Trans-Atlantic Video’s Spanish Superman VHS (1989)

While digging through my junk collection recently, I found this old VHS of the public domain 1940s Superman cartoons. Not so odd in and of itself, I come across these kinds of tapes while out and about all the time, and I’ve got more than enough of them in my collection as it is. But, what’s interesting about this particular release is that it’s a Spanish edition. Also, it’s sealed brand new. Also, I have zero recollection of ever buying it.

What probably happened is I bought a bunch of tapes or otherwise interesting items at Goodwill or something, I found this tape while there and threw it in with the rest of my stuff, and subsequently forgot about it because something else I picked up in the haul was more exciting. That has to have been what happened, because I’d like to think under normal circumstances, I’d have some recollection of a sealed Spanish Superman (alliteration) VHS tape in my collection.

I can’t bring myself to open it. Most likely the cartoons within are the regular English versions found on any number of cheap VHS releases; I highly, highly doubt these are Spanish-dubbed. So why bother? There probably won’t be any notable differences between the content of this tape and the standard U.S. releases I’m more accustomed to. Plus, if I leave it sealed, I can stomp around and act all superior to everyone else because my Spanish Superman tape is still minty brand new. Right?

This isn’t the first time I’ve babbled about budget Supaguy tapes; back in February 2014, I looked at this ostensibly obscure release. This Trans-Atlantic tape is actually more typical of most similar releases, except for, you know, that whole Spanish language box thing. The front cover artwork, while clearly ‘homemade,’ is decidedly more competent than a lot of budget Superman videos, and make no mistake, in this peculiar field, that’s no small accomplishment.

Look at that: the standard disclaimer about the images on the box being “color enhanced” and taken from the actual cartoons on the tape is apparently universal. Most budget cartoon tapes had a similarly-worded disclaimer. I assume “color enhanced” really means “redrawn” or something along those lines, probably to avoid any legal hassles. And in the case of Superman, you do not want to be taking any chances with that property.

I can’t even begin to speak Spanish in any adequate sense, but I can still figure out what a good deal of the wording on the box means, and for what I can’t figure out on my own, this helpful online translator keeps me from looking like a total doofus. The yellow bullet point by Supe’s foot roughly translates to “animated films,” and it looks like the cartoons included are The Underground World, Japoteurs (“Gee, ya don’t say?!”), and what I can only surmise is an old Bimbo (as in Betty Boop’s canine boyfriend, weird relationship though that was) cartoon as filler, which really wasn’t too unusual with video releases of this type.

According to the translation site, El Coche de Bimbo roughly translates to “Bimbo’s Car,” so you figure out what the hell cartoon it actually is if you need to know that badly. Stop trying to make me open my tape.

Also apparently universal: the fairly plain-Jane back covers of these releases. Doesn’t look like there’s anything specific to this Superman tape in the description on the back; from what I can tell, there’s the standard disclaimer about these all being public domain cartoons. Plus, the listing of other cartoon tapes from the company. I have no idea what “Bill Cosby” could refer to; Fat Albert was never public domain, was it? I totally want a Spanish Popeye tape now.

Maybe I’m not giving a wholly accurate picture of this tape: while it is indeed a Spanish release of 1940s public domain Superman cartoons, this probably wasn’t something you’d actually have to leave the country to buy; more likely, it was sold in the U.S., but specifically in Spanish stores/neighborhoods. My case is only bolstered by the fact that I found it around town at all, as well as the fact that, according to the box, it was manufactured in the U.S.

So, while the tape may not be that rare/unique/whatever, considering it’s not the sort of thing I myself come across all that often (relatively speaking), well, that puts it one-up on the usual fare I’m forced to contend with on a consistent basis. After you see variations of the same thing some 100,000 times, it doesn’t take much to stand out.

It’s a cool video, and one I’m certainly glad to have. I just wish I could remember where the hell it came from.

