The Cannibal Man

Lore & Background

The plot follows Marcos (Vicente Parra), a young butcher who accidentally kills a taxicab driver and then strangles his girlfriend Paula (Emma Cohen), the only witness, when she wants to go to the police. As others become suspicious, Marcos kills additional people, including members of his family, and butchers their remains at his workplace to dispose of the bodies. The cast also includes Eusebio Poncela as Néstor, Vicky Lagos as Rosa, and Lola Herrera as Carmen.

Reader's Guide

The Cannibal Man is notable for its misleading English-language title, as the film contains no cannibalism. TV Guide described it as 'a bloody, politically inflected drama' that is 'not at all what the exploitative English-language title suggests,' noting that the marketing campaign was designed to make it look like a knock-off of Last House on the Left (1972). In reality, the film is both a study of an ordinary person spiraling into madness and a slyly satirical evocation of life in Spain under the oppressive Franco regime. Critical reception has been positive in retrospect: PopMatters called it 'a refreshing forgotten gem,' and DVD Verdict praised it as 'an extremely well-made Euro thriller with welcome social commentary and subtext,' adding that it is 'suspenseful, disturbing and graphically violent' and succeeds in depicting both physical and psychological horror. Its inclusion on the British 'Video Nasties' list contributed to its notoriety.

The Regulatory Gap That Spawned a Cultural Storm

When domestic video recorders arrived in British homes during the 1970s, no specific legislation existed to govern what could be recorded and rented from the new medium. The British Board of Film Classification, established back in 1912 as an accidental byproduct of the Cinematograph Act 1909, held authority only over material shown in cinemas. The sole legal instrument touching video content was the Obscene Publications Act of 1959, which had been updated in 1977 to encompass erotic films. Meanwhile, major studio distributors shied away from embracing VHS, dreading the threat of piracy, which left the emerging rental market wide open. Low-budget horror and exploitation titles flooded the shelves, some having passed BBFC scrutiny for theatrical release while others had been flatly denied certification. Because the classification laws contained a loophole permitting video releases to skip the BBFC entirely, these titles reached the public completely uncensored, setting the stage for a cultural and political firestorm.

From Anonymous Letter to National Panic

The public reckoning with video nasties ignited in early 1982 when Vipco, the UK distributor of the 1979 splatter picture The Driller Killer, placed full-page advertisements in specialist video magazines showcasing the tape's graphic cover art. The ads triggered a flood of complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority. Months later, Go Video, handling the already-notorious 1980 Italian film Cannibal Holocaust, made a publicity blunder that would reshape the debate: they wrote an anonymous letter to Mary Whitehouse of the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association complaining about their own product. Whitehouse seized the moment, launched a national campaign, and popularised the phrase "video nasty." The Sunday Times widened the conversation in May 1982 with a feature asking how horror was invading the family home, and the Daily Mail soon mounted its own editorial offensive. In the resulting media frenzy, the mere accessibility of these tapes to children was cited as a driver of rising youth violence, transforming a niche rental-market issue into a matter of national moral panic.

Arbitrary Raids and the DPP's Two Lists

Enforcement of the Obscene Publications Act against video retailers was chaotic and often arbitrary. Prosecutions had to be pursued individually, creating a growing backlog, while police in certain constabularies—most notably Greater Manchester under Chief Constable James Anderton—escalated raids on video hire shops. The selection of titles seized appeared random; one well-known operation confiscated a copy of the Dolly Parton musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas on the mistaken assumption it was pornographic. The Video Retailers Association, alarmed by the unpredictability, petitioned the Director of Public Prosecutions for clear guidelines. The DPP responded by publishing two lists: the first named 72 titles it considered to breach the Act, some of which had previously been acquitted of obscenity or even held BBFC certification; the second listed 82 additional films that, while unlikely to yield a conviction, could still be confiscated under forfeiture provisions. The contradictory nature of these documents made the legal definition of obscenity nearly impossible to navigate, deepening industry confusion and public frustration.

The Video Recordings Act and a Legacy of Overreach

The legislative confusion surrounding the DPP lists ultimately compelled Parliament to act. The Video Recordings Act of 1984 closed the classification loophole by mandating that all video releases be certified by the BBFC before distribution. However, because the law was explicitly designed to protect underage viewers from the kind of material that had fuelled the video nasty panic, it imposed a stricter censorship threshold on home video than was required for theatrical exhibition. The consequence was paradoxical: several major studio productions were banned from video release simply because they fell within the scope of legislation originally crafted to police low-budget exploitation titles. Over the following decades, the rigid standards gradually softened, and many films once branded as video nasties were eventually certified uncut or with only minor edits. In a curious footnote, a legislative error uncovered in August 2009 led to the 1984 Act being repealed and immediately re-enacted, word for word, as the Video Recordings Act 2010.

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