Rob Gonsalves

The shot of Cropsy, the disfigured killer in The Burning (1981), holding his garden shears aloft before the film's signature raft massacre, deserves to be one of the iconic images of horror cinema. The Burning, which boasts strong, painful Tom Savini gore effects, went out in UK theaters with some trimming (as it did in US theaters), then turned up uncut on video. For its troubles, it got itself on the Video Nasties list, only to be released in 1992 with about 20 seconds of cuts, then uncut in 2001.

Meet David Hess, best known for playing iconic villains in grungy cult horror films. I first saw him as a thug/minion in Wes Craven's Swamp Thing, a decade or so after Craven had directed Hess in the notorious Last House on the Left (1972).

If there's anything the moral arbiters responsible for banning the Video Nasties feared and loathed, it was movies about cannibals. Movies that actually had the word "cannibal" in their titles may as well have painted juicy targets on their backs.

In 1980s Britain, certain grindhouse flicks could not be shown in theaters without extensive cuts due to extreme violence. There were 72 videos -- the worst of the worst -- that were, for all intents and purposes, banned in the UK. Later, they were released uncut on home video, where BBFC certification wasn't necessary. These were the “video nasties.”