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Old 23rd May 2016, 06:39 PM
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Paul@TheOverlook Paul@TheOverlook is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Tavistock, Devon
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Bootlegging, in the sense that it was applied in the UK, was perfectly acceptable back in the days before the BBFC took a less stringent stance in 1997/1998 - the censorious, draconian rule of the Tories during the eighties drove legitimate collector's underground and the only way many of us could see stuff like THE EXORCIST, TCM, THE EVIL DEAD and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (not a state-sanctioned ban on the latter) was by trading copies with other folk who had stuff that you didn't have at home.

Had the films been legally available I'd have rented or purchased them. My discovery of film was just after the passing of the VRA (video recordings act of 1984), so I missed the boat on most of the titles (although we'd hired DEAD AND BURIED and either ZFE or ZOMBIE CREEPING FLESH) when I was eight or nine(!) so I had no idea how to get hold of this stuff until I was in high school - it was there I found quite a buoyant exchange platform with my peers.

All said about the VRA and nasties scandal it did manage to lead to one thing that was quite special - by depriving us of them, the films developed great notoriety, so you really felt like you had achieved greatness when you got hold of something and sat down to see it - some of those viewings were anticlimactic but others were dizzying in their brilliance.
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