Last Orgy by the Cemetery

Book excerpt: The meteoric rise of video technology in the early 1980s was met with suspicion in some quarters. Pressure groups found certain videocassettes objectionable and ‘video nasties’ became a catch-all term for undesirable films or films potentially liable for prosecution under the Obscene Publications Act 1959. This book is not a discussion of the video nasties themselves, but instead gives a detailed synopsis of each film, from Absurd to Zombie Flesh Eaters, without criticism or commentary — 75 video nasty plots without dissection. The book may be considered a nostalgic reverie for those fans and collectors who don’t have the fortitude to sit through these films again and would like an aide-memoire means of revisiting them. What’s more, many of the films are cheap and exploitative, little masterclasses of cutting corners, and the brutal logic of their storylines when laid bare make for entertaining reading. The material contained in LAST ORGY BY THE CEMETERY originally appeared in a different form in the authors’ See No Evil: Banned Films and Video Controversy, published by Headpress in 2000 and now out of print.