The ‘number one nasty’: Why ‘The Evil Dead’ was banned in the UK
There’s at least one generation of cinemagoers, possibly even two, who were first introduced to Sam Raimi by way of his comic book adaptations. For those a little longer in the tooth, though, their baptism of fire came through the no-holds-barred horrors of The Evil Dead.
With solitary amateur movie It’s Murder! under his belt – which starred Bruce Campbell in what would soon become the habit of a lifetime – the filmmaker went full guerrilla when it came to crafting his true first feature after cobbling together the $375,000 budget by scrounging for donations.
Raimi was only 20 years old when shooting started, and it showed, given what happened during production. The Evil Dead was filmed on a rented camera, the crew got lost in the woods, several of them suffered injuries, and all manner of inventiveness and ingenuity was required in order for the creative mastermind behind the hard-edged terror to realise his vision.
It would be an understatement to say that he did, with The Evil Dead becoming immensely profitable after gaining attention as a word-of-mouth sensation, snatching cult status from the second it hit cinemas, and convincing countless aspiring filmmakers that it was possible to make a phenomenal movie with nothing more than grit, determination, ambition, and a shoestring budget.
However, there was controversy to be found along the way, with The Evil Dead ending up as one of the most notorious titles of the ‘Video Nasty’ era. Raimi shot the film without considering what censors or ratings boards would have to say about the gruesome content, which saw it slapped with an X-rating in the United Kingdom and an NC-17 in the United States.
Thanks to the advent of the Video Recordings Act, though, The Evil Dead was eventually banned outright in the UK. It was trimmed by 49 seconds for its original release in the country before being pulled, snipped by an additional 66 seconds in 1990 to grant it an 18 certificate, and it wouldn’t be until 2000 that Raimi’s breakthrough hit was made available to purchase or screen in Britain in its original, unedited form.
The infamous Mary Whitehouse – who spearheaded the ‘Video Nasty’ era – declared The Evil Dead to be “the number one nasty,” and everyone knows that trying to prevent somebody from doing something is the easiest way to embolden them to go ahead and do it anyway. As a result, Raimi’s gore-splattered flick quickly became an underground favourite because horror fans demanded to know what the fuss was about.
According to the BBFC, the distributors who dared to ship it to video stores around the UK ended up being taken to court, although no charges were brought against them after they successfully argued The Evil Dead didn’t fit the criteria to be declared an obscenity.
However, thanks to Whitehouse’s scaremongering, many business owners “simply pleaded guilty to supplying an obscene article rather than incur the added expenses of trying to defend the film,” but as the panic died down, it was eventually removed from the ‘Video Nasty’ list for good in September 1985.
