Genre:
Documentary
Distributor:
Nucleas Films
Rating:18
Release Date:
1st March 2014 (World Premiere, Glasgow Film Festival) June 2014 (UK DVD)
Director:
Jake West
Cast:
Marc Morris, Kim Newman, Christopher Smith, Neil Marshall, Alan Jones
For those of us left unsated by the critically acclaimed Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship, & Videotape, director Jake West and producer Marc Morris return for a second instalment of the revealing documentary. This time the duo tackle everything that came after the 1984 Video recordings Act, filling in the blanks on how the horror fan base reacted to the Nazi-like censorship of the so-called Video Nasties.
For any younger horror fans, those of us who didn’t live in the treacherous times of home raids, jail time for ownership, and the troubles of cross-continental smuggling, Draconian Days seems just as preposterous as Moral Panic. By that I’m referring to the sordid mess of legislation enacted by a group of self-righteous conservative moral rights activists to ban flagrant use of tit and gore, not the documentaries themselves. The world Morris and West present to us is worrying indeed.
Where the first documentary ended on a note of caution, contextualising the Video Nasties mess as a frankly mind-boggling encroachment on civil liberties, Draconian Days, looks at the fallout of the act and the effects it had on forming the modern-day horror fan base. A plethora of intriguing interviews and footage make this just as fascinating and entertaining a watch as the first, and once the film has dispensed with a ten minute recap of the first (which seems oddly wasteful) the film drive forward into mostly new territory.
Arguably the recycling of previous interviewees keeps much of the film bogged down in defending its own right to exist as a sequel, but in the second half West appears to quickly discard these issues and allow the film to take shape in its own right. Draconian Days, as the title may suggest, is bothered by the excessive demonization of horror movies in the 80’s and early 90’s. The vitriol of an outraged generation seeps through the celluloid, taking a stand against not only a point in history that the horror fans have almost buried, but daring anyone to try it again.
For horror fans, Draconian Days is a must, not simply as a cautionary tale paralleling the modern day issues of copyrighting and censorship, but as a well-conceived, well-humoured, and often insightful glimpse into a specific point in Horror history. If you weren’t bothered for the first then this is surplus to requirement.
he video nasties atrocities
ReplyDeletein the hysteria of film censorship back in
the early eighties
where morality was at it’s highest where
there were violent
atrocities going on in England like the
coal miners strikes
in cities and violence of protests going
on in Utoxteth
and Brixton and the war in the Falklands
over its control
of between England and Argentina and mass
employment
that former factory and mine workers took
their severance
pay by starting up in the video rental
service due to the birth
of home cinema was booming with it’s war
between vhs and beta
that vhs won hands down but their were no
censoring on graphic
horror movies including nightmaresin a
damage brain that led distributor
David Hamilton grant went to prison for
18 months due to hosting an
distasteful guess the weight of a human
brain contest that tied in with
the illegal uncut version uncensored and
at his trial film columnist Derek Malcolm
was asked
by the qc about what he thought of the
films merit and Malcolm said it was
an well executed film so the judge
exploded well executed and the judge
continued
about some Nazi atrocity was well
executed and that lead the path of
the department of public prosecutions
issue an motion of the video recordings
act
lead by conservative politician graham
bright to censor graphic horror with
campaigner Mary Whitehouse as collaborator
by labelling it under the obscene
Publicaton’s act 1957 the same treatment
as horror comics by the hysteria of
turning children into serial killers and
fabricating a list of real titles with
made up ones for school children as
research lead by guy Cumberbatch but
Clifford
hill was furious with the research and
author and professor martin barker
was set up by the newsociety magazine a
government funded publication
but tricking him to sumerise an article
about female revenge horror film
I spit on your grave so he got tormented
by the press for three days solid
that lead these stories as fine
ingrediants for an tell all documentary
compendium dvd set back in 2010 and now
in 2014 comes the continuation.
Frankie Dandridge Smales
smalestv uk