[p_headless_g]

"How much longer will the Government dither and Parliament blather while our children can continue to buy sadism from the video-pusher as easily - and almost as cheaply - as fruit gems from the sweetie shop?"

- Daily Mail, 30th June 1983

Blame Mary Whitehouse, the Conservative government, scare-mongering media and the rise of the 'video nasty' in the public conciousness. Around the early 80's, spurred on by Whitehouse, the Director of Public Prosecutions released a list of 60 videos that had been labelled obscene and were to be confiscated from video retailers. Right at the top was 'The Evil Dead', presumably picked mostly for the shock value in its name.
It was even passed for release by the BBFC - admittedly with minor edits. There was a scene with a pencil in a leg that was apparently trimmed because the pencil was wiggled twice, and the scene where a zombie starts beating a character around the head with a metal girder was edited so that there were only *three* blows to the head instead of *five*. Ridiculous...
You know it was originally meant to passed completely uncut? It was examined by three people at the time - James Ferman (the head of the BBFC) and two other examiners. Ferman and one of the examiners were in tears of laughter by the end of the movie, but the other examiner found it 'nauseating' and insisted that her 'bodily integrity had been attacked'.