Sylvania Hi-Fi Stereo VHS VCR Model No. VC3645GY01 (1985)

Hey, remember when I used to write about interesting VCRs and whatnot that I had come across? It’s sure been awhile! The reason being that while I have picked up several really good ones in recent months, I just couldn’t get sufficiently fired up enough to write about them. That changes now, because after a fairly long dry spell, I finally, finally came across a ridiculously cool VCR out in the wild that absolutely needs a place of honor (ha!) on my silly blog. Behold: a Sylvania Hi-Fi VHS VCR, model number VC3645GY01, from 1985! And it only set me back $5 last weekend! Cool winnins!

From the picture above, it may not look that interesting. I mean, sure, it has that classy black and silver, heavy duty 1980s design going for it, and it’s a 4-head, Hi-Fi stereo model, but is that really enough to get me to write about it? Plenty of other VCRs from the time period had the same characteristics, after all. Keep reading chief, you’ll see, the real horsepower of this beast is under the hood, so to speak.

Outside appearances belie the advantages of this deck, because this thing is positively loaded with features. It all comes courtesy of an everlastingly cool fold-down door. Nope, a regular pull-down door just won’t do for the Sylvania; by pressing the appropriately-named “door” button, all the features drop down to your fingertips.

Just look at ’em all! Besides the standard play-stop-rewind-fast-forward-pause-record options, you’ve got the ability to record in all three speeds, and even cooler, the ability to do freakin’ audio dubbing! You can adjust the audio levels, and/or fiddle around with the audio level meter display. I love the old-school tracking control knob, and even though I’ll never actually use it, the (relatively) easy-set clock/timer feature had to have been a blessing back in ’85.

And look at that! Even more features! Sharpness control (which is a feature I absolutely love on a lot of these old VCRs), a regular TV or cable TV swich, you can even select normal or thin tape! Since I never really do any audio dubbing, I’m guessing that option was for that particular feature of the VCR?

Something that’s really cool and which I wasn’t expecting at all is seen in the left picture above: That 1:37 isn’t the tape counter (indeed, this unit uses the old-school, 0000 tape counters, as opposed to the exact hours/minutes/seconds counters of later VCRs). Rather, that seems to indicate how much time is left on the tape. Swanky! That sort of thing was in vogue later on, but I was a surprised to see it used in a 1985 model.

The picture on the right demonstrates the slow-motion feature in action. You know, I’ve got that option on a lot of my VCRs (both VHS and Beta), and while it’s not something I ever really use at all, I still get a kick out of it being included. Go figure.

And as if all that wasn’t enough, it’s even got an LED audio level meter, in an attractive red-and-blue color scheme to boot!

However, there are some sad failins afoot with this deck: it doesn’t quite work correctly. It seems like until it gets “warmed up,” it won’t really run a tape all that well, and when it finally does get warmed up, you get sound (really terrific sound, in fact), but no picture. Maybe the heads are shot, maybe they just need a good cleaning, I don’t know. I’m actually not too upset about this factor, though. The genuine coolness of this VCR was easily worth the $5 I plunked down for it, and besides, odds are it can be repaired in the future, if need be.

(From how I understand it, Sylvania VCRs were always just re-badged Panasonic machines anyway, which I kinda suspected in the first-place, so some parts swapping probably isn’t out of the question, if it came to that.)

And yet more features on the back of the unit! You’ll probably have to click on either pic to enlarge them enough to see, but there’s an audio filter switch, camera remote input, right and left microphone inputs, and what really kinda surprised me, a Pay-TV knob. I’ve got a lot of old VCRs lying around, and while there may very well be a similar knob on one of those as well, I just can’t recall seeing a Pay-TV knob on any of them. And truth be told, I’m really not sure how exactly that would work. I’m guessing to record Pay-Per-View and whatnot? Or maybe used in conjunction with those old ‘special channel’ boxes? I have no idea.

And that’s all in addition to the necessary stereo RCA jack inputs and outputs.

See, model number VC3645GY01, manufactured in late-1985. Did you think I was lying? I wasn’t.

I can’t even begin to guess how much this model cost back in 1985, and internet searches really aren’t revealing a whole lot of info about it or even any pictures of it, but this sure looks like it was a pretty high-end model back in the day, and high-end models weren’t exactly cheap at the time. It’s funny, a VCR that was undoubtedly several hundred dollars (at least!) back in the 1980s only cost me $5 last week, but hey, that’s the nature of electronics; it doesn’t take long for them to become obsolete. Well, obsolete to the general public, anyway. Me? I get fired up finding things like this just as much as I probably would have had I found it new in the stores back in ’85!

