Mark Kermode on censorship: What are they scared of?

Almost exactly 30 years ago, a lurid publicity poster for the low-budget horror film Last House on the Left asked, "Can a movie go too far?". This week, in a decision that has shocked and surprised British horror aficionados, the Video Appeals Committee (VAC) concluded that Last House on the Left did, indeed, still "go too far", and could not be released in the UK without cuts. Despite their alleged new-found resolve to "allow adults to decide for themselves what they watch", the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) has delighted in the verdict that supports its decision to slice 16 seconds of "sexual violence" from Wes Craven's acclaimed directorial debut, and leaves British horror fans once again in the wilderness.

According to the VAC, whose previous decisions in favour of sex films such as Makin' Whoopee, Horny Catbabe and Nympho Nurse Nancy, effectively forced the BBFC to redraw its lines on acceptable pornography, Last House on the Left is "an unpleasant work" that its members unanimously found "very disturbing", and that they fear would lead viewers to be "excited into amoral behaviour". Indeed, the panel of judges (which included former Blue Peter honcho Biddy Baxter) concluded that the BBFC had already been "inappropriately generous" to this rape-revenge classic in asking for only 16 seconds of cuts from scenes of disembowelling, chest-carving, and "forced urination".

For British horror fans, this is business as usual. At a time when notorious hard-core porno flicks such as Deep Throat can now be sold uncut in sex shops, and sexually violent "art films" such as Pasolini's Saló are freely available on the shelves of your local Virgin or HMV, the demonisation of "sleazy" horror and exploitation pictures remains a mainstay of film and video censorship. Thus, while it is apparently acceptable for Pasolini to show naked young men and women being whipped, buggered, and forced to eat human excrement under the guise of "political art", and it's OK to watch Linda Lovelace performing "consensual" sexual acrobatics (which she has since testified were forced upon her under threat of death), it remains illegal to distribute an uncut video of a classic horror film that was inspired by Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring and is widely acclaimed as a milestone genre movie. Welcome to the free West.

As a horror fan who testified to the VAC about the artistic merits of Last House on the Left, I find this decision typically depressing. Not only does it demonstrate a contempt for the work of Wes Craven (who went on to direct such mainstream hits as A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream), it also marks a miserable conclusion to a brave struggle by the distributors Blue Underground to resist even a few seconds of cuts from a treasured title simply because they believed that the fans deserved more (and this at a time when less scrupulous competitors were merrily accepting six or seven minutes of deletions from former "video nasties" in their rush to get product on the shelf). For its efforts, Blue Underground has been rewarded with the kind of verdict that explains why so many genre fans now order their videos and DVDs from abroad as a matter of course.

"The film has always caused a furore," admits the director Wes Craven of his most notorious work. "I remember that during the first year it ran in the US, people actually rushed to the projection booths trying to get to the print and destroy it. Theatre owners were bodily threatened, there was a fist-fight in one theatre, a heart-attack in another, reports of grown men weeping."

Unsurprisingly, when such a provocative film came before the British censors in 1974, it was refused a cinema classification outright, with the BBFC making clear that cuts would make no difference. Like Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which was similarly banned at around the same time, Last House on the Left was simply viewed as too disturbing for exhibition in Britain in any form. However, whereas the ban on Texas was duly lifted a few years ago when the former chief censor (and TCM opponent) James Ferman announced his retirement from office, the battle to suppress Last House on the Left has continued unabated. Indeed, the film seems to have become as much of a bugbear for new chief censor Robin Duval as The Exorcist was for his uptight predecessor.

For Duval, this grudge-match dates back to May 1999, when he first informed the distributors Feature Film that they could finally have an "18" cinema certificate for Last House on the Left only if they conceded 90 seconds of cuts, "to remove images of the horrific stripping, rape, and knife murder of the two women". After Feature declined to co-operate (what self-respecting horror fan wants to watch a film with 90 seconds cut out of it?), the BBFC officially rejected the title again, declaring it to be "unacceptable both in terms of our published guidelines and in terms of public expectations". Enter Exploited Films, a subsidiary of Blue Underground, which now picked up the banned classic and proceeded to tour an uncut print around Britain without a BBFC certificate, (as had been done with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), in the hope of proving that the Board was out of step with public opinion. Ten screenings at London's ICA passed without incident, while local councils in Oxford, Leicester and Southampton overruled the BBFC judgement and awarded their own uncut "18" ratings. According to the Blue Underground spokesman Carl Daft, the fact that Last House on the Left played without cuts, and without provoking public outcry or police intervention, demonstrated that the film was now considered acceptable for an adult audience. But still the BBFC insisted on cuts, although it seemed increasingly unsure as to what should be cut... and why.

In a letter to Blue Underground, dated 5 November 2001, the BBFC outlined four cuts, now totalling only 16 seconds, only five of which corresponded to the 90 seconds previously demanded, but all of which were clearly marked as obligatory under the terms of the Obscene Publications Act. (There have been previous OPA convictions involving tapes of Last House, although the VAC concluded that "we have our doubts whether a conviction would result" if a case was brought today.) Ten days later, when it became clear that Blue Underground was going to appeal – and surely aware of the weakness of their OPA argument – the Board wrote again, this time insisting that, in fact, the issue at stake was one of "harm" as defined in the Video Recordings Act. Although David Pannick, QC, acting for Blue Underground, was at pains to challenge the Board's right to move the goalposts thus, the VAC concluded that "harm" (rather then obscenity) was indeed the issue, and duly found against the distributor So much for fair play.

But what exactly is so harmful about Last House on the Left? According to the BBFC, the film "invites the viewer to relish" the depiction of sexual violence, and passing it uncut would have serious ramifications for their ability to deal effectively with "violent pornography" as a whole. As Mr Duval stated in his submission to the VAC: "As ever, the regulatory issue is one of precedent ... A change to [the Board's] present policy applied consistently would mean a significant increase in the level of permitted sexual violence in 18-classified videos, and indeed in R18 videos also." In other words, if you allow Last House on the Left to be passed uncut, you open the floodgates to a tide of violent pornography.

This is a point that has been vigorously disputed by Blue Underground, which insists that there is no similarity between the intentionally disturbing violence of Craven's film (which is demonstrably not pornographic), and the "eroticised" violence with which the Board is concerned. "I am frankly astonished and appalled at the VAC's decision," says Carl Daft. "Not only is it incorrect on the basis of the evidence put before them, it makes a mockery of the rules of fairness on conduct applicable to public bodies such as the BBFC. Contrary to what we might expect under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, we are a very long way from having our right to free expression in this country guaranteed. Such actions make us the laughing stock of the rest of the Western world. The right to free speech in the United Kingdom died today, and for that I have to say that I am ashamed to be British."

As for Wes Craven, he maintains that Last House on the Left is "a protest against real violence in the world, and the downplaying of the reality of violence in films. We showed violence in its true ugliness, rather than taking the usual Hollywood path of making it glamorous and exciting and entertaining, which is in essence a lie. I've had many people over the years tell me it's my strongest film and most truthful film. And I think there is a sense that the film was "pure" in that it didn't pull any punches or cater to any form of censorship."

Sadly, that is a "purity" that remains unappreciated on these pathologically censorious shores.