The biggest fear in the 1980's was the video nasties and the fact people could more openly get these film at home. The fact people could get unregulated and uncensored films from home struck fear in to the government.
1980 saw a rose in home video with rises in sales in the VHS and the beta max. This drove the attendance of cinemas to an all time low. This was due to the fact people wanted to stay in at home and watch the films with friends and family, this made watching films more of a social event, at this time they could get any film they wanted due to the increase of video piracy. Piracy drove down the sales of beta max, as VHS was easier for people to copy and spreading the copies around.
Unregulated/video nasties films also arose at this point, this meant that people could get any film they wanted at home even if they had been banned from the cinemas, this meant that anyone of any age, any social status could watch these films, the four big video nasties of the time period were, evil dead, I spit on your grave, last house in the left and driller killer.
These video nasties gave the government a life line to have something to blame on the way the people were reacting to thatchers policies and the miners strikes, the government blamed this on the fact they could see anything and the video nasties were corrupting the nation.
The 80's saw the arrival of the BBFC. The British board of film classification, they started to protested about the video nasties and eventually started to get regulation on home videos.
In the end, the ban in the video nasties has not effected us to this day, I believe that films should not be censored as no a days we have be come de-sensitised, to the thing we see in films. As no we can see anything we want though the Internet.
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