It’s not quite the best VCR I’ve found while out thrifting, but it’s up there, even if it’s not working correctly at the moment. No matter, because I was thrilled to come across this unit. Indeed, I wish I had more finds like it! It’s a welcome addition to my ever-growing mountain of ancient VCRs.

Fritz Lang’s Metropolis – Crown Movie Classics VHS Release

I haven’t talked much about Fritz Lang’s 1927 Metropolis on this blog, but in the league of my all-time favorite films, it is way, way near the top. I like a lot of movies, but we’re talking a top five’r, here. Not only is it a genuine silent masterpiece, but it’s also a movie I just never get tired of.

Kino’s 2004 DVD release of a terrific restoration and, even better, their 2010 DVD and Blu-ray release of a virtually complete version have obviously made earlier editions obsolete, but during the VHS-era, there were a myriad of different releases of the film, exacerbated by a public domain status (that apparently no longer holds). Needless to say, this Crown movie Classics edition (undated, but almost certainly from the mid-1980s) is one such release.

Y’see, following the original 1927 theatrical release, for various reasons the movie almost immediately began being cut down, the end result being that for years the complete original cut of the film was considered lost, and by the time of the home video era, there were a ton of differing prints out there, in varying degrees of quality and completeness. Barring few exceptions, most of these releases weren’t all that good, suffering from poor print quality, incompleteness, and so on.

By the late-1990s/early-2000s, the conventional Metropolis wisdom was that the two best releases to have were 1) the then-out-of-print Vestron Video release of the 1984 Giorgio Moroder restoration, which for all of Moroder’s tampering (modern tinting and effects, subtitles instead of intertitles, a then-modern rock soundtrack, even a few newly-filmed bits), had beautiful print quality and more scenes restored that any other version up to that point. It was a polarizing restoration, for sure, but just from a viewable footage/coherent story standpoint, it was worth the high prices used copies were regularly commanding on Ebay at the time (it has since been released on DVD and Blu-ray). 2) The 1989 Kino VHS release. It wasn’t as complete as Moroder’s, but it was absolutely the best ‘traditional’ version of Metropolis out there, in glorious black & white and fantastic print quality. The only downside was a semi-jazzy soundtrack that didn’t fit all that well and actually dragged the whole film down.

Nowadays, it’s easier than ever to find a good print of the film (and make no mistake, for years the quality of a print made all the difference as to whether a viewer ‘got’ the movie or not), but back then, Moroder and Kino were the ones to go after. The thing was, by the late-1990s/early-2000s, the Moroder version had been out of print for years, and while it was readily available used online, the popularity frequently made prices range from $30-$60 (depending on condition) for the VHS release, and if you wanted the Laserdisc edition, you were going to have to really pry open the wallet (contrary to what many claimed, the VHS was never that rare, just very highly sought-after, but the Laserdisc was a whole different story). And, to make matters worse, the ’89 Kino VHS was becoming increasingly harder to find around this time, too. Over time, these tapes began costing more and more to acquire, but they were worth the effort, because while neither was perfect, they were the only ones to do Metropolis any kind of justice in the home video market (in regards to the mainstream home video market, I mean; there were probably some specialty mail-order retailers that released decent VHS editions, but most people shopping in the video stores never saw those kind of copies).

So, besides Moroder and the 1989 Kino VHS, there were tons of varying video releases out there, and the differences between them could be pretty drastic. Metropolis had long since attained “legendary film” status, and with the movie then in the public domain, it was an easy target for low-budget releases. Many (most?) people may have been satisfied picking up one of these releases and calling it a day, but personally, after acquiring Moroder’s (and having already had a bargain-bin version), I began buying as many variants of the film as I could come across. Sure, most of them were crummy, but it was actually kinda fun to see how they differed from each other. From quality to beginning/end cards to soundtracks to completeness, they could vary wildly from one copy to the next. I still have all of my different VHS copies I’ve acquired over the years (in a box dedicated almost entirely to just Metropolis), and while my collecting has become more sporadic in recent times, I do still pick up obscure releases or ones I otherwise haven’t come across before, even though it goes without saying that I own all of the new, definitive restorations.

