The "Video Nasties" Part 2: Summer 1982

In the wake of Peter Chippendale's article in The Sunday Times, the problem of the "video nasties" seemed to be being debated just about everywhere. Chippendale returned the following Sunday, 30 May, to wheel out Peter Kruger, operational head of the Obscene Publications Squad, for his comments on the suituation and it was clear from his words that he was less than happy with both the situation and the way that the video trade seemed to be puuting themselves beyond the reach of the law.

It was hardly a suprise, then, that at the end of May, in the immediate aftermath of Chippendale's articles, Kruger and his team secured warrants to enter and search the offices of several of the distributors in search of obscene materials. This initial raid netted them copies of SS Experiment Camp, I Spit On Your Grave and The Driller Killer, all of which were passed to the Director of Public Prosecutions [DPP], Sir Thomas Hethrington, for inspection with a view to prosecution under the terms of the Obscene Publications Act 1957.

The most immediate effect was to galvanise the British Videogram Association into action. They announced that they had entered into a joint working party with the British Board of Film Censors to devise a new system of video classification that they hoped would be in effect by the end of the year. They, perhaps over-optimistically, urged their members not to stock any tapes that hadn't been already been classified. This suggested that the average video dealer would have any clue as to which of the by now thousands of films flooding the market had a BBFC certificate and which didn't and didn't address the key problem facing the dealers - the "nasties" were popular, they rented well and all the recent publicity was simply making them all the more desirable.

While Hetherington and his team decided what, if anything, they could do with the films already presented to them, The Sunday Times, quickly establishing itself at the forefront of the charge against the "nasties", claimed that the Obscene Publications Squad was preparing to move against four further titles.

Hetherington took his time to deliberate on the initial three titles, despite mounting pressure from both Scotland Yard and the media for a quick answer. Indeed such was the outrage expressed by some quarters of the press that it was surely becoming increasingly difficult for Hetherington not to give the Yard the go-ahead for a prosecution. And sure enough, by the first week in August it was being reported that Hetherington had ruled that at least three titles, and possibly more, could face prosecution, though it wasn't clear whether or not the prosecutions would be made under Section 2 or Section 3 of the Obscene Publications Act.

Section 3 was seen as the softer option, the maximum punishment being seizure and forfiture of goods under a magistrate's warrant. It wasn't an option that was favoured by some of the more extreme elements of the campaign against violent horror videos, particularly Mary Whitehouse of the moral pressure group National Viewers and Listeners Association who favoured prosecutions under Section 2 of the act which allowed for prison sentences of up to three years.

In principle, the DPP was happy that at least five titles could face Section 2 prosecutions. These included titles already mentioned elsewhere, but added Tobe Hooper's Death Trap to the list, an unexpected addition that seemed to come out of nowhere.

And Death Trap was one of the first legal victims of the "video nasties" campaign when it and The Driller Killer became the first videos successfully prosecuted under the terms of the OPA. Towards the end of August 1982, magistrates in Willesden, north-west London, ordered the immediate seizure of 590 copies along with all masters of both films. Prosecutions were brought under Section 3 of the Act, but Stephen Wooller, speaking for the DPP, noted that in future any such prosectuions would be made under Section 2.

The decision threw the British video industry into confusion. Video retailers and rental shop owners were concerned that no-one was telling them exactly what constituted a "nasty" and were even more concerned that they could conceivably be proscuted in the future for titles which had not yet been sent before the DPP. Their professional body, the Video Traders Association, cautioned its members to be wary, to remove copies of the three siezed films from display and warned then that "any film which exploits gratuitous violence may now be open to the same sort of prosecution as pornography."

A summer of litigation concluded with Astra Video in the dock when, on 24 September, they were ordered by magistrates in Croydon, south London, to hand over 234 copies of I Spit On Your Grave though contrary to earlier warnings, the prosecution was again made under Section 3. Presiding magistrate George Mitchell expressed some suprise that although the DPOP seemed ready to proceed with Section 2 and 3 prosecutions, the paperwork sent in by the Obscene Publications Squad's Peter Kruger were for Section 2 only. Mitchell opined that this was due to "a breakdown in communications" between Scotland Yard and the DPP's office and noted that although the DPP was keen to proceed with Section 2 prosecutions but to establish a legal precedent would have taken months had they gone down that route.

Last Updated: 6 March, 2007