London Fortean Society:
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 from Newham Bookshop on the evening.

Age Recommendation:

16+

Price:

Standard £10 • Living Support £7 • Students £7 • Online £7

Access Information

Due to the age and Grade II listing of the building, there is no lift access to rooms above the ground floor.

All the ground-floor rooms are fully accessible by wheelchair. Main Hall (street access, step-free), Brockway Room (street access, step-free), Bertrand Russell Room (street access, shallow ramp), Hive Cafe (street access, step-free), There is also an accessible toilet on the ground floor opposite the Brockway Room.

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