Of all the films on the DPP Video Nasties list of criminalized films, perhaps the most famous,
and almost surely the one that has seen the most enduring success as a viable property and in the subsequent careers of those involved, is The Evil Dead. It’s also a film that stood in particular notoriety at the height of the hysteria surrounding the Video Recordings Act 1983, with perhaps its combination of viciousness and commercial success making it stand out as a target of hatred above all others for some. None other than Mary Whitehouse herself brandished it with the label of, “the number one nasty.”
Taking all this into consideration, it is worth highlighting the historical significance that The Evil Dead has in the wider narrative of the “video nasties” moral panic and the legal battles it provoked. Across the UK in the early ’80s, retailers and distributors were being taken to court on obscenity charges, with the subjective nature of what is obscene meaning that some were being acquitted and others were being prosecuted, sometimes over the same film, only adding to the sense of confusion around the video nasties. In the case of The Evil Dead specifically, the film was taken to court on forty different occasions, and despite only two of these leading to convictions, the film’s enemies could technically just keep doing this indefinitely, in hopes of driving the film underground. All this built up to July 1985, when Palace Pictures – distributors of The Evil Dead – were called to face obscenity charges at Snaresbrook Crown Court, in what would be taken as a test case, the result of which would set a countrywide precedent going forward.
The trial went on for several months. At one point, Sam Raimi flew to London, ready to testify on behalf of the film himself, though the judge promptly turned him away. It ultimately fell on Nik Powell, Chairman of Palace Pictures, to make the case for the film, and he made the argument that much of the hysteria surrounding the film was founded in ignorance – despite that famous “number one nasty” quote, Mary Whitehouse confessed to never having seen the film herself. So, in a high stakes gambit worthy of a cinematic courtroom drama, Powell arranged for a screening of The Evil Dead for the judge and jury, so they could make up their own minds. Having seen the film, the judge ruled that the film was not obscene, and the case was dismissed. Based off this result, Powell and co-director Stephen Woolley continued to take the fight to the government, not relenting until The Evil Dead was finally removed from the video nasties list for good in September 1985.
Even after this result, The Evil Dead was only able to secure a certified video release with heavy cuts in 1990, and was only released uncut on DVD in the UK in 2001. But this was a major blow to the credibility of the Video Recordings Act and the DPP witch-hunt against the video nasties, showing that for those with the resources to stand up against them in court,
these obscenity charges often did not have the legal footing to hold up under challenge and scrutiny. Though it would take some time to fully come to fruition, I believe the vindication of The Evil Dead put cracks in the Video Recordings Act that would eventually bring the whole thing down.
This is an awful lot of preamble before getting to the film itself, but I think another key element in the success of The Evil Dead against this hate campaign is that its artistic merit cannot be denied. This is a genuinely excellent film, clearly the work of a gifted filmmaker in Sam Raimi.
To be continued in the back pages of The Nasty #1!
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