Absurd (film)

Lore & Background

The film was conceived almost exclusively for the foreign market. George Eastman, the film's protagonist and writer, recalls that D'Amato wanted it to be a proper sequel to Antropophagus (1980), whereas Eastman opposed it. Eastman then rewrote the treatment from scratch, aiming for an American thriller style akin to Halloween. The shooting took place in May 1981, with some scenes shot during the day, and the two child actors, Katia and Kasimir Berger, were the children of William Berger. Michele Soavi, who played a biker, later became a successful Italian horror director; D'Amato produced Soavi's first directorial effort, Stage Fright.

Reader's Guide

Absurd is significant as a product of the Italian exploitation film industry, attempting to capitalize on the American slasher boom of the late 1970s and early 1980s. It is often considered a spiritual sequel to Antropophagus, sharing the same lead actor and a similar indestructible killer concept. The film gained notoriety in the UK as one of the 'video nasties' prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Acts in 1984. Despite mixed critical reception—some calling it a boring formula-slasher, others noting improved pacing over its predecessor—it has developed a cult following. Its legacy includes inspiring the name of the German black metal band Absurd, and it has been released on Blu-ray in multiple countries, including a 2017 UK release by 88 Films and a 2018 US release by Severin Films.

Did You Know?

• The film's working title was La porta dell'oltretomba (literally: 'The Door of the Beyond').
• The house used as the main set was located in Fiano Romano, near Rome, and was later used for three adult films in 1981.
• Michele Soavi, who played a biker in the film, later became a successful Italian horror director; D'Amato produced his first directorial effort, Stage Fright.
• The film inspired the name for the German black metal act Absurd, whose members later committed murder in 1993.

The Unregulated Video Market

When domestic video recorders first appeared in British homes during the 1970s, the legal framework governing what could be recorded and sold simply did not exist in any meaningful form. The only applicable statute was the Obscene Publications Act of 1959, which had been amended in 1977 to encompass erotic material, but it offered no systematic classification mechanism for the new medium. Major film studios, wary of piracy, were slow to adopt the format, leaving a vacuum that was quickly filled by low-budget horror and exploitation titles. Some of these films had cleared the British Board of Film Classification for theatrical release, while others had been flatly refused certification—a decision that effectively banned them from cinemas but did nothing to stop their distribution on tape. The BBFC itself had been established back in 1912, originally as an unintended byproduct of the Cinematograph Act 1909, and its mandate covered only material intended for public screening. This gap between cinema regulation and the private video market created a landscape in which violent, uncensored content could reach any household with a rental shelf, setting the stage for the cultural firestorm that would follow.

The Campaign and Public Panic

Public alarm over these tapes was ignited in early 1982 when Vipco, the UK distributor of the 1979 splatter film The Driller Killer, ran full-page advertisements in specialist video magazines featuring the release's graphic cover art. The campaign drew a flood of complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority. Months later, Go Video, handling the already-notorious Italian film Cannibal Holocaust, made the bizarre decision to write anonymously to Mary Whitehouse of the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association, complaining about their own product in an attempt to generate publicity. The stunt backfired spectacularly. Whitehouse launched a full-scale public campaign and is credited with coining the phrase "video nasty" to describe the category. The Sunday Times widened the conversation in May 1982 with a feature headlined "How High Street Horror is Invading the Home," and the Daily Mail soon mounted its own editorial crusade. As coverage intensified, commentators began linking the availability of these films to a perceived rise in youth violence, transforming a niche retail issue into a national moral panic.

Enforcement and the DPP Lists

Under the Obscene Publications Act, the Director of Public Prosecutions could initiate charges against producers, distributors, and retailers of material deemed to tend to deprave and corrupt its audience—a standard so open to interpretation that enforcement varied wildly by region. In the early 1980s, Greater Manchester Police, led by Chief Constable James Anderton, became particularly aggressive, conducting raids on video rental shops with what appeared to be entirely arbitrary title selection. One notorious seizure netted a copy of the Dolly Parton musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, confiscated under the mistaken assumption it was pornographic. The Video Retailers Association, alarmed by the inconsistency, petitioned the DPP for clear guidelines. In response, the office published a list of 72 titles it believed violated the Act, some of which had previously been acquitted of obscenity or had already received BBFC certification. A second list of 82 additional titles was issued for potential confiscation under forfeiture provisions. The resulting legal confusion made clear that a dedicated piece of video-specific legislation was overdue.

Legislative Response and Long-Term Impact

The legislative answer arrived with the Video Recordings Act of 1984, which closed the classification loophole by mandating that all video releases pass through the BBFC before reaching the market. Because the Act was designed with the protection of underage viewers in mind, it imposed a stricter censorship threshold on home video than on theatrical screenings. The consequence was that several major studio productions, well beyond the scope of the low-budget titles that had triggered the original panic, were banned from video distribution. Over the following decades, however, the climate shifted. Titles once branded as video nasties gradually received certification either uncut or with only minor edits, reflecting a broader cultural reassessment of what constituted harmful content. In a bureaucratic twist, a legislative drafting error was uncovered in August 2009, prompting the repeal and immediate re-enactment of the Act in unchanged form as the Video Recordings Act 2010. The episode stands as a reminder of how a regulatory crisis born from a technological gap can reshape an entire industry's relationship with censorship.

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