Video nasty is a colloquial term popularised by the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association (NVLA) in the UK to refer to a number of films, typically low-budget horror or exploitation films, distributed on VHS in the early 1980s that were criticised by the press, social commentators, and various religious organisations for their violent content. These video releases were not submitted to the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) due to a loophole in film classification laws that allowed them to bypass the review process. The resulting uncensored video releases sparked public debate over the availability of these films to children, given the market's unregulated nature.