And that brings us back to the Crown Movie Classics VHS (remember when this article was supposed to be about it?). Oddly enough, despite my being aware of it for years through online searches, this Crown Movie Classics release is actually a newer acquisition of mine. In this day and age it’s not particularly rare, maybe uncommon at best, but much to my surprise, it’s one of the more interesting video releases from the era.

As previously stated, there’s no date anywhere on this tape, but the mention of it being released in theaters on the back of the box (they probably should have said “re-released,” but I nitpick) points to around 1985. Giorgio Moroder’s 1984 release wasn’t just a great restoration, it also brought the film back to movie theaters, which is almost certainly what the summary on the box is referring to.

My own quick synopsis: Metropolis is a seminal silent sci-fi (how’s that for alliteration?!) classic from Germany, enormously influential, not only in the science fiction genre, and not only in silent films, but in film making period. Falling into the German expressionist category, it details a futuristic city in which the rich and privileged live in a towering city above ground, while workers keep the city running through endless manual labor below ground. Plotlines involving the son of the man who runs the city, a girl from below ground who wants to unite the two classes of people, a robot created by a mad scientist, as well as some simply phenomenal special effects that are still impressive, it all combines into a not only a terrific sci-fi movie, but one that works as a social allegory, even today. Not only was Metropolis ahead of its time in many ways, it’s also still frighteningly prescient.

That’s an extremely streamlined rundown of the film, which is intentional. My reasoning? if you’re reading this article, there’s a good chance you are already familiar with it. However, if by some chance you haven’t seen Metropolis and are reading this, go watch it. Nothing can replace experiencing this film for yourself, even more so now that we have practically the complete film restored and available.

I first actually saw the movie in the summer of 1998 (July 4th or thereabouts, as I recall), when I found a budget video release of it at Best Buy, back when their budget VHS sections could yield untold numbers of “good stuff.” Metropolis played into my love of both sci-fi movies and silent movies, so it was a no-brainer purchase. Unfortunately, the tape I bought was the version released by Madacy, which unbeknownst to me at the time was widely considered one of the worst versions to have. Madacy, who were no strangers to such things, repackaged this particular print endlessly in the VHS era, and in the late-1990s it was by far the most commonly found edition. Combining abysmal print quality and a score comprised entirely of classical music with no attempt whatsoever to sync it with what was happening on screen, well, it wasn’t exactly Metropolis as it was meant to be seen.

While I appreciated the film for what it represented and the achievements it made, truth be told, it wasn’t until I caught a TV broadcast of Giorgio Moroder’s 1984 restoration that I truly fell in love with the film, and I’ve been there ever since.

One thing about collecting Metropolis: the more differing copies you’d get, the more you’d start running into the same prints over and over again after awhile. I’ll explain more in a bit, but that aforementioned Madacy release actually shares some heritage with this Crown Movie Classics one, though one isn’t a carbon copy of the other. Read on, you’ll see.

Ignore both the 120 minute running time on the back of the box and the 139 minute running time printed on the tape’s label, because the movie as found here only runs about 95 minutes. Not so unusual, since the running times of these earlier, lower-budget VHS releases generally ranged from 90 minutes to 120 minutes. The running times were rarely a gauge of how complete a respective print was, though; rather, this being a silent, the speed at which the film was run varied from version to version, and that more than anything dictated the total running time of a particular release.

Also, this release is recorded in SP, which of course is preferable to the EP and LP recordings of a good many other copies out there at the time.

W-w-what’s it say?! The various problems of this release are immediately evident as soon as the movie starts. The introductory card is so blurry, it’s basically unreadable! This does not inspire confidence in the product that’s to follow.

As I mentioned, this Crown Movie Classics VHS actually has quite a bit in common with that old Madacy release that was my first Metropolis. It clearly comes from the same source, though the two are hardly identical. Because Madacy’s was such a widely distributed version, comparisons between the two are, for me, inevitable.

