CENSOR, a film that’s worthy of attention, if only because of its subject matter: the “Video Nasties” craze that gripped Britain in the 1980s, in which horror-themed VHS movies judged obscene by the Department of Public Prosecutions (DPP) were censored. The term Video Nasty may be largely forgotten today, but many of the bans are still in place, and the era remains quite vivid in the minds of those horror-meisters who lived through it—one of whom, the critic/novelist Kim Newman, was among the executive producers of CENSOR.
This 2021 film is far from the definitive take on the subject, but it isn’t without worth. The feature debut of writer-director Prano Bailey-Bond (known for directing several short films, including 2015’s well-received NASTY), it played at the Sundance Film Festival and was given a summer 2021 theatrical run by Magnet Releasing (albeit to very little success).
Enid is a dedicated British censor in the early 1980s. Her latest job, on a film entitled DON’T GO IN THE CHURCH, directed by one Frederick North, is having a most disturbing effect on her psyche. Its imagery is triggering unpleasant childhood flashbacks and, even worse, causing Enid’s memories to become intertwined in her mind with the events of DON’T GO IN THE CHURCH. She’s in a great deal of trouble already, due to having not censored a film that becomes the primary culprit in an actual killing, making her the target of public ire.
Enid goes in search of other Frederick North films on VHS. She finds one entitled ASUNDER, and becomes convinced that its lead actress, one Alice Lee, is her long-lost younger sister. Enid decides to deepen her investigation, tracking down North on the set of his latest opus, a sequel to DON’T GO IN THE CHURCH. But she also pays a visit to the home of another targeted Video Nasty director, entailing an attempted seduction and accidental killing, after which Enid snaps entirely and all traces of reality dissolve.
This is an extremely slick, technically assured film, with an excellent lead performance by Niamh Algar and skilled intercutting between the here-and-now actions of Enid with clips from the gory films she views. Particularly ingenious are the dueling aspect ratios, with the “real” scenes visualized in widescreen format and the movie ones in TV standard ratios, a dichotomy that undergoes a dramatic change as the film advances and reality becomes progressively less fluid. This, unfortunately, brings up CENSOR’s most outsized flaw.
It’s a problem that tends to recur in movies about moviemaking: the fact that the movies-within-the-movie, containing titles like CANNIBAL CARNAGE and EXTREME CODA, are utterly worthless in every conceivable respect, with amateurish filmmaking and production values that wouldn’t pass muster in a student film. Given that the final third takes place largely, if not entirely, within the universe of those films, that’s a rather pressing issue.
This is not to say that the 72 actual Video Nasties, which included anti-classics like BLOOD FEAST, THE DRILLER KILLER, CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST and THE EVIL DEAD, were anyone’s idea of well-made cinema. They have (mostly) endured, though, and I’m not entirely sure we’ll be able to say the same for CENSOR.
Vital Statistics
CENSOR
BFI/Silver Salt Films
Director: Prano Bailey-Bond
Producer: Helen Jones
Screenplay: Prano Bailey-Bond, Anthony Fletcher
Cinematography: Annika Summerson
Editing: Mark Towns
Cast: Niamh Algar, Nicholas Burns, Vincent Franklin, Sophia La Porta, Adrian Schiller, Clare Holman, Andrew Havill, Felicity Montagu, Danny Lee Wynter, Clare Perkins, Guillaume Delaunay, Richard Glover, Michael Smiley