DPP

The Director of Public Prosecutions heads the Crown Prosecution Service in England and Wales and decides which cases are pursued.

In horror, "the DPP list" means the register of films circulated by that office under the Obscene Publications Act 1959, first made public in June 1983, revised as prosecutions failed or were dropped, and made obsolete when the Video Recordings Act 1984 came into force on 1 September 1985. The list carried no legal force of its own. What it did was tell police forces which titles the DPP thought a jury would convict on, which in practice authorised the raids.

Because obscenity is a question of fact for each local jury, listed films could be and were convicted in one town and acquitted in the next. The Evil Dead was prosecuted more than any other title and won a clear majority of its cases.