Every Video Nasty ranked from worst to best

In 1979, home video arrived – a new medi­um which briefly enjoyed a peri­od beyond the legal purview of the British Board of Film Cen­sors (as it was then known), whose influ­ence was con­fined to pub­lic exhi­bi­tion. For a time video stores – essen­tial­ly cow­boy oper­a­tions – could rent any­thing to any­one, unex­pur­gat­ed and unreg­u­lat­ed, and the own­ers of these estab­lish­ments were quick to realise that the films with lurid sleeve art and tawdry titles moved off the shelves fastest.

This new­found free­dom soon spawned a moral pan­ic, spear­head­ed by a col­lec­tion of sen­sa­tion-seek­ing tabloids, god-both­er­ing zealots, raid-hap­py cop­pers and pig-igno­rant politi­cians. The police and Depart­ment of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions com­piled an ever-chang­ing list of titles deemed pros­e­cutable, or at least poten­tial­ly pros­e­cutable, under the Obscene Pub­li­ca­tions Act 1964, for ​“tend­ing to cor­rupt or deprave persons”.

In all, 72 films – most­ly hor­ror titles – were pro­scribed on the Video Nas­ties list, although only 39 were ever suc­cess­ful­ly pros­e­cut­ed. When the Video Record­ings Act 1984 was passed, home releas­es came under the over­sight of the BBFC (the ​‘C’ now stand­ing for ​‘Clas­si­fi­ca­tion’). Today most Nas­ties are avail­able uncut, even as the inter­net unleash­es a new cow­boy era of unreg­u­lat­ed video mate­ri­als. Below you’ll find our com­pre­hen­sive guide to all 72 titles. Just don’t say we didn’t warn you…

Direct­ed by Ulli Lom­mel
Aka Boogey­man II
Released in re-edit­ed form in 2003

The vast major­i­ty of exploita­tion movies are ama­teur­ish by design. In the case of Revenge of the Boogey­man, how­ev­er, you get the sense that none of the cast or crew had the faintest idea what they were doing, or even cared. Pri­mar­i­ly filmed (and pre­sum­ably edit­ed) in the dark, and fea­tur­ing exten­sive flash­back sequences lift­ed whole­sale from its pre­de­ces­sor, this sor­ry sequel to 1980’s The Boogey­man sees return­ing final girl Suzan­na Love (then still mar­ried to direc­tor Ulli Lom­mel) rock up in Hol­ly­wood, where a coked-up pro­duc­er express­es an inter­est in mak­ing a film about her pri­or para­nor­mal expe­ri­ences. Depend­ing on your purview, this is either a sly meta-com­ment on hor­ror fans’ will­ing­ness to sit through any old bol­locks, a deeply cyn­i­cal satire of Tin­sel­town itself, or a shame­less cash-in by a hack direc­tor whose heart just wasn’t in it. Adam Wood­ward

Direct­ed by Alain Deru­elle
Released uncut in 2003

From the absolute bot­tom of the chum bar­rel comes this rare French-direct­ed for­ay into can­ni­bal gut-crunch­ing, as a pair of lanky goons plus a bux­om wench kid­nap a young girl, spir­it her across the bor­der and then hole up in a house that – oop­sie! – is smack dab next to a tribe of flesh eaters. Dur­ing its 90-minute run­time there is, at most, five min­utes of actu­al can­ni­bal mate­r­i­al, and much that is looped three times over. Oth­er­wise, it’s a bunch of crush­ing­ly dull plot machi­na­tions, stock footage, an icky and unnec­es­sar­i­ly pro­longed rape sequence, and reg­u­lar use of a com­plete­ly out of place cov­er of ​‘La Bam­ba’. David Jenk­ins

Direct­ed by Michael Find­lay, Hora­cio Fredriks­son
Passed uncut in 2003 but cur­rent­ly no UK release

There’s quite a bit of his­to­ry behind this exploita­tion yarn, orig­i­nal­ly shot by Michael and Rober­ta Find­lay in Argenti­na in 1971. Filmed most­ly with­out sound due to the actors not speak­ing Eng­lish, it was intend­ed to depict a cult sim­i­lar to the Man­son Fam­i­ly, fea­tur­ing bik­er women led by a man named Satán. Some years lat­er, the film’s pro­duc­er was inspired to revis­it it fol­low­ing rumours in the media about snuff movies being pro­duced in South Amer­i­ca. With­out the per­mis­sion of the orig­i­nal film­mak­ers, he shot a new end­ing and cre­at­ed an entire mar­ket­ing cam­paign around the ques­tion of whether or not Snuff was, indeed, a snuff film. It worked – almost too well. The­atres were forced to stop show­ing the film due to pro­test­ers and one Amer­i­can cin­e­ma own­er was arrest­ed on obscen­i­ty charges. All is much more inter­est­ing than the film itself, which fea­tures mean­der­ing, mean­ing­less con­ver­sa­tions amid all the mur­der­ing. Han­nah Strong

Direct­ed by Cesare Canevari
Aka Last Orgy of the Third Reich; Caligu­la Rein­car­nat­ed as Hitler
Refused a cer­tifi­cate in 2021

Essen­tial­ly a soft­core Euro romp in which the Holo­caust is used as nar­ra­tive win­dow dress­ing, Gestapo’s Last Orgy pass­es the extreme­ly low bar set by numer­ous sex­ploita­tion movies of its ilk in that it presents a cohe­sive (albeit stom­ach-turn­ing) sto­ry and semi-cred­i­ble char­ac­ters. Some time after World War Two, Lise (UNICEF Good­will Ambas­sador Daniela Pog­gi) returns to the site of the con­cen­tra­tion camp where she and many oth­er Jew­ish women were interned and sadis­ti­cal­ly tor­tured. Her for­mer Com­man­dant and appar­ent lover (Adri­ano Mican­toni) tags along on this dis­taste­ful trip down mem­o­ry lane, with Lise con­ceal­ing a venge­ful ulte­ri­or motive. Cur­rent­ly still banned in the UK for its anti-Semit­ic con­text. AW

Direct­ed by Lui­gi Batzel­la
Aka SS Hell Camp; SS Exper­i­ment Part 2; Hor­ri­fy­ing Exper­i­ments of SS Last Days
No UK re-release

Knock-off Gestapo garb and half-heart­ed ​‘Heil Hitlers’ abound in this groan-induc­ing Nazi­ploita­tion fol­ly – the sec­ond such SS sex­ca­pade made by Lui­gi Batzel­la in 1977 under the pseu­do­nym Ivan Kathansky (the Ital­ian direc­tor also went by Pao­lo Solvay, Paul Selvin and Dean Jones at var­i­ous points in his career). Like Gestapo’s Last Orgy and Love Camp 7, The Beast in Heat por­trays POW tor­ture and med­ical exper­i­ments which, for all their schlock val­ue, pale in com­par­i­son to the real-life atroc­i­ties car­ried out by the Third Reich. The ​‘plot’ sees a genet­i­cal­ly-mod­i­fied human mon­ster, dosed up on aphro­disi­acs, unleashed by a fiendish doc­tor (Macha Mag­a­ll), while else­where a band of Résis­tance fight­ers lay siege to an Occu­pied cas­tle. Yet to receive a UK re-release, to the loss of absolute­ly no one. AW

Direct­ed by Jean-Claude Lord
Aka The Fright
Passed with cuts; passed uncut in 2017

Pure TV movie awful­ness in which a gurn­ing Michael Iron­side plays a dyed-in-the-wool misog­y­nist named Colt, who becomes fix­at­ed on killing a fem­i­nist TV news anchor who rubs him up the wrong way. The title refers to the hos­pi­tal where much of the sto­ry unfurls, as we fol­low Colt’s attempts to fin­ish the job after his ini­tial attack doesn’t quite yield a kill. With end­less hob­bling chase sequences around con­ve­nient­ly emp­ty cor­ri­dors, and Iron­side sport­ing a black vul­can­ised rub­ber S&M vest, it man­ages to make this hard­ened lum­mox appear com­plete­ly inef­fec­tu­al and bum­bling. To cap it off, William Shat­ner turns up as a bray­ing boyf with poofy hair in a role whose fee prob­a­bly helped him resur­face his pool. Why they banned this soft-edged crud remains a mys­tery. DJ

Direct­ed by Fred­er­ick R Friedel
Aka Lisa, Lisa; Cal­i­for­nia Axe Mas­sacre
Passed with cuts; released uncut in 2005

