RED TAPE

SET IN THE 1980S DURING THE MORAL PANIC OF THE VIDEO NASTIES, CENSOR INTERROGATES IF HOR RORS REAL OR IMAGINED CAUSE NIGHTMARES IN A DAMAGED BRAIN. TF BRAVES AN UNCENSORED CHAT WITH WRITER DIRECTOR PRANO BAILEY-BOND AND STAR NIAMH ALGAR…

- JAMIE GRAHAM

Prano Bailey-Bond was seven years old when she first encountered film censorship. The year was 1989, and she’d just settled down to watch Lady In White on VHS when up popped radio broadcaster, Simon Bates. As readers of a certain age will know, Bates’ introductions informed the viewer of just what to expect from the video they were about to watch in terms of profanity, violence, and sexual conduct, and that it was an offense for anyone to supply videos to viewers under the certified age.

“He terrified me because I thought my mum was going to get arrested,” grins Bailey-Bond over Zoom in early May. “I went, ‘Mum, we’re going to get into loads of trouble because he said people are going to be prosecuted if someone under the age of 12 watches this.’ And I was under the age of 12.”

Fast-forward 23 years to 2012 and Bailey-Bond was about to have another encounter with the peculiarities of film censorship, this one sparking the idea for her debut feature, Censor. She was reading an article about Hammer Horror and the things that particularly peeved the censors. “One of them was blood on the breast of a woman,” she says. Her smile is still in place, but there’s now a look of disbelief in her eyes. “They would cut that because apparently, it made men likelier to commit rape. I was like, ‘Well, surely there are a lot of male censors in that room. What protects the film censor from losing control if these images are meant to pervert our minds?’”

IN THE CUT