Cen­sor – first-look review

Men­tion the name Mary White­house to any Brit who was of an age from the 1960s onwards (or just knows their social his­to­ry of the UK) and you’ll prob­a­bly get a chuck­le or deep sigh by way of response. For the best part of three decades White­house railed against what she per­ceived as ​‘inde­cen­cy’ in the British media, from the use of the word ​‘bloody’ on sit­com Til Death Do Us Part to just about every­thing that hap­pened on Doc­tor Who.

After the Con­ser­v­a­tives won the 1979 elec­tion she found an ally in Prime Min­is­ter Mar­garet Thatch­er, and togeth­er they clutched their pearls about the idea of Britain’s moral stand­ing being dec­i­mat­ed by the advent of home video. With this came the advent of the British Board of Film Cen­sor­ship (since renamed Clas­si­fi­ca­tion), which admit­ted­ly doesn’t sound like a par­tic­u­lar­ly scin­til­lat­ing top­ic for a hor­ror film, but British film­mak­ers have a way of turn­ing the most mun­dane-sound­ing top­ics into fod­der for freak­outs; car­a­van hol­i­days, but­ter­fly col­lect­ing, wick­er fur­ni­ture… etcetera, etcetera.

Pra­no Bai­ley-Bond is an accom­plished edi­tor and short film­mak­er, but her fea­ture debut seems cer­tain to take her to the next lev­el. Squir­relled away in a dark screen­ing room, dili­gent cen­sor Enid Baines (Niamh Algar) watch­es count­less hours of gore and decides what’s fit for pub­lic con­sump­tion. Her uptight atti­tude draws the ire of her col­leagues, but out of the office she’s still try­ing to come to terms with the loss of her sis­ter some years ear­li­er, much to the cha­grin of her shifty par­ents, who encour­age her to drop the mat­ter entirely.

After a shock­ing mur­der brings the cen­sor­ship team’s work under pub­lic scruti­ny, shy, slight­ly awk­ward Enid bares the brunt of the back­lash, receiv­ing dis­turb­ing phone calls and hound­ed by reporters. At the same time she encoun­ters the lech­er­ous film pro­duc­er Doug Smart (Michael Smi­ley) who drops by with his lat­est offer­ing: a Video Nasty from infa­mous direc­tor Fred­er­ick North. Enid is struck by the lead actress’ shock­ing resem­blance to her miss­ing sis­ter, and becomes obsessed with the idea that Smart and North hold the key to unlock­ing her past.

The retro styling is rem­i­nis­cent of Peter Strickland’s Berber­ian Sound Stu­dio while the gore and overt weird­ness evokes the ear­ly work of Ben Wheat­ley, but Cen­sor has enough per­son­al­i­ty of its own to avoid slip­ping too much into pas­tiche ter­ri­to­ry. Although it’s more of a mood piece than a nar­ra­tive one, Niamh Algar is excel­lent in the lead role (hav­ing already proved her­self one to watch with her sup­port­ing turn in Calm with Hors­es) and there’s yet to be a film not improved by an appear­ance from Michael Smiley.

Although it’s a fit­ting and glee­ful­ly gory trib­ute to the gold­en age of the video nasty, Cen­sor also feels like a recla­ma­tion of the genre, tra­di­tion­al­ly dom­i­nat­ed by female nudi­ty and suf­fer­ing. Effort­less­ly styl­ish and par­tic­u­lar­ly assured for a debut fea­ture, it’s only a shame that its pre­mière was on a lap­top screen rather than loud and chaot­ic at a mid­night screen­ing. Still, if this is the future of British film­mak­ing, it’s look­ing brighter than ever, and not just because of all the fake blood.