It was Jean-Luc Godard who coined the immor­tal max­im ​“all you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun”. Well, he was right on the first count; real­ly, any old weapon will do. Take 1974’s Axe for instance. Writ­ten, direct­ed, edit­ed by and star­ring Fred­er­ick R Friedel, the film cen­tres on a trio of pet­ty crooks who prey upon a milk-n-cook­ies nymphet after ran­dom­ly bump­ing off a con­ve­nience store clerk William Tell-style. At the farm­house where our unsus­pect­ing hero­ine lives with her paral­ysed grand­pa, things quick­ly take a turn for the depraved before Lisa (Leslie Lee) exacts her bit­ter­sweet revenge. With a run­time as eco­nom­i­cal as its title, this is unde­mand­ing, if rather tame, view­ing. AW

Direct­ed by Umber­to Lenzi
Aka Man from Deep Riv­er; The Man from Deep Riv­er; The Coun­try of Sav­age Sex; Sac­ri­fice!
Refused a cin­e­ma cer­tifi­cate in 1975; released with cuts in 2016

Before Rug­gero Deoda­to brought Ital­ian can­ni­bal cin­e­ma to glob­al promi­nence in the ​’80s, the ear­li­er move­ment of Mon­do cin­e­ma – pseu­do-non­fic­tion shot in exot­ic locales, exploit­ing the West’s imag­i­na­tion of sav­agery in far-flung jun­gles – spawned this trend-set­ting blood­bath from Umber­to Lenzi. A pho­tog­ra­ph­er sojourns from Britain to deep­est Thai­land, where a tribe of locals straight out of a colonist’s worst night­mare take him cap­tive and incor­po­rate him into their gris­ly trib­ute rit­u­als. He ulti­mate­ly defies expec­ta­tions by going native and adapt­ing to life among his cap­tors, who appear more humane when con­trast­ed with a war-hun­gry neigh­bour­ing sect. A will­ing­ness to con­sid­er shades of nuanced grey among the film’s big bad buga­boos set it apart from sim­i­lar works of its era and mini-genre. Charles Bramesco

Direct­ed by Frank Roach
No UK re-release

There are some instances of films with the Video Nasty label where you’re forced to ques­tion what, exact­ly, was con­sid­ered so awful that this had to be hid­den from the pub­lic eye? Frank Roach’s 1975 zombie/​reanimation schlock­er Frozen Scream is one such instance, as it’s such an ama­teur-hour affair that even the occa­sion­al splat­ter inter­lude does lit­tle to raise the pulse. It sees a pair of howl­in’ mad sci­en­tists run­ning a fake new age edu­ca­tion­al course with the view to pick­ing off stu­dents to use for their exper­i­ments. Their aim is to dis­cov­er the secret of immor­tal­i­ty, but all they can man­age is the secret of becom­ing a brain-dead killer zom­bie, which isn’t real­ly that help­ful. DJ

Direct­ed by Lee Frost
Refused a video cer­tifi­cate in 2002; refused a stream­ing cer­tifi­cate in 2020

Hitler may have only had one ball, but that didn’t stop him from par­tak­ing in the occa­sion­al orgy. At least, that’s what Love Camp 7 would have us believe. Sound enough in premise but faint­ly com­i­cal in exe­cu­tion, this pulpy, sex­u­al­ly explic­it pre­cur­sor to the sim­i­lar­ly noto­ri­ous ​‘Ilsa’ films of the mid-’70s (them­selves reject­ed by the BBFC) sees two Allied female offi­cers enter a con­cen­tra­tion camp on a covert recon mis­sion, where they are forced to serve as ​“whores for the Third Reich”. With full frontal nudi­ty through­out, the film ditch­es any ini­tial pre­ten­sions of authen­tic­i­ty in favour of a seem­ing­ly end­less stream of masochis­tic role play sce­nar­ios. (Let’s be hon­est, no one is watch­ing for the peri­od-accu­rate cos­tume design.) Holds the inaus­pi­cious dis­tinc­tion of hav­ing kick­start­ed the Nazis­ploita­tion craze. AW

Direct­ed by Joe D’Amato
Aka Rosso Sangue; Mon­ster Hunter; Anthro­poph­a­gus 2; Hor­ri­ble
Passed with cuts; released uncut in 2017

Ever won­dered how the killers in slash­er films keep get­ting up again and again, no mat­ter how many times they are mor­tal­ly wound­ed? Joe D’Amato’s sort-of sequel to 1980’s Anthro­poph­a­gus has an answer: the incred­i­ble regen­er­a­tive abil­i­ties of Mikos (George East­man) are the result of bio­chem­i­cal exper­i­ments con­duct­ed on him by the Church, with homi­ci­dal insan­i­ty an unfor­tu­nate side effect. It doesn’t real­ly make sense, but hey, the film is called Absurd. Using what­ev­er tools (sur­gi­cal drill, band­saw, mat­tock, oven, scis­sors) are around, ​“boogey­man” Mikos would earn him­self a DPP pros­e­cu­tion, but has been avail­able uncut since 2017. Anton Bitel

Direct­ed by Rug­gero Deoda­to
Refused a cer­tifi­cate in 1981; re-released with cuts in 2011

Boo­gieing ser­i­al rapist Alex (David Hess chan­nelling Andrew Dice Clay) and his clown­ish side­kick Ricky (Gio­van­ni Lom­bar­do Radice, oth­er­wise known as John Morghen) crash a yup­pie house par­ty in New Jer­sey – with dia­bol­i­cal results! Direc­tor Rug­gero Deoda­to, Italy’s Il Duce of Deviance, shot The House on the Edge of the Park the same year as Can­ni­bal Holo­caust, but it has more in com­mon with Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left from eight years ear­li­er (which also stars Hess and is supe­ri­or in every aspect). With scenes of gra­tu­itous sex­u­al vio­lence against women com­pris­ing the bulk of its run­time, this is one entry that ful­ly earns its Nasty sta­tus. AW

Direct­ed by Lawrence D Foldes
Released uncut in 2006

It’s your aver­age hor­ror set-up: a Cro-Magnon broth­er and sis­ter are cursed by their moth­er to spend 12,000 years sub­sist­ing on the entrails of the inno­cent, and when their time’s near­ly up come 1965, they must pass their genet­ic mate­r­i­al on to an infant for use as a blood trib­ute. So the scene is set for a mor­bid, gris­ly, lust­ful sort of fam­i­ly dra­ma, in which long-sim­mer­ing ten­sions between par­ents, chil­dren, and sib­lings explode into cheap yet effec­tive dis­plays of sen­su­al vio­lence. The oedi­pal grand finale syn­the­sis­es the two taboos still unac­cept­able to the sen­si­bil­i­ty of polite soci­ety: eat­ing or cop­u­lat­ing with imme­di­ate rel­a­tives. CB

Direct­ed by James C Was­son
Released with cuts in 1994

In just 92 min­utes, Night of the Demon man­ages to com­bine Big­foot, Satan­ic rit­u­als, rape, dis­em­bow­el­ment and a half-mutant child. An anthro­pol­o­gy pro­fes­sor inves­ti­gates a series of bru­tal mur­ders that some believe to be caused by a Big­foot (a myth­i­cal ape-like crea­ture that lives in the for­est and enjoys cas­trat­ing young passers-by), which leads him to a recluse who has a lot of expe­ri­ence with the crea­ture. Read­ing a detailed syn­op­sis of the film is actu­al­ly more dis­turb­ing than watch­ing it, but the gore proved too much for cen­sors: the cas­tra­tion and dis­em­bow­el­ing had to go. Anna Bogut­skaya

Direct­ed by Gre­go­ry Good­ell
Aka Beyond the Gate
Passed uncut; no UK re-release

A coun­try singer trav­el­ling across Amer­i­ca resists the advances of a lech­er­ous bar own­er, only to land her­self in hot water when her car breaks down. And that’s just the begin­ning of her trou­bles. She ends up at the mer­cy of a sadis­tic prison doc­tor who has some rad­i­cal ideas about ​“cur­ing” crim­i­nal­i­ty – name­ly, elec­troshock ther­a­py. The film starts off promis­ing­ly, and the scene in which Rachel comes across a slaugh­tered fam­i­ly while look­ing for help with her car is sur­pris­ing­ly effec­tive, but things get a bit bor­ing once our hero­ine heads off to the clink. Like a fair few of the films on this list, Human Exper­i­ments is an excuse for men to ogle women’s bod­ies rather than an attempt to inter­ro­gate the ethics of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. HS

Direct­ed by Tony May­lam
Passed with cuts; released uncut in 2001

The nasty fac­tor of Tony Maylam’s The Burn­ing is aug­ment­ed by the fact that it’s the first big movie play by ser­i­al abuser Har­vey Wein­stein (and co-writ­ten by his broth­er Bob). Essen­tial­ly a live­ly cash-in on the mid-’80s cycle of boogey­man-based teen slash­ers, this one sees an eccen­tric sum­mer camp jan­i­tor set on fire as a cool prank, then years of skin-grafts lat­er, he returns with a pair of gar­den shears and an unquench­able thirst for killing semi-naked teens in a bucol­ic nat­ur­al set­ting. The US stu­dio gloss sets this apart from much of the Euro schlock on this list, but a focus on injury details, and blunt objects being wrig­gled around inside wounds, is what tips it over the top. DJ

