months ago, I deactivated and deleted all social media from my life, and I can honestly say that next to getting a vasectomy is the most liberated I've ever felt in my life. I'm no longer panic scrolling, hoping to find some silver lining to it all.

I'm able to just live out each day oblivious to the bad and take in all that is still good. And there's a lot of good still in this world. I'm somebody who appreciates even the smallest, most minuscule amounts of joy which I believe always make this all worth it. Having an ice cream cone. Str stranger waving or saying hello in public, holding the door for somebody and then returning the favor, my son saying something ridiculous and funny, receiving a hug, etc. These are the silver linings that you will not find on social media. I would strongly recommend this to anybody struggling right now. It's the best decision I've made in recent years.

Thanks for all you do for the meat sack community provide a great escape from the darkness of the world. Sincerely, Jake. Well, thank you, Jake. Yeah, you know, it's good to stay informed, but you don't have to stay informed every single day if it's fucking up your mental health and you don't have to do it through social media. You know, you don't have to do it through even the internet. They still print daily newspapers.

You can read the news off of the source. It doesn't need electricity. Imagine that doesn't allow you to doom scroll. Or like I said, in the episode, you can limit your exposure to news apps that don't allow comments and other interference. And now one more humor loving sack. Zach Hagen sending a message with the subject line of Time Suck episode 449 feedback. Dan and Time Suck team.

Thanks for the great episode about Russia disinformation. As a misophonia having motherfucker it will be no surprise that I tend to respond to things with anger and frustration. LOL you get it. I do. And boy does this peckerwood get angry thinking about how Russia fucks with us through disinformation. It also really pisses me off that I can't fuck with them back because they already live in a dystopian hellhole ran by a bunch of cunts I did have a suggestion that I'd like to pass along to you about how to fight disinformation The paper posted on Reuters

Reports on how humor and absurdity have been used by Ukraine to combat Russia and its disinformation campaign Humor as a strategic tool against disinformation, Ukraine's response to Russia is the name of the article. One excerpt from it is the part about NAFO, or North Atlantic Fellow Organization, which is committed to shitposting and dank memory. Really makes me mad thinking about how easy of a target we can be for disinformation because of the freedoms we have. And since we don't have the option to torture Putin and his cronies, get felched, then maybe we can cook up some memes in order to fight the good fight. Thanks for the great content across Time Suck, Secret Suck, Scared to Death,

Nightmare Fuel, Hate to Make It a Dead giveaway, but I'm a really big fan. Regards, Zach. Ah, Zach, thank you for the message, dude. And yes, humor can help with so many things in life, including fighting propaganda. Make some memes. Mocking what you know is disinformation bullshit. Make people laugh while also questioning some dumb shit that they have fallen for. Right? It's at least worth a shot, right?

Even if you can't change their minds, you can get some laughs. Thank you so much for all the suggestions, messages, everybody. Please keep them coming. I'd love to see them and love to share them here. Well thank you for listening to another Bad Magic Productions podcast. Scare to Death and Time Suck each week. Short Sucks and Nightmare Fuel on the Time Suck and Scare to Death podcast feeds twice a month. Please don't panic this week over something stupid like low budget horror movies. In fact, just don't panic. Don't panic about anything.

When was the last time truly panicking helped you out? I'm gonna guess never. So don't do it. Just keep on sucking. TARASA! Ad Magic Productions It's late at night. You're far from home. Lost in the dark woods. The only light you have is the light of the moon. You haven't eaten in days. But then you find a small orchard.

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