Moral panic, myth, and the macabre: Video nasties in the 1980s and beyond. Thursday 21 November 2024 6.30 pm doors. 7 pm start. £10 / £7 Concessions Advance Booking Conway Hall , 25 Red Lion Square, London, WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn London Fortean Email List When the widespread introduction of the VHS cassette changed the face of home entertainment in the early 1980s, it wasn’t long before video rental store shelves were filled with lurid tapes promising orgies of sex, violence, and terror. In this talk, authors David Kerekes and Jennifer Wallis explore how the panic over ‘video nasties’ developed: prompting raids and arrests, implicating films in real-life murder cases, and targeting film dealers, distributors, and viewers. They will ask how far policies and campaigns directed at video nasties — not forgetting the marketing of these films — created a mystique and mythology of their own, as fans sought out every tape on the famed video nasty ‘list’ produced by the Director of Public P
‘The ghosts of today don’t live in castles or stately homes, they’re in normal houses and workplaces, witnessed by people just like you and me. But are they the dead returning from the “undiscovered country” of death, or the product of that equally mysterious location, the human mind?’ Friday 4 October 2024 6.30 pm doors. 7 pm start. £16 / £11 Concessions Advance Booking Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London, WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn London Fortean Email List Danny Robins is on a mission to solve the greatest mysteries – do ghosts exist? His thrilling new book tells the stories of ordinary people who have experienced extraordinary things and want to understand them. It is also a journey of self-discovery, as Danny explores what the paranormal means to us, and considers the exciting yet terrifying prospect that we are not alone. Are you Team Believer or Team Sceptic – and do you dare to find out? Helping you decide are Uncanny crew members Chris French and Deborah Hyde. Danny Robins i