‘Video Nasty’ Recap And Ending Explained: What Happens To Ethel Greaves?

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For a generation of youth growing up in the Europe of the 80s, their secret and often illicit diet of exploitation films caused a moral panic that spilled over borders. With some of the now cult titles like The Blob and I Spit on Your Grave decorating the list of forbidden films, the world was both vexed and amused by the power of the medium of video. Loosely labeled as ‘video nasties,’ to its opponents, the proliferation of these films painted a horrifying picture of Europe as it supposedly slid into its decadence. Sadism, violence, and sex lie at the heart of these videos. However, more often than not, they were just promotional bait with all these elements being merely suggestive in the film. The 2025 BBC series, Video Nasty, however, satirically exposes the dangers of society’s empty-mindedness and how that contributes to an even greater state of terror. It is a timely commentary on how a frenzied moral panic claims more lives, mentally or otherwise, than the supposed moral depravity of watching the videos.

Spoilers Ahead


Where is the story set?

In Dublin, in the year 1985, two teenagers, Con and Billy, struggle to keep their collection of “video nasties” afloat, following the imposition of the Video Recordings Act of 1984. Despite the incessant warnings of legal repercussions, the trade in this explicit media seems to reach no permanent hault. Con and Billy steal the money from the funds reserved for the School Debs (the name for the formal ball for the final year students in Ireland) and buy these forbidden items. The boys are just one tape short of possessing the complete 72 banned titles as laid down by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), as Billy searches for a lead. 

Billy’s father gets him a loot of seized tapes, which he extorted from someone who was smuggling them in from Italy. He asks Billy to take what he likes and sell the rest to the local video store owner, TJ. The local video store, “TJ’s Video Vault,” accepts only the most explicit of films. TJ pushes Billy to get the tape of the last film, in exchange of which he is ready to offer a lot of money. 

In England, Billy’s by-now regular correspondent, “Fangoria Fangirl,” writes to him with the news that she has a first-generation original tape of “Nightmare Maker,” the missing piece of his puzzle. Billy coaxes Con into joining him for this trip to England to pick up the tape. Upon completing their collection, they would sell their treasure to TJ and restore the stolen Debs money. Now broke, they think of asking Zoe, Con’s sister, to help them get some funds together. However, due to Zoe, the other school kids find out about the fund misappropriation and are now baying for their blood. The two set off at dawn, with Zoe forcibly accompanying them. Video Nasty episode 1 ends with Fangoria Fangirl being terrorized by a masked intruder. The intruder, dressed as a plague doctor, abducts her from her home. 

Zoe’s alleged quarantine is the talk of the town. She is subjected to constant ridicule over her depressive episode, during which she locked herself in her room for a month. Nobody knows that her depression stems from a sudden trauma. It is here in the second episode– called “Kill Scene”– that we find a flashback which explains her mental state. Two months back, Zoe caught her father off-guard, while he sneaked a woman inside their house. The shock was so great for her to bear that she hid herself inside her room for a month. The kids’ parents start looking for them. Billy’s father, Abe, suggests that TJ might have a whiff of their trail. Con’s parents, Frank and Maureen, being staunch Catholics, are horrified by their son’s jarring interest. They blame Abe and his son for brainwashing Con. Both TJ and Abe realize that the three kids have left for Derbyshire in search of Fangoria Fangirl. The kids, on the other hand, undertake a ferry and bus journey to reach Derbyshire. As they walk along the lush green fields of the farm country, a red Ferrari pulls up. The driver, a young guy, agrees to offer them a lift to Ashdale. The boys spot a syringe pole at the back of the car. It is as if the boy’s discovery of this device catches the driver off guard. The guy touches Zoe inappropriately. While Zoe and Billy protest, Con is seen sleeping through the entire fiasco; they are dropped midway. 

Having lost sight of the walking trail, the friends set up their tent in the middle of the forest. However, the three are constantly squabbling, which makes matters worse. While Con and Billy have a tense exchange of words over the real goal of the trip, Billy and Zoe have a second round of tension, with Billy calling the latter “mental.” Zoe goes to have a smoke in the dark and spots entities lurking around the forest, entities that resemble the ones tormenting Fangoria Fangirl. By the time the morning light rolls in, Fangoria Fangirl has been tortured with a drilling machine and killed. While making their way through the forest, the kids do not realize that they have crossed the dumped body of the girl. 


