Our Staff Picks column takes you back to a time when video stores reigned supreme and the "Staff Picks" section was the place to find out what films were worthy of one's time. Of course, our version of Staff Picks has a decidedly skintillating angle, as we suss out which films from a particular subgenre are the best to find great nudity. This week, we cover one of the biggest controversies of the home video movement with the United Kingdom's notorious list of Video Nasties!
If you don't follow British culture or listen to British film critics, you might not have heard of the Video Nasties before now. During the early days of home video, the BBFC (England's equivalent of the MPAA) sought to exert a new form of censorship control over cinematic endeavors that, thanks to a loophole in the law, could skirt around their classification system by just showing up on video unrated. Presumably, these films with terribly offensive content could then be procured by some poor, unsuspecting good Christian family and forever pervert that family and their entire belief system. This injustice could not stand and so the BBFC released a list of films that came to be known as the so-called Video Nasties.
In June 1983, the Department of Public Prosecution released their first list of films, which would be altered monthly as new films came along and others dropped off the list. A total of 72 films appeared on the list at one time or another in the list's 18 year history, with 39 of them successfully prosecuted to be submitted for formal BBFC classification and have cuts made to the films accordingly. The full list of 72 is a bit of a snooze because a great many of them appeared briefly on the list before quickly dropping off thanks to a lack of truly obscene content.
However, the 39 movies that were actually successfully prosecuted and can officially call themselves Video Nasties is quite a list. There's some truly depraved content on the list, films dominated by either sexual violence like Meir Zarchi's I Spit On Your Grave or just flat out repulsive violence like a great many Cannibal-sploitation classics. However, there's some excellent content as well, with everything from camp classics to films by highly regarded directors. This week we're highlighting four flicks that manage to transcend the Video Nasty label and become worthwhile artistic endeavors on their own merits.
Night of the Bloody Apes (1969)
Did you ever wonder what Planet of the Apes would've been like if Chuck Heston had banged Kim Hunter's Zira? Or maybe if Dr. Zaius had his way with Linda Harrison's Nova? Well, Night of the Bloody Apes might just be the movie for you, weirdo with oddly specific taste! This flick was made and released in Mexico in 1969 under the title La Horripilante bestia humana ("The Horrible Man-Beast"), before gaining its new title with an American re-dub released stateside in 1972 to capitalize on Apes fever.
The plot concerns mad scientist Dr. Krallman who, racked with grief at the news his son may die, decides to transplant his son's failed heart with a gorilla heart. This saves his son's life but also turns him into a murderous, half-man, half-ape creature who runs amok, killing and sexually assaulting with equally reckless abandon. The film itself is dirt stupid and its regard for science is about on par with Ed Wood's belief of what atomic age science could do to humanity.
Like so many low budget foreign endeavors that get re-edited, re-dubbed, and have new sequences shot to amp up sex and violence for the American audience, it's basically just a non-stop TA fest with monster makeup that rivals the background extras in some of the latter Planet of the Apes sequels...
**Available to Stream via Tubi**
****
The Last House on the Left (1972)
**Portions of the following text are excerpted from our SKIN-depth Look at Wes Craven's Films**
Following a collaboration with future Friday the 13th creator Sean S. Cunningham's flick Together, Wes Craven chose to make his first film an adaptation of Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring, which itself was influenced by Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon. Gone, however, is Bergman's ending where the vengeful father vows to build a church on the site of his daughter's murder, replaced instead with some very violent sexual content.
As a staple of the midnight drive-in circuit, the flick had many posters with one hell of an awesome tagline: "It rests on 13 acres of earth over the very center of hell!" The film tells the story of two teenage girls (Lucy Grantham and Sandra Peabody) whose detour to score some weed prior to heading to a concert finds them brutally attacked, assaulted, and murdered by a gang of thugs. When the thugs end up seeking shelter for the night in the home of one of the victims, the parents decide to enact their revenge in an equally savage manner.
The film itself was mostly savaged by critics, though Roger Ebert did give it a positive review that he stood by when given the chance to change his mind on several occasions. Unfortunately, most of the sex and nudity in the film is of the violent variety, with almost none of it being played for titillation.
If nothing else, this is the film that establishes Craven's love of the bathtub and bathing beauties in general, bringing a brief nip slip from Jeramie Rain nine minutes in...