Direct­ed by Robert A Endel­son
Refused a cer­tifi­cate in 1981; no UK re-release

Robert A Endel­son made just two films in his life­time: 1973’s X‑rated obscen­i­ty tri­al satire The Filth­i­est Show in Town (co-direct­ed with his broth­er Rick), and this home inva­sion thriller from 1977. Red­neck-on-the-run Jessie Lee Kane (William Sander­son) and his psy­chot­ic side­kicks take great plea­sure in ter­ror­is­ing the god-fear­ing Turn­er fam­i­ly (Kane’s eth­nic big­otry is evi­dent­ly lost on the Chi­nese Ling and Mex­i­can Chi­no), which goes some way to explain­ing the film’s rep­u­ta­tion as one of the nas­ti­er grind­house releas­es of its day. Achieves the rare feat of its worst vio­lence being ver­bal rather than phys­i­cal: prac­ti­cal­ly every oth­er word out of its chief antagonist’s mouth is a racial slur. AW

Direct­ed by Miguel Igle­sias Bonns
Aka The Curse of the Beast; Night of the Howl­ing Beast; Hall of the Moun­tain King
No UK re-release

Trav­el­ling from civilised Lon­don (scored with bag­pipes, for some rea­son) to exot­ic Tibet, this psy­che­del­ic, absurd­ly po-faced fan­ta­sy action-adven­ture is a ver­i­ta­ble mon­ster mash, fea­tur­ing a demon­ic vam­piress, a char­la­tan witch, a wolf­man and an abom­inable snow­man (with the lat­ter two hav­ing a cli­mac­tic punch-up in the snow). The eighth instal­ment in a series of films fea­tur­ing Count Walde­mar Danin­sky (played by screen­writer Paul Naschy), and also the one with the great­est amount of sadism and nudi­ty, this was suc­cess­ful­ly pros­e­cut­ed under the Obscene Pub­li­ca­tions Act and has nev­er been released in the UK. Anton B

Direct­ed by Peter Maris
Aka Psy­cho Pup­pet
Released with cuts in 1987

Sad­ly, this film does not con­cern an actu­al mar­i­onette on a homi­ci­dal ram­page; the ​“pup­pet” is Char­lie (Nick Panouzis, eyes com­plete­ly devoid of light), a Viet­nam vet on the brink of a men­tal break­down. He’s been tapped by an under­ground cabal of reac­tionary vig­i­lantes to be their enforcer, tak­ing out the crim­i­nal ele­ment (a notion informed here by white-flight racism) ruled guilty in this clan­des­tine kan­ga­roo court. But of course this mad dog gets off his leash and goes on a killing spree more indis­crim­i­nate than his han­dlers might like, push­ing the ​‘man with a gun’ anti­hero pic­tures fol­low­ing the exam­ple of Death Wish to a dark­er and more sober­ing place. CB

Direct­ed by Joe D’Amato
Aka Anthro­pophagous; Antropofa­go; The Grim Reaper; Man Beast; Man-Eater; The Sav­age Island
Released with eight min­utes of pre-edits; passed uncut in 2015

Very sim­i­lar in look and tone to Nico Mas­torakis’ Island of Death from 1976, Joe D’Amato’s Anthro­pophagous: The Beast sees a gag­gle of dizzy-head­ed meat pup­pets strand­ed on a remote Greek island, only to dis­cov­er it has been cleared out by a rag­ing can­ni­bal with a wispy beard named Klaus. Gore set-pieces are inter­spersed with bog­gy expo­si­tion, includ­ing one utter­ly insane flash­back in which Klaus, strand­ed on a life raft with his wife and kids, ​“acci­den­tal­ly” stabs and eats them. Notable for a deeply unpleas­ant sequence in which our wack­adoo antag­o­nist tears the unborn child from the body of one of his vic­tims and takes a big bite as if it’s a juicy Granny Smith apple. DJ

Direct­ed by Gary Sher­man
Orig­i­nal­ly passed uncut for cin­e­ma; re-released uncut in 1999

Along­side Matt Cimber’s The Witch Who Came from the Sea, Gary Sherman’s lacon­ic 1981 film Dead & Buried takes a more baroque and philo­soph­i­cal approach to its vio­lent premise. Co-writ­ten by the great Dan O’Bannon, the film chron­i­cles an epi­dem­ic of mur­der in a usu­al­ly sleepy Amer­i­can small town, and the local sher­iff draws on the eccen­tric local coro­ner (played by Grand­pa from Willy Won­ka and the Choco­late Fac­to­ry) to help him solve the mys­tery. Although this is admired as a supe­ri­or Video Nasty, it’s rather dull and mean­der­ing, its ideas dulled by slack pac­ing and poor dia­logue. DJ

Direct­ed by Jorge Grau
Aka Let Sleep­ing Corpses Lie; Don’t Open the Win­dow
Passed with cuts for cin­e­ma; re-released uncut in 2002

It’s the kind of hon­est mis­take that could hap­pen to any­one – who among us hasn’t, at some point or anoth­er, inad­ver­tent­ly raised an army of the undead while using ultra­son­ic waves as an exper­i­men­tal insec­ti­cide? With Italy stand­ing in for the Eng­lish coun­try­side, a cop pur­sues a cou­ple of hip­pies he sus­pects of Man­son-type dev­il­ry right into the afore­men­tioned zom­bie inva­sion, which racks up an impres­sive body count of souls both inno­cent and not-so-much. Direc­tor Jorge Grau was ahead of his time in his anti-police sen­ti­ments, treat­ing audi­ences to crowd-pleas­ing, glo­ri­ous­ly gra­tu­itous off­in­gs for overzeal­ous crooked cops. CB

Direct­ed by Andy Mil­li­gan
Aka The Ghast­ly Ones
No UK re-release

There will be some fud­dy-dud­dies who will dis­pute this, but there’s a case to be made that the great­est char­ac­ter with­in the Video Nas­ties cor­pus is trag­ic, put-upon hunch­back Col­in from Andy Milligan’s Blood Rites. With­in this world of dress­ing up box Vic­to­ri­ana, he plays the manser­vant at a man­sion in which three sis­ters must stay in order to secure a size­able inher­i­tance. He sports plas­tic fangs and a bowl-cut, and hov­ers in the back­ground of every cramped shot. Mil­li­gan is a micro-bud­get mae­stro whose films feel like doc­u­men­taries of their own mak­ing, where you see every scin­til­la of love and ener­gy that goes into get­ting these mal­formed delights made. This one is no dif­fer­ent. DJ

Direct­ed by James Bryan
Aka Don’t Go in the Woods… Alone!
Released uncut in 2007

It’s a tale as old as time: sexy young teens go on a camp­ing trip and come a crop­per of the local mur­der­ous her­mit. In one mem­o­rable scene, younger hon­ey­moon­ers ​‘Dick and Cher­ry’ are canoodling in their van when the killer (cred­it­ed only as ​‘Mani­ac’) stum­bles upon them. Why is the woods­man chop­ping tourists up with an axe? Why does he abduct a baby from an artist he slaugh­ters while she’s paint­ing some nice land­scapes? Don’t expect any answers to your ques­tions; there’s not an ounce of log­ic – or indeed decent act­ing – to be found in this over-the-top turkey. HS

Direct­ed by Jack Weis
No UK re-release

Jack Weis’ unau­tho­rised re-do of 1963’s Blood Feast shifts the set­ting to New Orleans and swaps Ishtar for the Aztec god­dess Coatl, while retain­ing the tem­plate of a pseu­do-Satan­ic killer pick­ing off nubile ladies for his tor­so-tear­ing sac­ri­fices. Still, there’s enough mer­it unique to this fra­ter­nal twin to set it apart from its pre­de­ces­sor: stark and flat light­ing that makes every scene look like an exis­ten­tial­ist porno, a stel­lar sound­track packed front to back with ​’70s grooves, hyp­not­i­cal­ly stilt­ed read­ings of the lurid dia­logue. Plus, a cli­max set dur­ing a Fat Tues­day parade – when else? – works in some trans­portive loca­tion shoot­ing, a lit­tle lagniappe to go with the main course of car­nage. CB

Direct­ed by Bruno Mat­tei
Aka Hell of the Liv­ing Dead; Virus
Passed uncut in an edit­ed ver­sion; full ver­sion released uncut in 2002

