Video Nasties Law Invalid? We’ll Take Care of That

Fulci's "The Beyond" was just one of the movies that was caught up in Great Britain's '80s-era "video nasties" ban. This week it was discovered that the law was never properly ratified.

Every time the heart warms to the ol’ Sceptered Aisle — usually after a particularly good BBC podcast — the dozing dragon that is Great Britain’s “video nasties” law stirs and growls, and sense retakes me once again: “Oh yes,” I think, “THAT’S why I don’t live there.”

This week, it turns out that law, officially called the Video Recordings Act of 1984, isn’t really a law at all, meaning future action under its auspices is no longer enforceable. Yet rather than taking this opportunity to quietly leave behind a particularly dark age of holier than thou insanity that saw many video store owners fined and jailed for renting horror flicks like The Evil Dead (and yes, to be fair, extreme flicks such as Cannibal Holocaust) to adults, the British government is quickly trying to ratify that 25-year-old act to ensure that this Thatcher-age assault on intellectual freedom remains robust for years to come.

There’s a certain symmetry to all of this of course, coming on the heels of the British banning of the new Japanese torturefest Grotesque.

Another Kind of German Horror Ban

It’s getting terribly tricky to make horror films in Germany these days.

Fresh on the heels of enacting new restrictions that have resulted in the banning of extreme films such as Hostel, the courts are now having a go at a 2006 film released in Germany as Rohtenburg.

The movie, also known as Grimm Love, currently is working the film festival circuit, with a recent showing at the Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.

“Aha,” I hear you say. “It’s a gay-themed film, hence the problem. Bloody closed-minded Europeans.”

Not so fast. The problem is much more interesting.

According to the Frankfurt Regional Court, Rohtenburg, which is about a man who kills and eats a voluntary victim, appears based on the real-life 2001 crime of German Armin Meiwes, who courted his victim online. (Damned Internet!) According to Meiwes, the movie (you’re going to love this) infringed upon his “personality rights,” since the picture is so-clearly about him.

The usual sturm und drang about censorship and killers’ rights aside, I must admit that I probably never would’ve heard of this film had it not been for this bit of legal music hall. What’s more, I never would’ve known that our Felicity, Keri Russell, has actually wound up in a proper horror film – a German one, no less. Thank you, German legal system. Now I’m gonna have to go out and see this movie for sure!