Before 'video nasties' there were horror comics, comics with titles such as Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, The Haunt of Fear.
They were accused of corrupting children, disturbing their imagination, formenting cruelty. But then, so the story goes, ordinary decent people - teachers, writers and others all over Britain - rallied in opposition until the government was forced to ban them.
A Haunt of Fears is the first serious study of the horror comics campaign. In it, Martin Barker tells a different story. The campaign itself was a well-orchestrated exercise in pressure politics, energized and run in large part by members of the Communist Party (a fact well concealed at the time). Its assumptions as to how horror comics worked in corrupting the young were crude in the extreme. Ironically, those which attracted the greatest criticism - such as The Orphan - were significant documents of radical social criticism.
In A Haunt of Fears, Martin Barker returns to the comics themselves, looking in detail at what they did and how they could be read. Some of the more controversial strips are reproduced for readers to judge for themselves.

cover illustration: Charles Peattie.
cover design: Mikki Rain

First published in 1984 by Pluto Press Ltd.
© Martin Barker 1984

Are video nasties really nasty? Should they be banned? Why did Parliament rush - almost without opposition - to accept an extraordinary degree of state censorship in the media?

This book presents a reasoned argument about the issues at stake. The contributors share a common concern at the implications of what they see as a wide-ranging attack on civil liberties. They look dispassionately at the nature of the videos in question: at the scientific research into their effects; at how the campaign against them was organised and orchestrated; at the history of such moral panics; and at the wider implications for artistic freedom and civil liberties in Britain.

Contributors include Martin Barker, Nigel Andrews, Graham Murdoch, Geoffrey Pearson, Marco Starr and Brian Brown.

cover illustration: Charles Peattie.
cover design: Michael Mayhew
First published in 1984 by Pluto Press Ltd, The Works, 105a Torraino Ave, London, NW5 2RX
© 1983, 1984 The various authors.