Nobody stole from oth­er films quite like Bruno Mat­tei, who here adopts the pseu­do­nym Vin­cent Dawn – per­haps as sly acknowl­edge­ment that he is rip­ping off George A Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, from the SWAT team and tele­vi­sion reporters caught up in a zom­bie out­break to the brazen appro­pri­a­tion of Goblin’s score. He even bor­rows stock footage of ele­phants – in a film set in pachy­derm-less Papua New Guinea! Mat­tei pos­i­tive­ly rev­els in splat­tery gore, misog­y­nis­tic machis­mo and oth­er­ing Ori­en­tal­ism, although it was prob­a­bly only the first of these that saw it banned in the UK. Anton B

Direct­ed by Charles McCrann
Aka Tox­ic Zom­bies; Blood­eaters; Blood­eaters: Butch­ers of the Damned; The Dro­max Derange­ment
No UK re-release

What’s more ter­ri­fy­ing than a horde of flesh-eat­ing zom­bies? That’s right: a horde of flesh-eat­ing tox­ic zom­bies. In Charles McCrann’s ultra-lo-fi can­ni­bal caper, a group of open-shirt­ed pot deal­ers are turned into blood­thirsty mutants when the local author­i­ty dusts their mar­i­jua­na crop with an untri­alled pes­ti­cide called ​‘Dro­max’. Sur­pris­ing­ly com­pe­tent giv­en its mea­gre bud­get and large­ly non-pro­fes­sion­al cast, with enough red stuff to sat­is­fy even the greed­i­est gore­hound, For­est of Fear is most notable for star­ring John Amplas, who made his name two years ear­li­er in George A Romero’s Mar­tin and Dawn of the Dead. Marred by its insen­si­tive depic­tion of a young char­ac­ter with a severe learn­ing dis­abil­i­ty. AW

Direct­ed by Jesús Fran­co
Aka The Saw of Death
Passed with cuts; released uncut in 2008

In all the obvi­ous ways, Jesús Franco’s 1981 sum­mer school slash­er is very poor. The dia­logue is pon­der­ous to the point of banal. The effects work is shab­by at best. And the act­ing is ris­i­ble. Indeed, when one woman is set for decap­i­ta­tion via an indus­tri­al cir­cu­lar saw, she’s scream­ing like some­one is spray­ing a bit of cold water on her. And yet, its man­i­fold defi­cien­cies come togeth­er to form a cer­tain absurd charm, where the film is actu­al­ly so stu­pid that it ends up being endear­ing. One major plus point is the cos­tumes, which include some of the gaud­i­est knits and gar­ish print­ed tops ever to fea­ture in a major motion pic­ture. DJ

Direct­ed by Ser­gio Gar­rone
Aka SS Exper­i­ment Love Camp
Released uncut in 2005

The premise – a Nazi com­man­dant (Gior­gio Ceri­oni) con­ducts twist­ed sex­u­al exper­i­ments to deter­mine which of his male under­lings will be wor­thy of pro­vid­ing the replace­ment for Herr von Kleiben’s lost tes­ti­cle – may have raised some eye­brows in 1976. The poster of a bare-breast­ed woman hang­ing upside-down from a cru­ci­fix didn’t help. But those com­ing in expect­ing a deprav­i­ty-fest on par with Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS will be sur­prised to find a com­par­a­tive­ly tame paean to sex and vio­lence. Despite the many, many pairs of mam­maries on dis­play, direc­tor Ser­gio Gar­rone went light on the sadism that would nonethe­less come to define this film for the moral watch­dogs who nev­er both­ered watch­ing it. CB

Direct­ed by Jesús Fran­co (as AM Frank)
Aka Dia­monds for Hell; Visa to Die; Sadis­tic Women’s Prison; Puni­tion Cell
Passed uncut in 2017

The sight of Jesus Franco’s muse and (lat­er) wife Lina Romay strapped to a chair in a dank women’s prison with elec­trodes attached to her labia is not a pret­ty one. A goatee’d fore­man cack­les as he orders his lack­ey to turn up the volt­age, and Romay screams in agony. As the scene drags on, I chose to avert my eyes, main­ly because it’s hard to know whether the scene is being played for erot­ic tit­il­la­tion or unspeak­able hor­ror. This trashy piece of exploita­tion Eurot­i­ca com­bines much casu­al nudi­ty with scads of abuse and tor­ture, as our hero­ine is locked up for killing her dirt­bag hus­band and is the only one who knows about a cachet of stolen dia­monds. DJ

Direct­ed by Ser­gio Mar­ti­no
Aka The Moun­tain of the Can­ni­bal God; Slave of the Can­ni­bal God
Passed with cuts; re-released with cuts in 2018

With its big-name cast (Sta­cy Keach! Ursu­la Andress!!) and slick pro­duc­tion, Ser­gio Martino’s jun­gle adven­ture is the glossi­est fea­ture to radi­ate from a run of Ital­ian pseu­do-ethno­graph­ic can­ni­bal gorefests. As an expe­di­tion search­es for a miss­ing aca­d­e­m­ic in Papua New Guinea and finds its own prim­i­tive heart of dark­ness, the film retains the subgenre’s cru­el fix­a­tion with real crit­ters being killed on cam­era. ​“Ani­mals only fol­low their instincts… killing and eat­ing”, as one char­ac­ter puts it. ​“Man too has the same instincts.” Per­haps, though, all the bes­tial snuff over-lit­er­alis­es the Dar­win­ian dog-eat-dog mes­sage. Anton B

Direct­ed by Jesús Fran­co
Aka Can­ni­bal Sex; The Man Hunter; Mandin­go Man­hunter
Released uncut in 2008

There are two things that pro­lif­ic Euro­trash auteur Jesús Fran­co loves: boobs and blood. Released in Spain as Can­ni­bal Sex, a much bet­ter title for what the film is actu­al­ly con­cerned with, Dev­il Hunter fol­lows a young mod­el who is kid­napped only for her abduc­tors to unwit­ting­ly take her to the site of a tribe of can­ni­bals who love a bit of boob as a side dish. Don’t expect much nuance here, but Franco’s equal oppor­tu­ni­ties approach to nudi­ty is admirable enough. Any excuse to fea­ture naked bod­ies, whether it’s a tor­ture scene or an expos­i­to­ry mono­logue, is tak­en full advan­tage of. Anna B

Direct­ed by Mur­ray Markowitz
Aka Drop Dead Dear­est; Left for Dead
Released with cuts in 1986

One of the odd­er entries on the Video Nas­ties list, Mur­ray Markowitz’s Canux­ploita­tion­er was ripped right from the head­lines, freely adapt­ing the Peter Deme­ter mur­der case of 1974. It may begin with mod­el Mag­da­lene Kruschen (Elke Som­mer) being blood­i­ly blud­geoned to death, but the rest is sober court­room dra­ma. As Magdalene’s hus­band, the Hun­gar­i­an refugee and self-made con­struc­tion mogul Charles (Don­ald Pilon), faces tri­al for mur­der, flash­backs mud­dy the waters with a web of soft­core adul­tery, black­mail, gold dig­ging, hired mus­cle, an escaped mani­ac and unpro­fes­sion­al polic­ing. Per­haps best known for being Howard Shore’s first gig as com­pos­er. Anton B

Direct­ed by Lui­gi Cozzi
Aka Alien Con­t­a­m­i­na­tion; Tox­ic Spawn; Lar­vae
Released uncut in 2004

If your only plea­sure in life is gleaned from watch­ing slow-motion images of men’s stom­achs explod­ing, then Con­t­a­m­i­na­tion is the film for you. An aban­doned freighter is found drift­ing through the Hud­son Riv­er, and a search par­ty hap­pens across a crew who look like they’ve been turned inside out. They enter the car­go hold to dis­cov­er it has been packed with strange glow­ing eggs that have been designed so they can’t be sued by the mak­ers of Alien. If the eggs crack and their juices hap­pen to spray on an inno­cent bystander, it’s boom time. Aside from the splat-hap­py open­ing 30 min­utes, the film lurch­es into vapid expo­si­tion and an unlike­ly back­sto­ry, all lead­ing to a Columbian cof­fee plan­ta­tion and a cyclop­tic alien who looks like he’s been repur­posed from a cheap­jack car­ni­val ride. DJ

Direct­ed by Giulio Berru­ti
Aka Sis­ter Mur­ders
Released with cuts in 1993; re-released uncut in 2006

At the heart of Giulio Berruti’s nun­sploita­tion­er is a misan­drist woman mad­dened by the trau­ma of child­hood abuse, as Sis­ter Gertrude (Ani­ta Ekberg) suf­fers a men­tal break­down after brain surgery, turn­ing to pros­ti­tu­tion, mor­phine and worse, while her besot­ted les­bian room­mate Sis­ter Math­ieu (Pao­la Mor­ra) hides her trans­gres­sions. It’s a slow-paced affair – although it cer­tain­ly esca­lates – but the con­junc­tion of nuns, sex and mur­der was bound to raise the prud­ish hack­les of Mary White­house and her Nation­wide Fes­ti­val of Light. Even more goad­ing is the cyn­i­cal final sequence in which the Church cov­ers up its in-house wrong­do­ings. Anton B

