Decade of Havoc

Duke Marketing, £14.99.

. . . And here’s another hour of gloating at others’ misfortunes. The Havoc tapes were the first of their genre, and established a bad reputation which others have by and large done well to avoid. In the early days, the Havoc producers thought it within the bounds of public decency to incorporate footage of fatal accidents in its videos. Nice.

Recently, they’ve toned down their act a little, although the opportunity to withdraw some of the earlier tapes from the market has never been taken. Indeed, they are even advertising them all widely again, now that the cover price has been dropped. The thing that is really dropping is the series.

In a nutshell, this is abysmal. There is nothing in the slightest bit entertaining about seeing an endless stream of motorcyclists falling off in identical fashion, nor in watching Formula 3000 cars pirouette in circles. The commentary is hopelessly inaccurate (Chico Serra is mistaken for Ayrton Senna, Julian Bailey for Julian Pratt, whoever he might be, and the script is littered with countless other faux pas), and is riddled with offensive, sexist remarks.

If you really want to seek out Decade of Havoc, dip down to the bottom of the barrel and keep going. SA