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This is the 'Video Nasties Newspaper Story Scans (1980-2008)' project, which was designed to be a free comprehensive resource for researchers, writers and other webmasters like myself. As of the last update, it's taken about 40 hours and cost around £130 in printing & travel costs (each A4 laser print-out is 23p!). If you find it useful and want to make a small donation to my costs you can contact me at
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On Wednesday 11th of July 2012, I spent the day at the British Library in Central London, going through their digitized archive of UK newspapers, printing off Video Nasty & censorship related material. My original intention was to collect together a few of the most famous headlines just for my own research. Unfortunately, their archive was a little limited. They only held full archives of The Daily & Sunday Mirror, and The Daily & Sunday Express. Whilst they also hold The Sun and The Daily Mail newspapers, these only start from around 1995, and The Daily Star from 2000. I was told anything which wasn't there in the digital archive, could be found at the British Library Newspapers building in North London, where they hold bound physical copies & microfilm transfers of just about everything. I went there the following day on the 12th of July, and again on the 21st of July, 11th of August 2012, 29th of September, and 6th of October, making a total of six days spent in London. While they do indeed have literally everything, the trick is knowing what to look for. There are no keyword searches, it's just a matter of looking through each page on the microfilm until you spot something relevant, or scrolling through to specific dates tied to events. Looking through endless sequential newspapers is such a mind numbing task and hard to appreciate unless you've done it. There is really no need for person after person to be doing this, so I have made my work freely available to everyone.
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The Daily Mail (July 1, 1983)
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The Daily Express (November 24, 1983)
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The Sun (November 26, 1993)
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Over those six days, I got though one-hundred-and-sixty-nine microfilm reels either entirely or just specific dates, printing off a total of 336 pages. For the most part, each microfilm reel holds one months worth of a given newspaper at around 30-50 pages per day. one-hundred-and-sixty-nine reels break down to forty-five of The Daily Mail, twenty-seven of The Times and seventeen of The Sunday Times, seventeen of the Daily Mirror and one of the Sunday Mirror, thirteen of The Sun, twelve of The Daily Star, eleven of the Daily Express and one of The Sunday Express, eight of The Guardian, six of The News Of The World, four of The Independent, two of The Daily Telegraph, two of the Financial Times, two of the Daily Sport, and one of the Sunday People. Should I spend further time there, I've got carbon copies of all my request slips so it wouldn't be hard to pick up where I left off. I used a mulit-feed auto scanner to scan all the laser print-outs at 300dpi, and strung the images together 1:1 into a PDF, which I have uploaded here compressed in a ZIP file;
The pages run in chronological order, from late 1980 up to 2008 with bookmarks at the start of each year. Although scaled down by roughly 50% to A4 (210mm x 297mm) from the original standard tabloid size of 432mm x 279mm, all the text is perfectly readable. I have also included a PDF image extraction app which will allow you to extract any page back out of the PDF 1:1 from the original scan, and a British Library Newspapers information booklet & paperwork should you wish to know the procedure for visiting them yourself, and exactly what newspaper material the actually have in their archives. Obviously having been sourced from Microfilm, the quality of the scans aren't great, they look like black & white photocopies. At least this will give people a chance to read through everything, and if needed, you can find the date & page from the above PDF and contact British Library Newspapers and ask them to make a better quality copy directly from the bound original.
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The Daily Mail (July 15, 1983)
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The Sun (May 1, 1990)
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The Mirror (April 13, 1994)
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This PDF does not purport to include every single article published (merely everything I could find so far), nor does it include the numerous articles in video trade magazines either. Below is a list of articles which I've found references to during research but still need a further library trip to add in.
Click here for a list of articles still missing from the PDF file
November 25, 1993 - | (The Daily Express - MLD3) Horror film link to gruesome murder (have p1) |
November 26, 1993 - | (The Guardian - MLD) Unknown headline, more bulger stuff |
November 26, 1993 - | (The Daily Mail - MLD6) Various bulger bits |
November 27, 1993 - | (The Guardian - MLD) Bulger judge urges debate on parenting and videos |
December 7, 1993 - | (The Daily Star - MLD3B) Bulger copycat fear in torture attack |
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March 4, 1994 - | (The Daily Star - MLD3B) Porno makes boy, 13, a beast |
March 22, 1994 - | (The Daily Star - MLD3B) cult film drove mod to kill |
April 3, 1994 - | (The Mail On Sunday - MLD44A) Tory revolt on video nasties |
April 12, 1994 - | (The Daily Mirror - MLD4) Video nasty blitz |
April 21, 1994 - | (The Daily Mirror - MLD4) Out of control - violent saga beats ban on nasties |
June 25, 1994 - | (The Sun - MLD5) Silence of the lambs treat then psycho killed man |
July 14, 1994 - | (The Daily Mail - MLD6) Let parents help root out the evil videos |
