Cannibal Error: A Social History of the ‘Video Nasty

Moral panic myth and the macabre: Video nasties in the 1980s and beyond.

When the widespread introduction of the VHS cassette changed the face of home entertainment in the early 1980s it wasn’t long before video rental store shelves were filled with lurid tapes promising orgies of sex violence and terror.

In this talk authors David Kerekes and Jennifer Wallis explore how the panic over ‘video nasties’ developed: prompting raids and arrests implicating films in real-life murder cases and targeting film dealers distributors and viewers. They will ask how far policies and campaigns directed at video nasties — not forgetting the marketing of these films — created a mystique and mythology of their own as fans sought out every tape on the famed video nasty ‘list’ produced by the Director of Public Prosecutions for example. Indeed the allure of the video nasty continues today with collectors snapping up titles for significant sums and modern horror franchises such as V/H/S drawing on the nostalgic appeal of the VHS era.

David Kerekes is the co-author of Cannibal Error: Anti-Film Propaganda and the ‘Video Nasties’ Panic of the 1980s (2024) and founder of Headpress publishing. Jennifer Wallis is a historian and VHS collector and Press & Marketing Officer for Headpress.

This talk will be hosted by Deborah Hyde. Deborah writes and talks about Dark Folklore and is one of the resident experts on the popular BBC podcast Uncanny. She is a fellow of The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and was the editor of The Skeptic Magazine for ten years the UK’s only regular magazine to take a critical-thinking and evidence-based approach to pseudo-science and the paranormal.

David Kerekes‘s book will be available to buy in person on the evening.

Age Recommendation:

16+

Host or Publisher Scott Wood