The other video nasties list
Section 3 list
The Section 3 list was the second UK video nasties list: around 82 titles that police could seize and a magistrate could order forfeited under the Obscene Publications Act 1959, with no trial and no conviction. It sits beside the prosecutable DPP 72.
The DPP list gets the attention because it carried a prison sentence. There was a second, longer list that carried something duller and in practice worse for the trade.
Section 3 of the Obscene Publications Act allows a magistrate to issue a warrant to seize material and order it forfeited. No defendant, no jury, no conviction: the police take the stock, a magistrate agrees it should be destroyed, and that is the end of it. A distributor could lose an entire catalogue without anybody ever being charged with anything.
Around 82 titles circulated on this second list. They were held to be liable to seizure but not worth prosecuting, which is a legal distinction that made no practical difference to a shop owner watching his shelves go into a van.
The films are a stranger mix than the famous 72. Alongside the expected Italian gore there are police-academy comedies, a Chuck Norris picture and several films whose only offence was a lurid sleeve. Officers were working from a list of titles, and a title is not a film.
Not yet published
The DPP 72 on the previous tab is complete and checked. The Section 3 titles are not published here yet, because the surviving records are inconsistent between police forces and the lists in circulation online disagree with each other.
A half-right list of banned films is worse than no list, so this tab stays empty until the titles have been checked against a source rather than assembled from memory. If you have a documented copy, send it over.
The law and the bans
The law
- What a video nasty is - The legal category, defined in under 200 words.
- The DPP - Who made the list and what it did and did not do.
- Section 3 - The seizure power behind the second list.
- Video Recordings Act 1984 - The law that made BBFC classification compulsory for video.
- The BBFC - The classifier the VRA put in charge of video.
- The list and the law behind it - The DPP circular of 72 titles and the 1959 obscenity law it relied on.
- The panic, 1982 to 1984 - How a press campaign turned into a prosecution list.
Banned films
- Banned horror movies - Films refused or removed in different countries.
- Films still banned in the UK - What remains unavailable, and why.
- Video nasties still banned or cut - Which of the 72 remain cut in Britain, and the two laws that decide it.
- Is Cannibal Holocaust banned? - The most argued-over title on the list.
- Is A Serbian Film banned? - No. The BBFC cut four minutes and twelve seconds in 2010 and passed it at 18.
- Censorship outside the UK - Bans and cuts in other countries.