See No Evil - David Kerekes, David Slater

The British fan press has seen the release of a number of accounts of the video nasty furore in the past few years, ranging from gorgeously packaged celebrations of nasty cover art (Salvation’s ‘The Art of the Nasty’) to John Gullidge’s ‘Seduction of the Gullible’. This, the latest from Headpress publishing outfit Critical Vision, is likely to be the last word on the subject, being an exhaustive study of each of the films to have been listed on the DPP’s notorious ‘nasty’ list. Or at least I hope it’s the last word. Most of the films caught up in the scandal appear to have been shoddy in the extreme, and ...  Read the complete review

The introduction of the video cassette recorder into homes, and the rapid transformation of the machine from an obscure gadget which was purely the domain of film enthusiasts to a mainstream piece of electronic equipment to be found in more than six million homes across Britain as early as 1983, forever changed the way in which films were marketed and distributed by their copyright owners, as well as the way in which we, as a nation, organised our evening’s viewing. Originally viewed as a rather lowly medium, in the first few years of the formats’ [yes, plural] inception most mainstream film distributors refused to allow their most lucrative ...  Read the complete review