The attack on Sandra Peabody and Lucy Grantham itself occurs thirty minutes into the film, with Grantham (right) attempting to calm an hysterical Peabody (left)...
For her efforts, Grantham also gets socked in the stomach after having her shirt opened and her breasts exposed...
Unlike other films of its ilk that would follow—like I Spit On Your Grave, Forced Entry, or Kiss of Death—Craven featured suggestions of violence rather than explicit portrayals of violence. Yes, there are some of the latter, but mostly he favors cutting away at crucial moments and leaving the audience's imaginations to fill in the blanks. This, of course, makes the film feel a lot worse than it actually is, but it was a savvy move on Craven's part, and an early chance for him to do quite a bit with very little money—a theme that sadly ran through most of his films.
**Available to Stream Free for Members via Amazon Prime and Hulu**
****
Flesh for Frankenstein (1973)
Also known as Andy Warhol's Frankenstein, this re-imagining of Shelley's classic tale by Factory staple Paul Morrisey stars the always incredible, always menacing Udo Kier as the titular mad doctor. Despite baring the notorious artist's name in some releases, Warhol himself had little to do with the production itself and was included in promotional materials as more of a marketing ploy than anything else. Shot concurrently in Italy with Blood for Dracula—which didn't make the DPP's list—Flesh for Frankenstein finds the titular doc hoping to make something of a "master race" using body parts culled from various people in an effort to create the perfect human.
Morrisey regular Joe Dallesandro plays a lunk-headed farmhand who gets roped into working for Frankenstein and soon uncovers his evil scheme, but the plot is tertiary at best in the equation of why the flick is a classic. There's really quite a lot here to love from Dallesandro's wonderfully anachronistic Brooklyn accent, to the grand guignol levels of blood, gore, and viscera on display. The Frankenstein-as-fascist conceit would be a lot better if Blood for Dracula didn't basically do the exact same thing with another Udo Kier character, but that's a small complaint.
Overall, there's a lot to love in Flesh for Frankenstein, namely all that titular flesh! A lot of it comes from some of the many ladies of the evening involved in Frankenstein's plan, but his wife Monique van Vooren gets nude in bed with Dallesandro, while his female monster (Dalila Di Lazzaro) also bares boobs and bush while rising from the slab...
Bronsonand Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn once said that Flesh for Frankenstein was "the only film I’ve ever wished that I had made." If you've seen this movie and his movie, you can't help but understand that statement completely.
**Currently only available via an Out of Print DVD from Criterion**
****
Tenebrae (1982)
**Portions of the following text are excerpted from our SKIN-depth Look at Dario Argento's Films**
Spun out of life-threatening phone calls and letters the director received from crazed "fans," Dario Argento's 1982 film marked a return to full-on giallo following his more supernatural works Suspiria and Inferno. Not released in the US until two years later, Tenebrae tells the tale of an American horror novelist (Anthony Franciosa) who travels to Italy to promote his latest novel, and finds himself and his inner circle threatened by an anonymous murderer.
The twist ends up being that the author himself is the culprit of the murder spree, and he finds himself felled in the end by his own assistant Anne, played by Argento's partner, Daria Nicolodi. Whatever sort of Freudian read you want to make of all this is likely valid and you could go in several different directions attempting to decipher Argento's thesis statement...
The lesbian undertones that populated the dance academy of Suspiriaexplode here as overtones, with Mirella Banti locking lips with Mirella D'Angelo at the 24 minute mark, with the pair paying for their promiscuity at the hands of the killer seven minutes later. Thankfully we get one last look at Mirella Banti's magnificent breasts before she bites the dust...
While not officially scored by Goblin as his previous efforts Deep Red and Suspiria were, three of the four band members (Claudio Simonetti, Massimo Morante, and Fabio Pignatelli) returned to compose the film's soundtrack. Tenebraeis also perhaps best remembered for being a part of the original list of Video Nasties from the UK, though the film was eventually passed without cuts in 2003. It is also widely regarded as one of Argento's finest films, and is also noted as one of his most unbridled and erotic films. Yes, it's definitely got some disturbing moments, but it's also sexy as fuck...
**Available to Stream Free for Members via Shudder or to Rent or Own via iTunes**
****
Enjoy Some More of Our Staff Picks
—Barbarian Movies of the Early 80s
****
