Volume 2: The Dropped 33

Of the roughly seventy-two films investigated during Britain's video nasty panic of 1983 and 1984, only thirty-nine ever resulted in a successful obscenity conviction. Volume 2 of Video Nasty Files covers the other thirty-three: tapes seized from video shop shelves, formally investigated by the Director of Public Prosecutions' office, and in several cases dragged before magistrates — only for the charges to be withdrawn, the case quietly dropped, or the prosecution to end in acquittal. From The Evil Dead and Possession — now celebrated as landmark works of horror and art-house cinema respectively — to genuinely obscure regional oddities like Frozen Scream and Cannibal Terror, this volume tells a stranger and more revealing story than the "Final 39" alone ever could. Because obscenity law was enforced locally rather than nationally, some of these titles were convicted in one British jurisdiction and cleared in another using the exact same tape — a patchwork of inconsistent verdicts that exposes just how improvised and arbitrary the wider enforcement campaign truly was. Each chapter delivers a complete profile: the plot, the production history, why the film drew DPP scrutiny, how that scrutiny ultimately collapsed, and where the film stands today. Illustrated throughout with original, specially commissioned artwork evoking the VHS era without reproducing a single actual poster or box cover, this volume completes the fuller, messier picture the "Final 39" leaves out — the tapes that were investigated, seized, and threatened with prosecution, but never quite convicted.