Jake West’s sequel to his Video Nasties documentary focuses
on the rise of former filmmaker James Ferman as the head censor at the British
Board of Film Censorship. The way Ferman
got other conservatives to rally alongside him was admittedly ingenious: He showed them a greatest hits collection of
all the goriest bits from all the nasties.
Even the most die-hard gorehound would’ve been a little queasy watching
that.
West also gets into how the tabloids used the video nasties
as a scapegoat to real-life tragedies. A
mass shooting is blamed on Rambo and Child’s Play 3 is blamed for the tragic
Bulger murder. Thinking something as
tame as Child’s Play 3 could drive someone to murder is laughable now, but when
you think of the media frenzy that surrounded the case, it’s easy to see why
people were so hysterical.
When politicians call for tighter restrictions on videos, it
is Ferman who champions to prevent them from further censorship. Later, he gets ousted when he tries to
legalize pornography. Even though this
guy wanted to hack all the good stuff out of countless genre classics, he winds
up being a decent guy after all.
While Draconian Days covers a lot of the same territory as
David Gregory’s Ban the Sadist Videos did, there are a couple of pleasant
deviations. The segment on horror
fanzines is great and probably deserves its own documentary at some point. In the end, it runs on a bit too long for its
own good. With some tighter editing,
West could’ve condensed all the material into one feature. If you've seen the first one, you probably owe it to yourself to watch this one too.
Nice write-up! Definitely want to check this out. BBFC stories are also interesting.
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