Direct­ed by James Kenelm Clarke
Aka House on Straw Hill; Trau­ma
Passed with cuts; re-released with cuts in 1997

Bankrolled by Soho porn baron Paul Ray­mond and star­ring a heav­i­ly dubbed Udo Kier as – wait for it – a louche Eng­lish erot­ic nov­el­ist suf­fer­ing an acute case of writer’s block punc­tu­at­ed by extreme para­noid delu­sions, Exposé is one of the more refined exploita­tion films to come out of Britain dur­ing the 1970s. The three min­utes of cuts direc­tor James Kenelm Clarke made to secure an X cer­tifi­cate for the­atri­cal release notwith­stand­ing, this is nowhere near as unpleas­ant as its rep­u­ta­tion would sug­gest. Remade in 2010 under the title Stalk­er by ex-New Roman­tic idol/​Queen Vic land­lord Mar­tin Kemp. AW

Direct­ed by Ulli Lom­mel
Aka The Boogey Man
Passed with cuts; re-released uncut in 2000

“The least you can do is pick up the bro­ken pieces,” says Uncle Ernest. He means specif­i­cal­ly the fall­en sherds of a shat­tered mir­ror, but his words dou­ble as a ref­er­ence to the trau­ma and guilt afflict­ing sib­lings (played by actu­al sib­lings Suzan­na and Nicholas Love) ever since, 20 years ear­li­er, they were involved in the mur­der of their mother’s sadis­tic boyfriend. Ulli Lommel’s super­nat­ur­al slash­er may evoke both The Exorcist’s pos­ses­sions and The Ami­tyville Horror’s archi­tec­ture, but its psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly reflex­ive look­ing-glass hor­ror is all its own. Nev­er suc­cess­ful­ly pros­e­cut­ed, this should nev­er have been on the Nasty list. Anton B

Direct­ed by Tobe Hoop­er
Aka Car­ni­val of Ter­ror
Passed uncut; re-clas­si­fied in 2007

With its open­ing mon­tage of design details from a trav­el­ling car­ni­val, Tobe Hooper’s The Fun­house packs its most chill­ing punch before any of the action even begins. This is essen­tial­ly The Texas Chain Saw Mas­sacre-type slash­er repur­posed to a closed fun­fair attrac­tion, as a crew of cocky teens who think they’re too cool to be scared are pit­ted against a mur­der­ous troglodyte and his car­ni­val bark­er keep­er. There’s some real­ly great stuff here, but the film’s restric­tive set­ting and unin­ter­est­ing antag­o­nists make it a mid-tier effort from one of horror’s high kings. DJ

Direct­ed by SF Brown­rigg
Aka The For­got­ten; Death Ward #13
Passed with cuts; released uncut in 2005

The two def­i­n­i­tions of the word ​‘bed­lam’ – as a state of all-out chaos, and an archa­ic term for a men­tal insti­tu­tion – con­verge in SF Brownrigg’s per­verse guid­ed tour through an asy­lum over­tak­en by the res­i­dents. The unortho­dox method employed at the Stephen San­i­tar­i­um, a per­mis­sive free-roam­ing pol­i­cy that allows the patients to indulge their delu­sions in hope of bust­ing through them, back­fires on the staff dur­ing a night of wan­ton mad­ness that flies the freak flag high and proud. Infant-mind­ed men, plas­tic-doll-obsessed women, and a doc­tor con­ceal­ing a dark secret all descend on a blush­ing new­com­er nurse unaware of the full extent of insan­i­ty she’ll be deal­ing with, though Brown­rigg still reserves the most depth and sym­pa­thy for the non-neu­rotyp­i­cal char­ac­ters. CB

Direct­ed by Joseph Elli­son
Passed with cuts; re-released uncut in 2011

Released when the slash­er sub­genre was still in its infan­cy, when not every psy­cho killer was a silent heavy-breath­ing type, and when Psy­cho was still as much an influ­ence as Hal­loween, Joseph Ellison’s debut fea­ture fol­lows a moth­er-lov­ing man­child on his misog­y­nis­tic mis­sion to incin­er­ate women and keep their charred corpses – along­side mama’s – as his best and only friends. Don­ny (an intense, haunt­ed Dan Grimal­di) is a prod­uct of both past abuse and his present envi­ron­ment, mak­ing him a mon­ster to pity as much as fear, so that his mur­der spree comes with an ele­ment of tragedy. Anton B

Direct­ed by René Car­dona
Aka The Hor­ri­ble Man-Beast; Hor­ror and Sex; Gomar – The Human Goril­la
Passed with cuts; re-released uncut in 2002

Ladies wrestling in cat­suits, graph­ic scenes of open heart surgery, and a half-man, half-ape mon­ster ter­ror­is­ing the locals – what more could you want? This Mex­i­can entry into the Video Nasty Hall of Fame sees a doc­tor attempt to cure his son of leukemia by replac­ing his son’s heart with that of a goril­la (which seems sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly ill-advised) and the result­ing pan­de­mo­ni­um that fol­lows when he trans­forms into a strange hybrid beast with mur­der­ous intent. Beyond its whacky premise, the film’s biggest prob­lem is its painful­ly low bud­get; the fake blood appears to be red paint and there’s not a sin­gle con­vinc­ing actor among the cast. Even so, the use of gen­uine footage of surgery war­rants a men­tion. Per­haps that’s where all the mon­ey went. HS

Direct­ed by Eric West­on
Released uncut in 2004

You know how it goes: you ban­ish a Satan­ic priest from feu­dal Spain, only for him to be sum­moned by a book of black mass and cause hav­oc at a mil­i­tary reform school cen­turies lat­er. Bum­bling cadet Stan­ley Coop­er­smith (Clint Howard) draws the ire of his fel­low stu­dents and teach­ers alike for being bad at foot­ball and, err, hav­ing dead par­ents. After he inad­ver­tent­ly sum­mons the evil Father Loren­zo Este­ban using a com­put­er, a gag­gle of mur­der­ous boars turn up and start off­ing the staff and stu­dents quite indis­crim­i­nate­ly. It’s all very sil­ly, but this is some­what damp­ened by the over­whelm­ing focus on poor old Stanley’s school­yard tri­als and tribu­la­tions rather than the promise of Satan­ic priests. HS

Direct­ed by Lucio Ful­ci
Passed with cuts; released uncut in 2009

An air of win­tery melan­choly per­vades this semi-neglect­ed Boston-set haunt­ed house hor­ror by Lucio Ful­ci, with snow-flecked land­scapes and dusty brown inte­ri­ors despoiled by a reg­u­lar gloss­ing of human blood. Inspired by Hen­ry James (and bor­row­ing heav­i­ly from The Ami­tyville Hor­ror and The Shin­ing), the film sees a fam­i­ly of hap­py city folk pur­chase a house once owned by one Dr Jacob Freud­is­tein. Though locals assure that there’s noth­ing to wor­ry about, there’s def­i­nite­ly some dark shit hap­pen­ing under­foot. With its ace gore set-pieces nice­ly par­celled out against a tick­ing-clock plot­line, the main down­er is the char­ac­ter of Bob, a blonde, bowl-cut­ted pre-teen who just can’t seem to stop wan­der­ing into the base­ment and stir­ring up what­ev­er lives down there. DJ

Direct­ed by Dario Argen­to
Passed with cuts; re-released uncut in 2010

Dario Argento’s fol­low-up to Sus­piria has much of the style but lit­tle of the sub­stance of its pre­de­ces­sor. Infer­no is the sto­ry of a young man inves­ti­gat­ing the dis­ap­pear­ance of his sis­ter in a spoooooky apart­ment build­ing that hous­es a cen­turies old witch called Mater Tene­brarum. Argento’s glo­ri­ous gift for colour and depth ren­ders many of the vio­lent set pieces grotesque­ly spec­tac­u­lar but tied to a whol­ly unex­cit­ing plot they have lim­it­ed impact. While watch­ing the gial­lo mas­ter at work is always fun, this is firm­ly in the sec­ond tier of his oeu­vre. Leila Latif

Direct­ed by Wes Craven
Refused a cin­e­ma cer­tifi­cate in 1974 and 2000; released uncut in 2008

