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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Ph.D. Thesis Abstract - Strong Uncut Version: VIPCO and the Marketing and Distribution of the ‘Video Nasties’
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2015-10-01
2021-09-21
2015-10-01
2024-02-14
Cinéma & Cie
Mark McKenna
2015/10/01
University of Sunderland
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Ph.D. Thesis Abstract - Strong Uncut Version: VIPCO and the Marketing and Distribution of the ‘Video Nasties’
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/16435/16790
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Strong Uncut Version: VIPCO and the Marketing and
Distribution of the ‘Video Nasties’
Mark McKenna / Ph.D Thesis Project1
University of Sunderland




   The history of ‘video nasties’ has been recounted many times in the 30 years
since 1984 and the introduction of the Video Recordings Act. However, in this
time little attention has been paid to the distributors outside of their role as
dealers, facilitating the perceived ‘rape of our children’s minds’2 with graphic
scenes of sex and violence. Arguments have favoured issues of censorship and
the events that lead to the introduction of the Video Recordings Act, prioritising
moral panics more generally and the ubiquitous media effects debates that often
accompany the introduction of any new technology. These debates while impor-
tant, have side-lined the actual effects of retrospectively criminalising a product
and the ramifications upon wholesalers, distributors, dealers and consumers in
prosecutions that continued well into the 1990s.3
   For the Video Instant Picture Company (VIPCO), the distributor most closely
associated with the ‘video nasties’ moral panic, the new legislation governing
home video would prove to be defining. Targeted by the tabloid press,4 they
quickly garnered a reputation as the leading purveyor of ‘sadist videos’, and fol-
lowing prosecutions under the Obscene Publications Act (1959) the company
disappeared by early 1984.
   Re-emerging in the early 1990s VIPCO reissued previously banned films,
repackaged and rebranded for a new generation of horror fans. VIPCO’s re-
cognition of the value in the ‘Video Nasty’ defined the company’s subsequent
renaissance, relicensing titles from their own back catalogue and introducing
notorious titles previously distributed from other labels, creating a brand awa-
reness almost as significant as that of British production houses like Hammer or
Amicus.
   VIPCO operated at the forefront of British horror distribution for almost th-


1
  Ph.D. thesis supervised by Professor Clarissa Smith and Professor Julia Knight. For information:
mark.mckenna@research.sunderland.ac.uk.
2
  ‘Rape of our children’s minds’, Daily Mail, 30 June 1983, p. 6.
3
  BBFC records held for Zombie Flesh Eaters (Lucio Fulci, 1980), British Board of Film Classifica-
tion (BBFC) [accessed 13 September 2013].
4
  ‘How high street horror is invading the home’, The Sunday Times, 23 May 1982, p. 7.

                                                         Cinéma & Cie, vol. XV, no. 25, Fall 2015
                                        Mark McKenna


ree decades, pioneering the ‘banned brand’ and establishing a clear market for
the re-release of previously contentious material. In post 1984 Britain the strin-
gent regulations of the BBFC would prove damaging to VIPCO’s reputation as
a distributor trading in the illicit, constrained by the censor into offering films
in an expurgated form. VIPCO’s product increasingly fell from favour as fans
criticised the perceived lack of quality in their videos and DVDs.
   Through consideration of historic and subsequent re-releases of these titles,
marketing across two distinct periods will be examined — pre–1984 and, fol-
lowing the VRA, the era of certification and compliance to the BBFC’s guidelines
for ‘suitable home viewing.’ I will explore the deployment of ‘moral panic’ as a
marketing tool and, through a comparative analysis of pro- and anti-horror texts
examining how both seek to construct their object as ‘terrifying’. This will lead
to an analysis of audience responses to these releases, examining constructions of
authenticity within genre film communities and the deployment of sub-cultural
capital in the reception to the product.
   There is a large body of research on the ‘Video Nasties’ and censorship, most
notably the work of Martin Barker5 and Julian Petley,6 however the focus is very
much on the political motivations of central figures in the campaign and the issue
of censorship itself. A number of scholars have examined the textual formations
of the video nasties (Egan;7 Mee;8 Mendik9). Where my research differs is in its
emphasis on the marketing and distribution of the films and how both the voices
raised against them, and those producing, distributing and consuming the films
characterised the ‘video nasties’ as illicit. In so doing, I hope to explore the cir-
culation of discourses, often strategically deployed, to understand how, why, and
under what conditions, certain kinds of film are greeted by outrage.




5
  Martin Barker, The Video Nasties. Freedom and Censorship in the Media (London: Pluto Press,
1984).
6
  Julian Petley, Film and Video Censorship in Modern Britain (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 2011).
7
  Kate Egan, Trash or Treasure: Censorship and the Changing Meanings of the Video Nasties (Man-
chester: Manchester University Press, 2012).
8
  Laura Mee, ‘The re-rape and revenge of Jennifer Hills: Gender and genre in I Spit On Your Grave
(2010)’, Horror Studies, 4.1 (1 April 2013), pp. 75–89.
9
  Xavier Mendik, ‘The long road back from hell: Reclaiming Cannibal Holocaust’, Cannibal Holo-
caust DVD, Shameless Screen Entertainment, UK (2012).

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