Some of the films were outrageous, some tame.

There was, it has to be said, no sense that Go had a particular mission statement – they simply released whatever they could get hold of that seemed vaguely commercial, in whatever versions were available.

Go released a wide variety of titles, ranging from public domain cartoons and films to Euro softcore, comedy, action, drama and horror. One such label was Go Video, run by former music executive Des Dolan. Often run by opportunist businessmen rather than film fans, these labels would often snap up the rights to films in bulk without even thinking about the content, and release them in whatever versions were supplied by the rights holders. With no censorship laws in force beyond the Obscene Publications Act – then seen as applying only to hardcore porn, and possibly not even covering video cassettes – the labels were free to release whatever they wanted. These were the video pioneers – the people who opened high street rental shops, and the indie labels who flooded them with obscure movies while the major labels still dithered over the ‘threat’ of home viewing and held back their releases. A few years later, the courts and police forces would persecute many of the people who heeded the call, and her government would pass new laws that effectively forced them out of business. Britain’s most notorious video label and the company that started the Video Nasties moral panic.Īt the start of the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher was encouraging the small businessman and the entrepreneur.

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