 A nostalgic look at the glory days of the video market and VIPCO, one of the biggest horror players in the game (and some personal reminiscences from the reviewer)  Occasionally a non-fiction title comes my way I just know before even opening it, that in the simplest of terms, this is a labour of love; a project the author just had screaming to get out of their system. After completing Video Nasty Mayhem: The Inside Story of VIPCO I was proved to be 100% correct, James Simpson and I are probably around the same age, watched the same trash and hunted down many of the obscure films featured in this book when we were kids. We also both loved video shops and we both spent a small fortune on this stuff. Note I said VIDEO, the distribution company VIPCO, which this book is about, existed in the distant days before DVD, specialising in trashy and violent exploitation films which often had great covers, but behind the jacketing there were often (but not always) crap flicks. But as a child of the 1980s video shop generation, the gaudiness of the cover played a major part in my film selection and so VIPCO was often on my radar.  James Simpson takes us back to that era in this nostalgic, non-academic study of Video Instant Picture Company (VIPCO) which was responsible for releasing many genre classics in the UK, including Zombie Flesh Eaters, Shogun Assassins, The Burning and The Nostril Picker. Although many of these films will have been released on multiple occasions in the UK, all claiming to be more ‘uncut’ that the other, the company had a great eye for spotting films which would be easy to market for profit. I’ll get the greatest weakness the book has out of the way first; it spends way too much of its 164 (admittedly A4 size) pages giving long, often two pages on each, summarising around fifty of these titles. This takes up too many pages and for many readers these lengthy summaries are unnecessary. Ultimately, if you are the type to find yourself reading this book you really do not need James Simpson telling you what Zombie Flesh Eaters is about. If you haven’t seen this cult classic already this probably is not the book for you. I’m most definitely in this camp; in fact many years ago, I even asked Fulci an audience Q&A at a film retrospective where they showed a version of Zombie Flesh Eaters dubbed into Japanese as it was the only uncut version they could find (that was the early nineties for you!) This book is aimed at a VERY small niche; a very knowledgeable market and too much of it is basic stuff which horror buffs will already know. Ultimately, I’m not sure it revealed much I was not familiar with, but there were lots of clever observations and funny nuggets thrown into the mix. Admittedly, I had not seen The Nostrel Picker (nor is it a classic!) and don’t think I will be seeking it out. Sorry James! The book brought back much nostalgia for the video shop age and the crazy covers the likes of VIPCO and ColourBox had to sucker in teen viewers such as myself and Video Nasty Mayhem tracks down a few people who worked with Mike Lee who owned VIPCO and looks at the wheeling and dealing behind the company which were big business in the 1980s. Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond the control of the author there is no real paper trail for the author to follow as much of the VIPCO documentation no longer exists. James Simpson does join many dots about the company and their eye-opening business practices, and this is the strongest part of the book. The organisation lets it down slightly; as the ‘VIPCO Story’ is interspersed with all the film reviews, which after a while felt like unnecessarily padding. I think much shorter reviews might have worked better, similar perhaps to those used in Michael Weldon’s classic Psychotronic Film Encyclopaedia and included as an A-Z in the back of the book. A lot of coverage and observations is given to the Video Nasty furore which was a big deal in the UK in the early to mid-1980s, and I’m not sure whether American audiences will be particularly interested in this heavy-handed period of UK censorship brought on by moral crusaders and whipped up stories in the newspapers. This began when video cassettes were a new phenomenon and for a period many were released without certificates and going through the BBFC. Thus, films like Driller Killer were available in the UK and some of the most controversial films were released by VIPCO and the company was forever connected to the controversy. VIPCO made a lot of money from their notoriety and many of these films were to disappear from circulation for many years. Video Nasty Mayhem takes a thorough look at this period and the censorship issues which followed with other titles, such as Last House on the Left, which they failed to secure a release for. Looking back thirty years, to when I was leaving school at 18 and already well into horror; it is amazing to think that The Exorcist was unavailable in the UK, the word ‘Chainsaw’ was banned and when Fred Olen Ray released Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers on Colourbox the chainsaw had to be an icon in the title! You were not allowed to show nunchucks scenes in films, so Bruce Lee films were still heavily censored, Evil Dead was still banned and your chances of seeing Texas Chainsaw Massacre was zero. Thirty years later, many of these films are now regarded as masterpieces and regularly appear on television and that makes me smile. I recall ‘banned’ (or unavailable) films on video with no certificates costing as much as £140 (in 1990), including Sam Pechinpah’s Straw Dogs and Sonny Chiba’s cult classic Streetfighter. For many years ex-rental ‘big-box’ video cassettes were very collectable, and I recall paying big money for Bad Taste and Intruder: the Final Checkout (sadly, heavily cut) after Colourbox went bust! This book brought back memories for all this sort of stuff, whether it has the same impact for someone who did not live through the 1980s is another question. As James Simpson quite correctly says himself, many of the VIPCO films have aged very badly and many of the releases were not horror, but looking back, it was a fascinating period in the development of home entertainment. VIPCO also released films years after their initial Video Nasty controversy, a famous example being Cannibal Holocaust in 2001 which had been banned for almost twenty years and released by another company first time around. I’m going to digress for a moment…. Flick back thirty years to 1989 and you REALLY wanted to see Cannibal Holocaust, what were your options? Firstly, some independent shops did not destroy all their Video Nasty stock and still rented these films ‘under-the-counter’ so to speak. I frequented a shop which did this, but I do not know how common the practice was and it was more aimed at the hardcore porn market rather than horror. Secondly, you could buy them abroad and hide them in your luggage when you returned home! Thirdly, there was tape-trading, which I did all the time, tracking down the most infamous titles from Nekromantik to Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer which was denied a certificate for several years in the UK. This was an expensive and clunky business; posting boxes of dodgy cassettes across the UK and beyond and the loss of quality in converting from American video format to PAL were all issues. Of course, these days, Cannibal Holocaust sits snugly on Amazon Prime and that makes me shake my head ruefully, James Simpson probably does the same. Video Nasty Mayhem lacks an index but provides lots of pictures and useful information on which version is closest to ‘uncut’ and the best is not always necessarily VIPCO. Incredibly, The Exorcist did not legally surface in the UK until 1999 and if you’re interested in knowing why this book is full of nuggets which answer such obscure questions. It’s written in a fan-friendly style and even if you don’t read it from cover to cover, there is much fun to be had simply flicking through it and dipping into the many sections which can be read as stand-alone articles. It’s also full of films which I’m certain lots of actors and actresses really don’t want to talk about; when did you ever hear Ursula Andress and Stacy Keach musing over Mountain of the Cannibal God? I think I tape-traded that one back in the day…. 4/5 Tony Jones   Comments are closed.
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