Madacy presented one of the worst prints out there, but Crown Movie Classics’ release, well, it’s not exactly good either. The picture quality is uniformly terrible; blurry, washed out, off-center (just look at the title above!), it’s pretty rough going. Madacy’s version was pretty terrible looking, too, though I’m honestly I’m not sure which is worse here. Both present pretty poor versions of Metropolis. I never thought I’d say it, but based solely on that introductory text we saw, I may have to give the edge to Madacy as far as better print quality goes! At least the intro was kinda readable in that one!

Besides some editing differences, the chief example of which you’ll see in the next screencap, Madacy’s took the beginning cards, end card (in fact, Madacy’s end card looks to be some modern, cheesy cartoon-like thing; it’s completely different from the one on this tape) and intertitles and freeze-framed them, ostensibly so they’d be more readable. It ends up looking incredibly cheap, especially with all of the dust and scratches frozen in the frame. Crown Movie Classics’ version, however, leaves all of these unchanged, which if nothing else looks much more natural.

Soundtracks: Madacy decided to use random classical music with no connection to what was happening on-screen. Crown Movie Classics, on the other hand, used a soundtrack that seems like it would be more at home in a Laurel & Hardy short than Metropolis. It’s almost funny to hear happy-go-lucky music during some of the more dramatic scenes in the movie, except that it’s effectively taking you out of a scene instead of drawing you into it. Like the print quality, I can’t really decide which is the worse soundtrack, though I think I’d take Crown Movie Classics’ over Madacy’s…by a hair.

(To be fair, the same exact same print as what showed up in the Madacy VHS’ also appeared on tapes from other companies, and I really have no idea who the actual originator of the offending print was, but Madacy repackaged and released the version so many times that in time it appropriately became known as the “Madacy version.”)

For as crummy as the print quality and soundtrack are, there is a factor that, believe it or not, puts this version of Metropolis above most others on the market from the mid-1980s up through the 1990s, and you’re looking at it above: it’s the “stadium scene,” one of the hallmark “restored scenes” found in Moroder’s restoration. It wasn’t exactly exclusive to that restoration, but it turned up so rarely in other home video versions that it might as well have been.

It’s not really a long scene, just a fairly short moment of some of the upper-class citizens having a quick race at the start of the film. It’s placement in this print is a bit out of order from where it should be, and quality is so poor that a first-time viewer would be forgiven for not knowing what exactly was going on, but the fact that it’s here at all is a pleasant surprise. It’s amazing how stuck-in-2000 my Metropolis sensibilities are, because I got pretty jazzed upon finding this scene in this VHS release, even though I already have, you know, the complete restoration of the movie on DVD.

When DVDs were just starting to take off in the late-1990s, Metropolis began finding a presence in that format just as it had on VHS. But for a time, there were only two real DVD releases out there: Madacy’s, which was just a DVD version of their poor VHS, and one put out by a company called Classic Media Holdings, which was the same print as this Crown Movie Classics VHS – except the picture quality was infinitely better (I have a copy somewhere, but I don’t remember if the soundtrack is the same or not). Until the 2004 Kino release, it was really the best DVD version out there. It came out around 1998/1999, and by 2001, it was out of print and not easy to find. When a copy did turn up on Ebay, it went for pretty big bucks (in the summer of 2001, a copy popped up there, and I had a pocket full of dough from my recent grade school graduation party; it still wasn’t enough to win the auction. We’re talking well over a hundred bucks here. I finally got a copy some years later, though truth be told, it wasn’t much cheaper). The relatively excellent picture quality was certainly a selling point of the DVD release, but this stadium scene, this one little short scene that happened to be included, was also a big part of that.

Which brings me to this point: if someone, back in the glory days of the late-90’s/early-2000s Ebay when these types of tapes were actually selling, had listed a copy of this Crown Movie Classics edition and specifically mentioned this stadium scene, preferably in the auction title, there’s a good chance that not only would they have made a sale, they also would have made a bit more money than usual. That’s how starved some Metropolis fans (myself included) were for better, more unique, more complete versions of the movie at the time.

And despite sharing the same source, no, this scene is not in the Madacy release.

There are some scenes that, no matter how terrible the print and/or sound quality are, that remain amazing. Despite the blurriness of the picture, the early scene of the underground workers walking zombie-like to work is unbelievable. The machine-like dehumanization of the scene is unmistakeable, and it has become one of the defining images of Metropolis.