This infa­mous rape-revenge flick hasn’t aged par­tic­u­lar­ly well. Two teenage girls head to a rock con­cert as a birth­day treat are kid­napped, raped, tor­tured and killed by a group of psy­chot­ic escaped con­victs. Wes Craven’s direc­to­r­i­al debut seems to leer at the naked teenagers with as much grotesque inten­tion as their assailants. It is not with­out mer­it, there are inter­est­ing ideas at play about sub­ur­ban fear of coun­ter­cul­ture and Craven com­pe­tence as a direc­tor and knack for sus­pense is evi­dent but there’s not much else to war­rant its endur­ing rep­u­ta­tion. LL

Direct­ed by JS Car­done
Aka Night­mare Island
Released with cuts in 1992; re-released uncut in 2001

The moral pan­ic around Video Nas­ties was in part based on the erro­neous notion that their release would lead to a wave of copy­cat crimes. Yet even the most dis­turbed and indus­tri­ous view­er would be hard pressed to reen­act the elab­o­rate mur­ders depict­ed in JS Cardone’s debut fea­ture, in which two cou­ples become strand­ed on a remote island where an evil spir­it is seem­ing­ly lurk­ing. With its gris­ly pre­mo­ni­tions, ambigu­ous, ellip­ti­cal nar­ra­tive, and atmos­pher­ic (albeit more exot­ic) set­ting, The Slay­er is cut from the same creepy cloth as Robert Altman’s 1972 psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller Images. A lit­tle bag­gy in places, but good fun. AW

Direct­ed by Den­nis Don­nel­ly
Passed with cuts; re-released uncut in 2017

The Tool­box Mur­ders (not to be con­fused by true crime afi­ciona­dos with the Tool­box Killers or the Toy Box Mur­ders) is a sur­pris­ing­ly sub­ver­sive look at men who com­mit vio­lence against women. The plot is bare-bones: a ski-masked psy­chopath mur­ders beau­ti­ful young women using, well, tools. The mur­der­er him­self has a few intrigu­ing quirks but most inter­est­ing­ly the cam­era seems to flick the misog­y­nist lens on and off depend­ing on which char­ac­ter is in the dri­ving seat. Whilst it is no mas­ter­piece it def­i­nite­ly gets points for an ahead of its time #NotAll­Men final act twist. LL

Direct­ed by Ovidio G Assoni­tis
Aka There Was a Lit­tle Girl; And When She Was Bad
Released uncut in 2004

Hor­ror cin­e­ma loves a good set of evil twins, and Mad­house is no excep­tion. Sweet teacher Julia Sul­li­van strug­gles with hor­rif­ic mem­o­ries from her child­hood, hav­ing been tor­ment­ed by her sis­ter Mary. After much encour­age­ment she goes to vis­it her estranged sib­ling in a psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal, which goes about as well as you might expect. Poor Julia becomes increas­ing­ly para­noid after her trip, wor­ried that Mary has escaped and is intent on harm­ing her. It all sounds sim­ple, but Mad­house has a few tricks up its sleeve, and cer­tain moments are gen­uine­ly grue­some. HS

Direct­ed by Lucio Ful­ci
Aka 7 Doors of Death
Passed with cuts; re-released uncut in 2001

A woman inher­its a Louisiana hotel with a grim past and a foun­da­tion that may or may not be locat­ed on an entry­way to Hell – but that descrip­tion fails to con­vey the depth of the mad­ness direc­tor Lucio Ful­ci holis­ti­cal­ly inte­grat­ed into his finest film. The plot splin­ters into dis­con­nect­ed shards of hazy nar­ra­tive, throw­ing togeth­er a mélange of ter­rors includ­ing zom­bies, car­niv­o­rous spi­ders, appari­tions, and a whole lot of muti­lat­ed eye­balls. The gore was so potent that the Amer­i­can dis­trib­u­tor recut the film to achieve an R rat­ing, and even in this dilut­ed form, the release was still a com­mer­cial suc­cess. At mid­night show­ings, genre enthu­si­asts in the ​’80s lined up to be hor­ri­fied. CB

Direct­ed by Meir Zarchi
Aka Day of the Woman
Released with cuts in 2001

A rape-revenge movie par excel­lence, Meir Zarchi’s char­ac­ter study of a woman (Camille Keaton, an aveng­ing angel with­out mer­cy) cop­ing with trau­ma by inter­nal­is­ing and weapon­is­ing her own pain has more to offer than super­fi­cial shock val­ue. Roger Ebert may have called it a ​“vile bag of garbage,” but aca­d­e­mics and grind­house enthu­si­asts alike have recog­nised the under­cur­rent of warped empow­er­ment, wrapped up as it may be in a prob­lem­at­ic pol­i­tics no less imper­fect than the high­ly per­son­al process of com­ing to terms with one’s vio­la­tion. It’s not easy and it’s not always just, but what about that expe­ri­ence is? CB

Direct­ed by Don Gron­quist
Passed uncut; released uncut in 2004

Fol­low­ing a car acci­dent, a young girl becomes strand­ed at a strange house occu­pied by an even stranger woman and her elder­ly moth­er. They run their house­hold like a deranged matri­archy, treat­ing any men in the house­hold as sec­ond-class cit­i­zens. The odd, emo­tion­al­ly abu­sive and code­pen­dent rela­tion­ship between moth­er and daugh­ter is the true hor­ror of the film. Nat­u­ral­ly, there is some slash­ing too. Heav­ier on atmos­phere and gen­er­al eeri­ness than it is on gore, Unhinged feels like a low-rent ver­sion of The Beguiled. Anna B

Direct­ed by Paul Mor­ris­sey
Aka Andy Warhol’s Franken­stein
Passed with cuts; released uncut in 2006

Nev­er mind the Andy Warhol bit – he showed up once dur­ing shoot­ing and once dur­ing edit­ing, real­ly just lend­ing his celebri­ty to the project as a favour to his friend, direc­tor Paul Mor­ris­sey. Even so, the free­wheel­ing car­nal­i­ty that charged this revi­sion­ist inter­pre­ta­tion of Mary Shelley’s pro­to-hor­ror myth (fea­tur­ing a fetch­ing young Udo Kier as the Baron him­self) was very much in keep­ing with the pop artist’s spir­it. An arch sense of down­town-influ­enced camp blend­ed smooth­ly with the opu­lence of the film’s Ital­ian and West Ger­man ori­gins, amount­ing to an over-the-top par­o­dy of itself screened in eye-pop­ping 3D just to dri­ve the excess home. CB

Direct­ed by Stephen Car­pen­ter
Aka The Dorm That Dripped Blood; Death Dorm
Released with cuts

Coeds get­ting carved up on cam­pus – if there’s a sim­pler or more effec­tive set-up for a Video Nasty, we haven’t seen it. Co-writ­ten and direct­ed by Jef­frey Obrow and Stephen Car­pen­ter (no rela­tion), Pranks fol­lows four col­lege stu­dents who have more than their nerves shred­ded when they become the tar­get of a face­less prowler. Boast­ing some decent per­for­mances and a neat­ly-exe­cut­ed third-act twist con­cern­ing the killer’s true iden­ti­ty, the film astute­ly debunks the pop­u­lar myth that women are more like­ly to be attacked by strangers than some­one they know. AW

Direct­ed by Umber­to Lenzi
Aka Make Them Die Slow­ly; Woman from Deep Riv­er
Passed with cuts; re-released with cuts in 2018

Cleav­ing to the sick for­mu­la set by the pre­vi­ous year’s Can­ni­bal Holo­caust, this one takes dime­store anthro­pol­o­gy as an excuse to pile on the limb-lop­ping yucks. It all hinges, rather amus­ing­ly, on a young aca­d­e­m­ic who is out scav­eng­ing the Columbian rain­forests for proof that can­ni­bal­ism is a myth among indige­nous tribes. As pun­ish­ment for not real­is­ing you can’t prove that some­thing doesn’t exist, she and her small gang are fed through the meat-grinder. Mat­ters aren’t helped by the fact that they arrived just after a small-time drug deal­er has just fin­ished carv­ing up mem­bers of a tribe after he was unable to locate mas­sive quan­ti­ties of cocaine and emer­alds. If you can stom­ach its weird fix­a­tion on cas­tra­tion, then it’s well worth stick­ing with to see the drug lord cop it in epic fash­ion. DJ

Direct­ed by Rug­gero Deoda­to
Released with cuts in 2001

Sure, Rug­gero Deoda­to sin­gle­hand­ed­ly con­ceived the found footage sub­genre with this faux-real­ist account of one cam­era crew’s bru­tal sojourn into the jun­gles of the Ama­zon. But the likes of The Blair Witch Project and Para­nor­mal Activ­i­ty nev­er came close to the extremes he chart­ed dur­ing a gru­elling pro­duc­tion process that real­ly did involve mul­ti­ple cas­es of ani­mal cru­el­ty and a pos­si­ble sex­u­al assault. It’s the tact­ful strokes of fak­ery for which the film is remem­bered – the killings so con­vinc­ing that the direc­tor attract­ed mur­murs that he’d made a snuff pic­ture and was even­tu­al­ly arrest­ed on obscen­i­ty and mur­der charges. The lat­ter rap didn’t stick; the for­mer is fair. CB

