It is unlikely that the motion picture Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers will be familiar to many of this newspaper's readers. This is probably no bad thing, given its title and the probable nature of its contents. Actually, like most artistically suspect films, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers boasts a revealing catchline. "They charge an arm and a leg!" it boasts, which is really quite witty. (Maniac Cop, another film which most parents would prefer their children not to see, attracts the testosterone set with the come-on: "You have the right to remain silent . . . Forever!").
Back to Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, which has a cast list that still bears the marks from the bottom of the barrel across its collective body. Linnea Quigley, the leading actress, is described in one British Film Institute publication as an "overexposed starlet" and the book goes on to state that "her breasts have been in more bad films than the boom microphone".
Linnea's credits include the festively-titled Silent Night, Deadly Night Parts I and II, Sorority Babes in the Slime-Ball Bowl-a-Rama and, interestingly, her own fitness video, entitled Linnea Quigley's Horror Workout.
Her co-stars include Gunnar Hansen, who played the killer Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and appears to be engaging in some cultural cross-pollination of a cinematic nature by appearing in Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, complete with chainsaw. This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a high-class production.
My local video outlet expressed total bafflement when I inquired as to the possibility of renting Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers. It should be pointed out that said outlet takes a broadminded view of such matters.
For many years, it struck a small blow for freedom of expression by retaining - below the counter, naturally - a selection of films which had not troubled the censor's office with a request for certification or, if they had, had almost certainly received a polite but firm "No", a word with which the individuals in the films in question appeared to be unfamiliar.
Nodding And Winking
A list of these films was retained on what were known as "The Cards". A request for "The Cards", accompanied by some nodding and winking, would result in the production of a set of well-thumbed index cards, each containing a number and the title of a film of a misunderstood nature.
This allowed a punter of a suspect nature to flick through the titles at his leisure, safe in the knowledge that a bus could pull up and disgorge all of his teachers from primary school and every nun he had ever met, all of them intent on renting Sister Act, without them being any the wiser about what he was doing.
The Irish film censor still takes a dim view of films like Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, and for that he should be applauded, on grounds of good taste if nothing else. There are currently about 2,500 videos on the banned list retained by the Censor's Office under the Video Recordings Act 1989, of which 57 had been added in the first seven months of this year.
Each video has to be watched in full by the Film Censor's Office and a decision made on its suitability for viewing. Most are passed on by Customs officials or the Garda following their seizure, and a copy of each film is duly stored, which means the Film Censor now has a better selection of hard-core pornography than most shops in Amsterdam.
In the event of a query over another copy of a prohibited film, that film also has to be watched from start to finish and compared to the original. This is not a job for the easily shocked.
A small number of offerings from mainstream directors have earned a place on this list. The American director Abel Ferrara is particularly unfortunate, given that three of his films - Driller Killer, Bad Lieutenant and Dangerous Game - have received the thumbs-down from the censor. Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers also remains on the banned list, as does Robert Rodriguez's vampire flick From Dusk Til Dawn and Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls.
Prohibited Videos
But films by big-name directors are infrequent visitors to the list of prohibited videos. Most of the current list is taken up with films which are more interesting for their titles than anything else and, perhaps unsurprisingly, display an unhealthy obsession with matters of a sexual nature.
A one-handed round of applause, then, for Genital Hospital, For Your Thighs Only, Beyond Thunderbone, Nightmare on Sex Street, Star Ship Intercourse, Thrill Street Blues, Trampire and a number of suspect tributes to secret agent 007, namely Jane Bond Meets Octopussy and Jane Bond Meets Goldenrod.
Other titles which have failed to find favour include most of the obscurely titled Mad Bull 34 series, including Part III (City of Vice) and Part IV (Copkiller) and something entitled Derriere Dynamite.
In fact, a glance through some of the titles on the video list arouses a certain amount of curiosity, if nothing else. Who, for example, is likely to protest at the censor's failure to see the merits of Jello Wrestling? Or the presumably self-explanatory My Husband in Panties? What precisely are the services offered by the She Male Nurse? In Felicity Feels on Wheels, what exactly is Felicity feeling? And what problems might an individual have which might require the attentions of Die Lustklinik?
In addition, would a punter feel short-changed if he or she purchased - illegally - a copy of The Heat Is On? According to the censor's list, The Heat Is On lasts for only one minute and 45 seconds. Next to it, the 82 minutes of The Honey Mooners is like a Russian epic.
Sadly, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers had failed to make it on to the prohibited list, either because it was sufficiently harmless - unlikely - or because this particular piece of cinematic jetsam has failed to wash up on the Irish coast as yet.
There was one consolation: filed under "H" was something listed only as Horror Workout. Linnea Quigley, it seems, may have created her own little bit of Irish history by having her fitness video banned.