Will they ever meet Fangoria Fangirl?

In the morning, the police discover the body of the girl in the Derbyshire Dales. In the third episode, named after “Fangoria Fangirl”, a radio announcement appeals to the people around that area to come up with anything they might have noticed that might be classified as “suspicious.” The Ferrari guy calls the police with a tip-off, framing the three friends as being involved in the murder and part of a cult. On the other hand, the three arrive at Ashdale, described as the “best-kept town in Derbyshire.” The locals of the town are seen preparing for a festival with a large wicker figure with a beaked mouth. The kids assume that the figures they encountered last night were just overzealous locals frenzied about the festival. They arrive at a pub, the only pub in town. The close-knit community of the town does not have many options—only one pub, one shop, one post office, and one church. 

Con’s parents advise Abe to look through the letters from Fangoria Fangirl for more evidence. Abe is not very comfortable with the idea of going through his son’s personal letters in his absence. The police of Derbyshire, on the other hand, find a letter with the dead girl. The letter testifies that Billy too had been writing to the girl pseudonymously under “Billy Wickerman.” Billy insists on waiting at the pub for his fellow collector to arrive. He only has a post box number of the girl. Billy and Zoe stay back at the pub and send Con out to the post office to inquire about the owner of the post box. It is here that Zoe confesses to Billy about catching her father red-handed. The lady at the post office refuses to give out the information, so Con writes a letter at the post office and hands it out to her to see who arrives to collect it. The lady helps him out with directions to the house. Word spreads about the three suspects with bandaged arms. The locals are certain of the involvement of a cult. The three are thrown out of the pub on account of being profane. The parents set out to search for them in Derbyshire. Abe gets a call from the police that informs him that Billy, Con, and Zoe are wanted for questioning in a murder investigation. The three arrive at the garden mansion of Fangoria Fangirl but are surprised when a boy their age opens the door. The boy is aware of the intention of his guests, that they are here for the tape. The boy says that there is no one at home and that his parents are out, even though we see someone’s feet pacing inside the room on the first floor. 

Billy is caught in disbelief when the boy introduces himself as Fangoria Fangirl. This is equally confusing for him, as he assumed his correspondent to be a girl and had secretly developed feelings for her. Additionally, the emotional effect produced by the entire trip on Con is overtly evident. From Con’s disappointment in finding out from his sister that Billy is more interested in the girl than securing the tape to his question to the boy about pretending to be a girl, there seems to be something going on. The boy takes Billy and Con to the cow shed at the back of the house to play the tape of “Nightmare Maker.” He offers for Zoe to join, but she refuses and stays back at the house. Turns out that it is all part of a large trick. Back at the house, the Ferrari guy announces his presence and injects Zoe with a sedative. The Fangoria “Boy,” on the other hand, locks the cowshed from outside and runs away. Before losing consciousness, Zoe gets a glimpse of the news, which reports that the police are on the lookout for the three teens in connection to the murder. The episode introduces major questions whose answers are cornerstones in demystifying the hanging question marks. Who is the Ferrari guy, and why is he so gung-ho on going after the kids? In addition, if the real person going by the pseudonym, “Fangoria Fangirl,” is dead, then why would the strange boy introduce himself as the real one? 


What is so eerie about the lady at the post office?

In the fourth episode, “Whatever It Takes,” the intentions and the motivations of the character become somewhat clearer. The boy, purporting to be Fangoria Fangirl, is the son of the lady at the post office, the only post office at Ashdale. The lady has another son, the Ferrari guy. Two months back, the lady caught her son hiding video nasties in his underwear drawer. The boy quickly framed Kate Bannon for luring him with the tapes. The lady, Ethel Greaves, took it upon herself to discipline the girl. Ethel is the sister of the Reverend of Ashdale Church. At the church, as the convenor of the Commemorating Committee, Ethel announced that the populace of the town would commemorate 300 years anniversary of a portion of the population sacrificing themselves to get rid of the plague. She described why this milestone is relevant in reviving the town’s history of exterminating infected bodies and souls. Ethan invited the churchgoers’ attention to the modern plague that has their children in its thrall, slowly pushing them into the dark recesses of moral depravity and sin. 