Direct­ed by Tobe Hoop­er
Aka Eat­en Alive; Hotel Hor­ror; Starlight Slaugh­ter
Passed with cuts; re-released uncut in 2000

The film Tobe Hoop­er made after The Texas Chain Saw Mas­sacre couldn’t quite live up to the sheer ter­ror that film elicit­ed, but it’s still worth a look for its amus­ing premise and car­nage lev­el. The set­ting is a run­down hotel in rur­al Texas, where run­away pros­ti­tute Clara Wood runs into some trou­ble at the hands of creepy pro­pri­etor Judd and his pet croc­o­dile. Her father and sis­ter soon roll into town look­ing for her, while a local fam­i­ly and their pet dog make the mis­take of also check­ing into Judd’s estab­lish­ment. Incred­i­bly enough, the film is (loose­ly) based on the sto­ry of Joe Ball, who owned a bar with a res­i­dent alli­ga­tor in Texas dur­ing the 1930s and was believed to have fed a num­ber of women to his pet. Fea­tures Robert Englund in one of his ear­li­est roles. HS

Direct­ed by Her­schell Gor­don Lewis
Released uncut in 2005

All hail Her­schell Gor­don Lewis, king of the splat­ter pic­ture. In the ear­ly ​’60s, he pushed the enve­lope of how vio­lence would be depict­ed on screen fur­ther than any­one had before, pump­ing buck­ets of lumi­nes­cent dyed syrup out of the gap­ing flesh wounds on which he trained his eager cam­era. The plot – a nut­so event cater­er needs female body parts for a grand sac­ri­fice to the Egypt­ian god­dess Ishtar – serves most­ly to guide us from one mag­nif­i­cent mas­sacre to the next. The assort­ed man­glings set off an arms race of glee­ful vio­lence that would con­tin­ue top­ping itself through the 20^th cen­tu­ry and beyond. CB

Direct­ed by John Alan Schwartz (as Conan LeCilaire and lat­er Alan Black)
Aka The Orig­i­nal Faces of Death
Released with cuts in 2003

In a 2002 episode of The Sopra­nos, mob boss Tony goes to vis­it his sis­ter and her boyfriend, and reacts with dis­gust when he sees that they’re watch­ing a tape of Faces of Death. ​“Was The Sound of Music already rent­ed?” he gri­maces. Such is the lega­cy of John Alan Schwartz’s ​‘faux­u­men­tary’, star­ring Michael Carr as pathol­o­gist Fran­cis B Gröss who guides view­ers through a tour of the many ​‘faces of death’ from flesh-eat­ing tribes of the Ama­zon to a death row inmate des­tined for the elec­tric chair. It’s the scenes of ani­mal cru­el­ty (includ­ing dog fights and a mon­key beat­en to death by tourists) that attract­ed most of the con­tro­ver­sy, but Faces of Death’s lega­cy endures to this day; one of the top search terms for the film is ​‘Faces of Death real?’ HS

Direct­ed by Nico Mas­torakis
Aka Chil­dren of the Dev­il; Dev­ils in Mykonos; A Crav­ing For Lust
Passed with cuts; refused a video cer­tifi­cate in 1987 under the title Psy­chic Killer II; released uncut in 2010

In Nico Mas­torakis’ shock­er, British fugi­tives Christo­pher and Celia Lam­bert (Bob Behling and Jane Lyle) go on a killing spree in Mykonos against those they per­ceive as sin­ful. The irony of this being con­demned as a Video Nasty is that the mur­der­ous cou­ple at its cen­tre are also self-appoint­ed moral arbiters, ​“pun­ish­ing per­ver­sion” in oth­ers, while them­selves engag­ing in acts of voyeurism, adul­tery, sadism, uro­lagnia, bes­tial­i­ty, incest, rape and, of course, ser­i­al homi­cide. ​“We do every­thing vice ver­sa,” as Celia points out, even as she and Christo­pher embody the top­sy-turvy hypocrisy of our cen­so­ri­ous guardians. Anton B

Direct­ed by Lucio Ful­ci
Aka Zom­bi; Zom­bi 2; The Island of the Liv­ing Dead; Zom­bie: The Dead Walk Among Us; Woodoo; Zom­bie 2: The Dead Are Among Us; Night­mare Island
Passed with cuts; re-released uncut in 2005

Per­haps the defin­ing work from Ital­ian hor­ror mae­stro Lucio Ful­ci, Zom­bie Flesh Eaters is the clos­est that a Euro­pean rip-off mer­chant has come to repli­cat­ing the oper­at­ic and the­mat­i­cal­ly rich undead films of George A Romero. Famous for a sequence in which a sub-aqua zom­bie is filmed tak­ing a bite out of a shark, the film is large­ly dri­ven by its inno­v­a­tive gore set-pieces, includ­ing one that was heav­i­ly cut in which a young woman has a large wood­en splin­ter pressed into her eye­ball. It lacks the gloss and dynamism of its US coun­ter­parts, but there’s ambi­tion and inno­va­tion aplen­ty, as seen in a cli­max in which a grave­yard of fall­en (and hun­gry) Con­quis­ta­dors rise again. DJ

Direct­ed by Anto­nio Margher­i­ti
Aka Inva­sion of the Flesh Hunters
Released with cuts in 2005

You might recog­nise the name Anto­nio Margher­i­ti – Quentin Taran­ti­no bor­rowed it for the Ital­ian alias of Don­nie Donowitz in Inglou­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds, and then had Once Upon a Time in Hol­ly­wood​’s Rick Dal­ton fly off to Italy to make a fic­tion­al spy thriller direct­ed by Margher­i­ti, enti­tled ​‘Oper­azione Dyn-o-mite!’. Accord­ing to Margher­i­ti (who passed away in 2002) Can­ni­bal Apoc­a­lypse was Tarantino’s favourite of his many, many films – and it’s actu­al­ly pret­ty good. Nor­man Hop­per (John Sax­on) returns from Viet­nam hav­ing been bit­ten by a fel­low sol­dier who was being held as a POW, and soon devel­ops a curi­ous crav­ing for human flesh. Less gory than its title sug­gests, the film Can­ni­bal Apoc­a­lypse most close­ly resem­bles is Dog Day After­noon, thanks to an intense shoot-out scene. HS

Direct­ed by Mario Bava
Aka Ecol­o­gy of Crime; Chain Reac­tion; Car­nage; Twitch of the Death Nerve; Blood Bath
Refused a cer­tifi­cate in 1972; released uncut in 2010

For­get about Psy­cho and Peep­ing Tom. The slash­er flick – the sort with cab­ins in wood­ed seclu­sion and mis­chie­vous teens get­ting sliced and diced by a masked killer – begins in earnest here. Mario Bava’s ear­ly cor­ner­stone of the gial­lo move­ment revolves around a ver­dant inlet where a sin­is­ter plot to pick off inher­i­tors to a vast for­tune turns the swim­ming hole beet-red with vis­cera. All the sev­ered arter­ies, decap­i­ta­tions, and stran­gu­la­tions were enough to scan­dalise the cen­sors and inspire a gen­er­a­tion of Amer­i­can imi­ta­tors that even­tu­al­ly came into their own. CB

Direct­ed by Ken Hugh­es
Aka Night School; Psi­co­sis 2
Passed with cuts; released with cuts in 1987

The final film from B‑movie vet­er­an Ken Hugh­es (best known for direct­ing Chit­ty Chit­ty Bang Bang) con­tains an exem­plary pas­tiche of the show­er scene from Psy­cho that tran­si­tions into one of the most unerot­ic sex scenes ever com­mit­ted to cel­lu­loid. Yes, Ter­ror Eyes is a mixed bag: as full of head-scratch­ing sur­pris­es as it is pulse-quick­en­ing sus­pense. A killer is on the loose in Boston and tar­get­ing stu­dents at a local night school; their rather niche call­ing card is to dump the sev­ered heads of their vic­tims in water (a duck pond, a fish tank, etc). A slick slash­er whose copy­book was only slight­ly blot­ted by the cen­sors, who deemed it fit for cin­e­ma con­sump­tion with only minor cuts. AW

Direct­ed by Eloy de la Igle­sia
Aka Week of the Killer
Released with cuts in 1993

