Censor Cleverly Reinterprets the Impact of Exploitation Horror – Jezebel

Niamh Algar in CensorPhoto: Maria Lax (Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing via Ginsberg Libby)

The climactic scene of Prano Bailey-Bonds new horror film Censor features an image that will be familiar even to filmgoers who watch horror movies with their hands clasped over their eye: a bloodied young woman running through the woods. But the way said character, Censor protagonist Enid (Niamh Algar), gets there is unlike any previous filmEnid is a film censor in mid-80s England whose work is starting to merge with her reality in hallucinogenic proportions. Not only does Censor provide a unique take on meta-horror, its uncommonly thorough in its excavation of its protagonists psychology.

Theres a language in horror that the audience understands, Bailey-Bond told Jezebel this week from London via Zoom. With the hardcore fans, you can have another conversation going on within the horror genre that youre referencing. I really enjoy that. But also creating female characters that maybe feel a little bit more real to me...you want to kind of update these things and keep them fresh.

For the record, Bailey-Bond, who co-wrote Censor with Anthony Fletcher, is a horror fan whos loved the type of movies that her protagonist is on a mission to protect the public from. Censor takes place in Thatchers England during the era of the video nasties, a uniquely U.K. cultural moment in which violent and gory exploitation films of the 70s and 80s were being bandied about in the press as cause for specific crimes and, more generally, societys ills. This led to the cutting and (in most cases, temporary) banning of several films, including well-known genre entries like The Last House on the Left and I Spit on Your Grave. The list of the 72 films that were prosecuted (or for which prosecution was attempted) became an infamous trove for horror fans. The closest United States counterpart is the grindhouse flick, but those were largely available on this side of the Atlantic uncut.

Personally, I dont think that film is going to make someone throw their moral compass out of the window and go and do something really horrible to someone else, said Bailey-Bond. If somebody does that its because theyre unbalanced. We need mental health support. I think its about looking at how we look after those people who need help. Its an easy fix and easy blame to say that a movie or a type of music or video game is going to make somebody do something horrible to someone else. I just think its more complicated than that.

And complicate is something Censor does prodigiously. For one thing, the movie does not suggest that entertainment has no bearing on ones psychestill reeling from the childhood loss of her sister, Enid starts to fill in the fuzzy details of the disappearance when shes reminded of it in a movie shes tasked with reviewing, Dont Go in the Church. (Thats one of several convincing nasties-esque movies within the movie that Bailey-Bond dreamed up.) Its not that the character isnt influenced by what shes seeing; its that her experience is so singular and so obviously also informed by her own mental health issues that by exploring said experience, Censor is able to lay bare the ridiculousness of scapegoating art as directly responsible for peoples behavior. The aforementioned wild third act development, in which Enid breaks the film-viewer continuum and enters an alternate cinematic reality, functions as an ad absurdum argument. This is what it would look like for films to dictate peoples behavior, says Censor, as its protagonist wields an axe in a cabin in the woods. A deceptively sunny resolution that, via video glitches, calls bullshit on itself, imagines what the world would look like if the censors got their way and were right all along about art bearing all social responsibility for human behavior. It is accordingly ludicrous.

G/O Media may get a commission

The video nasty era is so rich, said Bailey-Bond. Its such an influential period for my generation of filmmakers. Also when you look back objectively at what happened, you can see things with a different set of goggles. You look back and go, wow, Were we all overreacting? Was this something else that was going on politically and the video nasties were a very convenient scapegoat for something else?

Elsewhere, Bailey-Bonds film suggests that not only was the moral panic illogical, it was also misplaced. Enid endures sexism and harassment at work from her fellow censors and a morally bankrupt film producer. While tabloid writers were wringing their hands about imagined movie-influenced violence, a very real exploitation was underway. To Jezebel, Bailey-Bond also pointed out that some of the video nasties, like Ruggero Deodatos infamous 1980 vomitorium Cannibal Holocaust, also depicted very real animal cruelty.

I love horror but there has to be a line in terms of the way we treat each other when were making it, the writer-director said. Nobody needs to get hurt while were making itanimals, women. Theres no need for that. So thats certainly where I draw a line. But thats doesnt have to stop the joy of watching horror and experiencing this fun, cathartic genre.

The vast majority, if not all, of the video nasties were directed by men. In contrast, along with herself, Bailey-Bonds crew featured several women in key roles (cinematographer Annika Summerson, production designer Paulina Rzeszowska, costume designer Saffron Cullane, composer Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch). This, however, was not an intentional answer to the historical male domination of the genre, according to Bailey-Bond, who says her hiring was slightly circumstantial and based on whom she thought was right for each role. Nevertheless, she says: Its nice to be able to claim something that I guess people dont necessarily naturally fit with a woman director. I like the idea that we can create [beyond] what people expect from us.

Enid works at a fictional agency thats loosely based on the British Board of Film Classification, which was responsible for the censoring and banning of video nasties. While writing their script, Bailey-Bond and Fletcher visited the BBFC (really helpful) and spoke to people who worked as censors during the time Censor takes place. One woman said the rooms were so dark and small and she didnt like horror very muchother censors I spoke to did like horrorbut she said sometimes it felt like really seedy and she was just sat in this poky dark room watching soft porn and like, you know, shed leave work and its night time and you havent seen any daylight, said Bailey-Bond. And those kinds of things really inspired me in terms of thinking about the space and the atmosphere of the censors office and this idea that it felt like a kind of underground rabbit warren. You know, down the ends corridors, youve got like the screams of people dying in horror films.

I wondered if any of the censors Bailey-Bond spoke with had regrets in line with her films reassessment goals. They didnt, but Bailey-Bond found evidence of such reconsideration nonetheless.

I remember reading the file for the Evil Dead, she said. [The BBFC] had cuts made whenever it first got reviewed and then about seven years later, they were looking at it again. There was this little note from one of the examiners whod seen originally saying, I cant believe we reacted like this because theres nothing harmful about this film but the atmosphere at the time made us all more cautious.

Read the original:
Censor Cleverly Reinterprets the Impact of Exploitation Horror - Jezebel