In the present day, Ethel is looking for ways to trap the kids with the help of her sons. When the Ferrari guy attempts to rape Zoe, she rebukes her son for falling prey to the Devil’s plans, for they are the guardians of God. She insists that the three should be left pure at the time of death, as inflicting harm on them would direct all attention to the family. She wants to stage the deaths in a way that makes them look like their own killers. Ethel wants the world to see their deaths as an inevitable consequence of them stuffing their minds with the extremist content of the video nasties. When the time comes, she believes that the world will cheer for the noble expressions of sacrifice that would drive the children to lay down their lives. The parents of the kids arrive at Derbyshire. Coincidentally, Abe shows up at the door of the horror house, looking for petrol. The three kids find their way down into the slurry pit of the cowshed. With dead bodies left to rot in bathtubs and skeletons scattered all around, the pit is a dungeon of horrors. The pit seems to be the secret bolt hole, tucked away from the sight of the other Greaves kid. When the Ferrari guy starts chasing the three teens, his brother climbs down into the pit. He stares in disbelief when he finds the dead body of an old man and identifies him to be his own father.

By the end of the episode, we realize that it was Ethel who spun the elaborate web to trap the teens. Through her son, she reaches Kate, the real Fangoria Fangirl, and through Kate, she gets to our three protagonists. In fact, if we hone our memory power, it is not too difficult to recall the original apartment of Fangoria Fangirl from the first episode. The locality where she stayed seemed to be one far removed from a lone garden mansion in the middle of the vast farm country. Ethel deliberately misdirected him to make sure that Con turns up at their mansion. 


Is there a larger conspiracy involved?

The excitement in the town to pit themselves against the widespread circulation of the morally reprehensible video nasties is substantially derived from the town’s own understanding of the way an illness can be eradicated, like it had put an end to the Black Death. Ashdale’s withdrawal from the world ensured that thousands of lives were spared, even though hundreds succumbed to the plague. Each year, to commemorate the sacrifice made by their own, the townspeople march from the parish church to the old village with rags and straw dolls. The ceremony culminates in the burning of a massive wicker figure. With the fire, they burn away what they attempt to exterminate from the world. In the penultimate episode called “Pray for Our Souls,” Reverend Downing and his sister, Ethel, try to sway the seemingly decorous townspeople against the morbidity-obsessed teens. The three friends break into the Ashdale police station to look for help. At the police station, Billy realizes that Kate Bannon’s letters were taken away by the deranged family to get to them. On the other hand, the younger son tries to confront his mother over the pile of dead bodies in the slurry pit. 

A tense situation ensues when Con becomes upset over Billy’s behavior. Zoe reminds Billy that no one has been honest with Con about the main purpose of the trip, and he is right to be angry. Zoe tells Con that their father had cheated on their mother. It is here that Zoe realizes that Con might be secretly harboring feelings for Billy. Meanwhile, Joe, in a police costume, enters the police station but does not see the three. While he is taking a look around, the three escape by breaking the window of the room. The kids become increasingly anxious about what lies beneath the apparently “best-kept” town. With Joe now dressed as the police, it is even more confusing whether the entire town comprises such deranged locals, like the classic horror “Wicker Man.” The parents reach the Derbyshire police in search of help, but they refuse to assist them and put the blame on the kids. After a fight with Billy, Con shows up at the church to pray. However, he is abducted by the same beak-faced figures who had killed Kate. Turns out, it is Reverend Downing who is behind that grotesque mask. While Joe is in hot pursuit of Zoe, Billy, while back at the cowshed to pick up the tape, gets sedated by Ethel. The younger son watches Billy scowl with pain and drop to the floor. Zoe spots a speeding car and tries to reach the highway, followed by Joe. However, the episode ends with both getting knocked down by the car. 

