It was the late-’80s, and we were smack dab in the middle of The Great VHS Boom. I believe it was Herbert Hoover who once promised, “a VCR in every home, and a membership to every mom & pop video store” – and that’s exactly what every family (including ours) had. And with the proliferation of VCRs came a wave of home recordings. No rental was safe from being recorded to a blank Kodak tape (or Polaroid, Sony, RCA, Fuji, et al.) You just had to make sure your recording speed was set to LP, and to put a little piece o’tape over that broken tab on the back, and you were in business. Sure, it was illegal. But it was the ’80s, and everyone was doing it. Continue reading STUFF THAT SCARED ME: A Home Recording of A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3
Tag Archives: rental
Horror VHS Promo Videos!
If, like most Americans in the mid to late-’80s, you quit your law firm in the city to move to the boonies and open a video store amid the Great VHS Boom, you were probably fairly clueless on the subject and immediately found yourself struck with the most imperative decision of your new business venture: what do you stock your shop with?
You turn to your family for answers: your boy says “Freddy”, whoever that is; your daughter suggests anything with Johnny Depp; your wife offers something classic. All fine suggestions, but what do the people want? At a retail price of $99.95 a piece, video cassettes at the time were too pricey to simply buy blindly. That’s where promotional videos come in. In a pre-Google world, movie distribution companies — wanting to secure some video store shelf space — would send these promotional tapes directly to video store proprietors. Continue reading Horror VHS Promo Videos!
Horror Video Ads from the ’80s!
Long before the Internet — before Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, and whatever else people use to search and share information nowadays — details on the latest movies releases (especially the more obscure titles, especially horror titles) were a lot harder to come by. A lot harder. There were newspapers and word of mouth, of course. But if you were a gorehound or looking for info on more underground stuff, having a subscription to a magazine like Fangoria or Starlog was a necessity — especially if you wanted to buy these movies. (There were other movie-centric publications, like Movieline which was actually pretty decent, but the best genre-specific info required genre-specific magazines.) Continue reading Horror Video Ads from the ’80s!
JUDGED BY THE COVER – “The Dark” (1979)
With “Judged by the Cover” I take a look at some VHS boxes of movies I’ve never seen — and most likely never will — and try and summarize what I think they’re about, merely by their box. This week, I look at: The Dark (1979) Continue reading JUDGED BY THE COVER – “The Dark” (1979)
DEATH ROW DINER – 13 Days of Shot on Video! (#1)
With 13 Days of Shot On Video I’ll be reviewing a new shot-on-video horror film every weekday for the last two weeks of October. You can view all entries HERE.
Well, the day has arrived: this is the final entry in my two week-long odyssey into the belly of the bare-bones beast, “13 Days of Shot on Video”. Honestly, it went a lot smoother than I thought it would. It wasn’t until today that I became afraid I wouldn’t make it. I know, it sounds silly to say but I really didn’t think I’d complete my final entry. I can only liken it to what I assume runners experience when they hit “the wall” miles into their marathon, right before they reach the finish line. Not only am I mentally exhausted from churning out a new review (for what are essentially identical movies) everyday for almost two weeks straight, but my tolerance for the camp and low-budget whimsy of these monsters is totally deep-fried. I’m beginning to no longer appreciate their shortcomings, which is unfair to them and makes for an impartial review. I said it before and I’ll say it again: I am in major need of a detox! Continue reading DEATH ROW DINER – 13 Days of Shot on Video! (#1)
BLOOD LAKE – 13 Days of Shot on Video! (#2)
With 13 Days of Shot On Video I’ll be reviewing a new shot-on-video horror film every weekday for the last two weeks of October. You can view all entries HERE.
Despite there not being a whole lot of information about Blood Lake to be found online, the scant reviews I did find on various horror blogs made one thing abundantly clear: people do not like this movie. I must be in the minority, because I didn’t mind it so much!
Blood Lake is almost identical to an earlier SOV release (and one I reviewed at the beginning of my “13 Days of Shot on Video” run), Sledgehammer. Both films see a group of young kids headed to a remote cabin for a weekend getaway filled with drinking, partying, and sex. And naturally, both movies see an evil presence stalking and killing them one by one. Both movies also feature tons of unnecessarily long, drawn out shots that were most likely left unedited to pad out the run time. However, there are certain elements about Blood Lake that give it an edge over Sledgehammer. Continue reading BLOOD LAKE – 13 Days of Shot on Video! (#2)
Camera Viscera 