Eloy de la Iglesia’s sole for­ay into hor­ror ter­ri­to­ry, dis­ap­point­ing­ly, doesn’t fea­ture any can­ni­bal­ism. The Can­ni­bal Man fol­lows a butch­er who acci­den­tal­ly kills a man, and falls into a mur­der spree try­ing to cov­er up the first killing. The film was heav­i­ly cen­sored in Fran­coist Spain, not so much for the mur­der bits but rather for the erot­ic sub­plot between two men, the mur­der­ous butch­er and his neigh­bour (played by Euse­bio Pon­cela, who would become one of Pedro Almodóvar’s col­lab­o­ra­tors a few years lat­er). The film’s erot­ic scenes were cut out of the Span­ish release, but kept in for the UK one. Anna B

Direct­ed by Abel Fer­rara
Released with pre-cuts in 1999; now in the pub­lic domain

Abel Fer­rera directs him­self as Reno Miller, a wiry, jit­tery artist liv­ing in the seedy under­bel­ly of 1970s New York. The Driller Killer fol­lows Reno’s descent into debt, drugs, psy­chosis and vio­lence. The film has far more style than the title evokes and pos­sess­es all the sweaty neo-noir grit Fer­rera is best known for. For all that it fol­lows a pre­dictable, well-trod­den route of a trou­bled man lash­ing out, The Driller Killer is quite unlike any­thing else. It seam­less­ly and unique­ly brings togeth­er rau­cous punk, reli­gious alle­go­ry, camp extrem­ism and grungy real­ism all set to an aching­ly cool sound­track. LL

Direct­ed by Romano Scav­oli­ni
Aka Night­mare
Passed with cuts; re-released uncut in 2015

The inces­sant seed­i­ness of Romano Scavolini’s Night­mare places it com­fort­ably with­in the ranks of time-hon­oured Video Nasty, but it also feels like a hat-tip to some of the more extreme work by Alfred Hitch­cock. Its focus on cod-Freudi­an ratio­nale links the killer to peren­ni­al mommy’s boy Nor­man Bates, while his cold, las­civ­i­ous­ness feels like a con­tin­u­a­tion of the work of Frenzy’s ​“neck­tie killer”, Bob Rusk. As a way to test out some exper­i­men­tal drugs, a group of beard­ed eggheads decide to allow a mul­ti­ple-mur­der­er back into polite soci­ety. They lose him instant­ly, and fol­low­ing a trip to a New York peep show, our clear­ly-deranged perp decides to stalk and slash his ex-wife. The psy­cho­log­i­cal pieces don’t quite fit togeth­er, but this is a well made and atmos­pher­ic slash­er bol­stered by some strong per­for­mances. DJ

Direct­ed by Dario Argen­to
Aka Unsane
Passed with cuts; re-released uncut in 2003

Dario Argento’s 1982 return to gial­lo is one of the most twist­ed and gor­geous exam­ples of the genre. An Amer­i­can hor­ror author in Rome is caught up with a ser­i­al killer who is seem­ing­ly inspired by his vio­lent, chau­vin­ist hor­ror nov­els. Tene­brae is a deeply unset­tling and phe­nom­e­nal­ly sexy film where Argen­to wres­tles with his own com­plic­i­ty in a world filled with unspeak­able vio­lence both on and off screen. Though it’s a lit­tle bag­gy towards the end each frame is still filled with Argento’s lus­cious sig­na­ture blood-splat­tered max­i­mal­ism. LL

Direct­ed by William Ash­er
Aka Night Warn­ing; Butch­er, Bak­er, Night­mare Mak­er
Refused a video cer­tifi­cate in 1987 under the title The Evil Pro­tégé; no UK re-release

A homo­pho­bic cop inves­ti­gates a mur­der he he believes to be part of a gay love tri­an­gle gone bad, but the truth is far weird­er and more mor­bid: the cul­prit is an unhinged psy­cho-bid­dy who came on to the vic­tim as a way of sub­li­mat­ing the quiv­er­ing desire she feels for her nephew, the real hero of our sto­ry. He’s torn between nor­mal ado­les­cent horni­ness, the Oedi­pal attrac­tion forced onto him, and the inti­mate bond he feels with his coach (the rare instance of a queer char­ac­ter treat­ed as a per­son rather than an odd­i­ty in ​’80s hor­ror) in a nasty stew of con­fused hor­mones, brought to a high boil by the jeal­ousy-moti­vat­ed slay­ings going on all around him. CB

Direct­ed by Aldo Lado
Aka Night Train Mur­ders; The New House on The Left; Sec­ond House on The Left; Don’t Ride on Late Night Trains; Last House Part II; Xmas Mas­sacre
Refused a cin­e­ma cer­tifi­cate in 1976; released uncut in 2008

If Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left trans­posed the Swedish medieval rape-revenge of Ing­mar Bergman’s The Vir­gin Spring to early-’70s New York, then Aldo Lado’s film puts it on board a Christ­mas Eve train from Munich to Italy. As two teens get raped and killed by a pair of thugs, Lado throws in a bour­geois socio­path­ic lib­er­tine (Macha Méril, extra­or­di­nary) to spur the young men on while avoid­ing the con­se­quences. Lack­ing Craven’s tone-deaf use of com­e­dy cops and sil­ly music, this is a sober, bleak­ly mean-spir­it­ed affair about class, vio­lence and civilisation’s ter­mi­nus. Anton Bitel

Direct­ed by Sam Rai­mi
Passed with cuts; re-released uncut in 2001

The film that put rapist trees on the map and made stars out of Sam Rai­mi and Bruce Camp­bell, this cab­in-in-the-woods clas­sic has endured for a rea­son and remains per­haps the most infa­mous of all the video nas­ties. Made on a shoe­string bud­get in Ten­nessee by a 13-per­son crew who were forced to sleep on the set, Camp­bell described the shoot as ​“12 weeks of mirth­less exer­cise in agony”, which per­haps explains the result­ing gorefest. Five col­lege stu­dents head to an iso­lat­ed cab­in for a vaca­tion and dis­cov­er a copy of the Natur­om Demon­to in the base­ment, along with a tape record­ing of incan­ta­tions which res­ur­rect a demon­ic enti­ty. Ter­ror ensues in many cre­ative and gory ways (involv­ing a lot of red food dye and corn syrup and some lo-fi pros­thet­ics which phys­i­cal­ly injured the actors) until the pièce de résis­tance, a mind-blow­ing stop-ani­ma­tion scene. The film was a com­mer­cial and crit­i­cal suc­cess, and its lega­cy is a whole host of sequels (offi­cial and unof­fi­cial), spin-offs, remakes. HS

Direct­ed by Matt Cim­ber
Released uncut in 2016

This dreamy explo­ration of trau­ma is buoyed by a won­der­ful cen­tral per­for­mance Mil­lie Perkins as Mol­ly, a repressed alco­holic unrav­el­ling in a sea­side town. The film is shaped to her unre­li­able per­spec­tive and fluc­tu­ates between abject revul­sion and dis­pas­sion­ate indif­fer­ence towards the vio­lence she receives and inflicts. Even in the peaks of her derange­ment there is nuance and immense sen­si­tiv­i­ty towards Mol­ly. Her sto­ry is framed not as a tit­il­lat­ing ​“good girl gone bad” but the nadir of a life filled with abuse, degra­da­tion and delu­sion. LL

Direct­ed by Andrzej Żuławs­ki
Passed uncut; released uncut in 1999

The Video Nasty list is a great exam­ple of what is known in media law as The Streisand Effect. This is when, by attempt­ing to remove images of her Malu­bi res­i­dence from some pid­dling, noth­ing pub­li­ca­tion, she inad­ver­tent­ly end­ed up draw­ing undue pub­lic atten­tion to them as a result of the ensu­ing legal pro­ceed­ings. So many of the films on the ​“banned” list would’ve slipped qui­et­ly into the night were it not for the pub­lic­i­ty they received via state cen­sor­ship, and you can find many of those sat at the bot­tom of the list. Andrzej Żuławski’s Pos­ses­sion, mean­while, suf­fered a some­what worse fate, in that its rep­u­ta­tion was tarred by asso­ci­a­tion to some of the less­er works here.

It’s a film clos­er in spir­it to the dark­er side of Ing­mar Bergman than it is to a cheap­jack gore flicks, depict­ing fam­i­ly break-up and men­tal break­down as a sym­bol­ic symp­tom of feel­ing your body is being invad­ed by an alien being. Its pièce de résis­tance is a mid­point freak­out involv­ing lead­ing lady Isabelle Adjani who descends into a pri­mal scream­ing fit in an U‑Bahn sta­tion pri­or to mis­car­ry­ing what appears to be an alien foe­tus. Despite the graph­ic mate­r­i­al and its extreme­ly evoca­tive (and admirably sub­tle) use of a ten­ta­cled mon­ster, this is a film which is not only a great art film, but one of the finest works of cin­e­ma to come out of the 1980s. DJ