July 14, 1994 - | (The Daily Express - MLD3) MPs urge new crackdown on video violence |
July 31, 1994 - | (The Sunday Express - MLD42) Does porn really lead to rape and sexual violence? |
August 18, 1994 - | (The Daily Star - MLD3B) Freddie maniac in blade bloodbath |
December 1, 1994 - | (The Daily Star - MLD3B) Drac movie turned me into a vampire |
December 21, 1994 - | (The Daily Mirror - MLD4) Why movies like this are making a killing |
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January 13, 1995 - | (The Daily Mirror - MLD4) 7 boys killed in horror snuff |
May 16, 1995 - | (The Daily Mirror - MLD4) Mirror gets ban on sick video nasty |
May 16, 1995 - | (The Daily Star - MLD3B) Porn film kills lad |
May 21, 1995 - | (The Mail On Sunday - MLD44A) Anguish of children in video nightmare |
June 10, 1995 - | (The Daily Mirror - MLD4) Reservoir puppies |
June 20, 1995 - | (The Daily Mirror - MLD4) Store bans video of executions |
June 25, 1995 - | (The News Of The World - MLD34) We've got you taped |
August 9, 1995 - | (The Daily Mail - MLD6) Sky-high violence |
August 18, 1995 - | (The Daily Mirror - MLD4) Basic instinct video made me stab sailor |
August 18, 1995 - | (The Daily Star - MLD3B) Basic instinct turned wife into crazed knife fiend |
August 18, 1995 - | (The Sun - MLD5) Basic instinct video made mum a knife maniac |
October 29, 1995 - | (The News Of The World - MLD34) Sex and violence faces ban |
November 7, 1995 - | (The Daily Mirror - MLD4) Park rapist, 14, got idea from porn video |
November 7, 1995 - | (The Sun - MLD5) Masked rapist aged 14 |
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April 8, 1996 - | (The Sun - MLD5) My pal was killed by Hollywood blood lust |
April 28, 1996 - | (The Sunday Sport - MLD11D) Unknown headline, bulger stuff |
May 3, 1996 - | (The Sun - MLD5) Psycho surfer had obsession with chucky |
May 7, 1996 - | (The Daily Mail - MLD6) Clampdown call after Tasmanian horror |
July 5, 1996 - | (The Daily Star - MLD3B) Knife frenzy of a teenage predator |
August 26, 1996 - | (The Daily Star - MLD3B) Peepshow ops video is slammed |
August 26, 1996 - | (The Daily Mirror - MLD4) Ban the sale of NHS op video nasties |
September 1, 1996 - | (The Sunday Sport - MLD11D) Is this you under the knife |
September 17, 1996 - | (The Daily Star - MLD3B) Vid-ops on sale in spring |
November 6, 1996 - | (The Sun - MLD5) PM's war on video violence |
November 10, 1996 - | (The Sunday Sport - MLD11D) Fury as censors pass bloodiest film ever |
November 10, 1996 - | (The News Of The World - MLD34) How did villains know what to do before TV |
December 4, 1996 - | (The Daily Mirror - MLD4) Sick! Ban this gory hospital ops video nasty |
December 13, 1996 - | (The Daily Mail - MLD6) Time to sack this feeble censor |
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January 26, 1997 - | (The News Of The World - MLD34) Banned, news of the world stops video nasty |
February 17, 1997 - | (The Daily Mirror - MLD4) Snuff movies at broadmoor |
April 7, 1997 - | (The Sun - MLD5) Cops hunt British movie sex fiend |
April 21, 1997 - | (The Daily Sport - MLD11D) Pure evil... blood lust of hooker snared by death tape |
August 18, 1997 - | (The Daily Express - MLD3) Straw to censor screen violence in jails |
August 18, 1997 - | (The Daily Mail - MLD6) Movies can make young more violent |
August 18, 1997 - | (The Daily Telegraph - MLD7) Sex and violence ban for young offenders |
If you know the details of any articles which I've missed, please get in contact. This will allow me to find & add them in, making them available to everyone else. If a larger revised PDF version is uploaded in the future, it will be noted here and announced on the main site news page so people don't miss out. You can also see an events timeline I created to work from below (the dates are all the day after the event, i.e. the day it would have been featured a newspaper)
Click here to read the Video Nasty events timeline
Wednesday September 1, 1982 - | Violent Videos outlawed after test case ruling |
Friday March 11, 1983 - | Government spokesman Christopher Mayhew announced BVA report ready |
Thursday June 9, 1983 - | A Gentleman's Agreement was screened |
Friday, July 8, 1983 - | Home Sec. Brittan/Home Office makes a statement to the Daily Mail |
Friday, July 8, 1983 - | Margaret Thatcher pledges government action over video nasties |
Wednesday November 2, 1983 - | Mary Whitehouse video screened for UK MPs |
Friday November 4, 1983 - | Graham Bright introduces his Private Member's Bill to the House of Commons |
Friday November 11, 1983 - | Margaret Thatcher pledges government action over video nasties |
Saturday November 12, 1983 - | Bright Bill had its second reading in the House of Commons |
Thursday November 17, 1983 - | Mary Whitehouse video screened for Euro MPs |
Wednesday November 23, 1983 - | The Parliamentary Group Video Inquiry publishes a report |
Saturday February 4, 1984 - | David Hamilton Grant of World of Video 2000 was sentenced to 18 months in jail |
Thursday March 8, 1984 - | The Parliamentary Group Video Inquiry publishes a survey |
Wednesday April 4, 1984 - | The Bright Bill had its second reading in the House of Lords |
Thursday 12 July, 1984 - | The Video Recordings Act (VRA) was passed by parliament |
Monday September 2, 1985 - | The Video Recordings Act (VRA) was signed into law |
Thursday October 17, 1986 - | Some report or other published |
Thursday August 20, 1987 - | The Hungerford Massacre happened (Michael Ryan committed suicide, no trial) |
Thursday 1 September, 1988 - | The Video Recordings Act (VRA) comes into force |
Tuesday November 2, 1993 - | James Bulger's killers' trial opened at Preston Crown Court |
Thursday November 25, 1993 - | James Bulger's killers' found guilty at Preston Crown Court |
Monday April 1, 1994 - | The Newson report released |
Tuesday April 12, 1994 - | Alton Amendment debated on |
Saturday April 16, 1994 - | Alton Amendment was to be Voted On, but it never happened |
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