“Nightmare Maker” (here, the final episode and not the original film) begins with the image of the two boys, Billy and Con, lying down in the middle of the forest. They have been abducted and brought here by Ethel and her Reverend brother. As they threaten the boys with their choice of weapons, Ethel’s younger son, Topher, arrives with a syringe pole to attack Reverend Downing. Topher has realized the larger conspiracy that is at play. He accuses them of hiding the truth from him and using him as a pawn in all these murders. Due to Topher attacking the Reverend, the boys get the time to run away. Ethel has a meltdown when she realizes that there are far more witnesses to the crimes they have committed in the town than people genuinely concerned about the threat the three kids pose. 


What Happens To Ethel Greaves?

When Zoe wakes up, she realizes that the car was being driven by her own parents. So, when she opens her eyes and sees her parents, the first thing she does is confess about her father’s infidelity to her mother. Zoe then takes the steering wheel and runs down on an already injured Joe to make sure he is dead, once and for all. The Reverend is now in hot pursuit of the boys. However, the boys manage to slip away when the sedatives start affecting him. The boys first decide to cut up the Reverend but then decide against it and instead look to free themselves and run. The town, on the other hand, is gathering impetus for the commemorating ceremony, which, on the other hand, is a conservative call for a censorship campaign. The locals have been effectively brainwashed into believing that the video nasties were instrumental in the recent death of the teenager. Ethel fashions the public “outcry” by proclaiming that the locals are on the side of the good fight. Before the march begins, she addresses the crowd and announces a war against the video nasties and the nasty teenagers. 

Zoe calls the police and leads the parents and the police officer into the slurry pit of the cowshed. The officer, Lisa, explains that there have been some cases of mysterious disappearances from Ashdale. With no bodies found and no communication detected from the missing person, the cases went cold with time. The teenager’s death was an exception this time as the killer wanted her to be found. Billy and Con arrive at the place where the wicker figure has been set up. They go inside the statue to check for Zoe but find her nowhere. A wicker coffin too has been set up, full of tapes of forbidden video nasties, from “The Blob” to “The House of the Skull.” The locals’ rally, led by Ethel, reaches its destination. Ethel commands the frenzied mob to enact justice against the boys by throwing them inside the burning pyre. The boys run away to hide. Although the police cordon off the place, some of the bloodhound locals manage to slip past the barricade and go after the boys. 

When the locals do reach them, Con and Billy, despite being vulnerable, pin down the men. With Zoe’s help, they manage to take on the men. Another plague doctor figure arrives, staggering, to attack Frank and Maureen, but Topher grabs his neck and tries to disarm him. In the fight, the attacker plunges the knife into Topher’s neck and kills him. It is Reverend Downing. At last, Downing is killed by Abe. The children come out of the hellish ride, not without their tape of “Nightmare Maker.” Having lost both of her sons, Ethel makes her way into the wicker statue and allows herself to perish in the fire of the burning pyre. Ethel undertakes this final act to preserve her upright image in the society for eternity and destroy all the blood trails leading to her. This act of self-immolation also points towards Ethel’s religious fanaticism. This antic can be a manifestation of Ethel’s words and her staunch purist code of conduct. When she realizes that there is no way that the world can be purified from this moral depravity propagated by the video nasties, she makes an exit through the fire, which has been traditionally regarded as a symbol of purity and moral righteousness. 


Is it the end of the horrors for the three friends?

In Video Nasty’s ending, the friends reunite with their parents back in Dublin and prepare for the Debs ball. The parents seem proud of the way their kids have managed to stand up to the horror and emerge victorious. After the ball, Billy, Con, and Zoe reassemble in Con’s video room to watch some video nasties. However, when Con goes back to the house to get the whisky, his eyes fall on an unattended envelope. He opens the envelope and shakes with terror as it carries a blood-stained message: “I am watching you.” Although the series ends, the cycle of horror in the universe of Con, Billy, and Zoe seems to have spiraled out of control. 


Damayanti Ghosh
Damayanti Ghoshhttps://letterboxd.com/deemem/
Damayanti is a Master of Arts in Film Studies from Jadavpur University. An inveterate admirer of the Hindi popular cinema, she takes equal pleasure in unearthing obscure animation and horror but does not let on much about it. Her favorite book is 'The Motorcycle Diaries'. Her favorite film is 'Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa'.


 

 

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