Ditto for the scene in which the scientist Rotwang (save the snickering, please) gives the image of heroine Maria to his robot. The special effects used, particularly as the persona is being grafted to robot (consisting of animated rings moving up and down the robot and growing progressively in number), is remarkable for a 1920s film.

The print quality obscures many of them in this version, but the panoramic shots of the city itself are still pretty awe-inspiring. According to legend, the various shots of the city were inspired by the towering skyscrapers of New York as Fritz Lang first entered the city via boat. The inspiration shows time and time again in Metropolis.

Even though you almost can’t read it, according to the end card, this was a Thunderbird Films release. I don’t know when they first put out their version of the film, but they released a lot of movies like this. I’m pretty sure I have a copy of Buster Keaton’s The General by them somewhere. Or maybe that was Blackhawk Films, I don’t remember.

It’s not really a ‘good’ version of Metropolis, but it is an interesting one. In fact, for those curious to see one of the cheaper, varying prints of the film out there when there wasn’t (much) better available, well, I guess you could do worse. The abysmal print and sound quality, clashing with the more-complete print (relative to other similar releases), the whole thing is entertaining in spite of itself. Though, to be fair, Metropolis is such a monumental film that even these old, disrespectful prints, despite trying their best, can’t completely hide what a masterpiece the movie is. If nothing else, it’s worth having just to see what fans by and large had to put up with in the home video market until things were more widely done right by Fritz Lang’s classic.

Geez, there’s an essentially complete DVD/Blu-ray release out there, and I just spent 47 hous talking about an incredibly obsolete VHS version. I have, how do you say, too much time on my hands.

Ghoulardifest 2014!

It’s that time of year again! Big Chuck & Lil’ John’s Ghoulardifest! 2014!

I’ve gone to this convention for several years in a row now, and I even wrote extensively about it last year. I always, always have a blast at these shows. Ostensibly, the convention is to celebrate all things Ernie “Ghoulardi” Anderson, and needless to say, you’ll see more Ghoulardi stuff than anything else there. But, it’s also a celebration of Northeast Ohio broadcasting, namely Hoolihan & Big Chuck & Lil’ John, Son of Ghoul, Jungle Bob, and even beyond; this year, Dee Wallace Stone and Arch Hall Jr. were also in attendance. Ghoulardifest isn’t just about Ghoulardi, it’s also about the Ghoulardi ideals, the music and movies and ideas he represented. That is, lotsa horror films, music (you can’t take two steps without running into some Beatles memorabilia – the way it should be), and the like. Trust me, it’s awesome.

For the second year in a row, the show was held at the LaVilla Banquet Center. I really, really like this place. It’s plush, and big enough to hold a lot of vendors, plus there’s a big ol’ stage for presentations, musical performances, etc. In short, it’s perfect for events like Ghoulardifest. When we (my brother and I) first got there, Frank & Dean were performing, and even though I was currently trying to get my bearings straight and deciding just what to tackle first (there’s a lot to take in!), I could tell they were putting on a heckuva show.

Every year, the show runs Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and this year those days were October 31 (HALLOWEEN), November 1st, and November 2nd. Also every year, the only feasible day for me to make it up is on Sunday. It’s easiest for me that way, and while I’m always pleased, going there this Sunday did have a few drawbacks: Son of Ghoul played with Arch Hall Jr. and his band on Friday and Saturday only, which I missed out on, as I did meeting Janet Decay, The Daughter Of The Ghoul, who was apparently only there the first two days. Tim Conway was supposed to be there again this year, this time signing autographs on Saturday only, but he had to cancel. Since I wasn’t going to make it up on Saturday anyway, I guess I broke even on that front.

Still, I was able to knock several items, be they meeting celebrities or items I’ve had a year to mull over purchasing, off my Ghoulardifest bucket list. Here now, are the highlights from said bucket list:

Hangin’ with my pal Son Of Ghoul! I always make it a point to stop by SOG’s table; a ‘Fest hasn’t gone by that I haven’t bought something (sometimes a lot) from him. Every year, he has these awesome Superhost t-shirts. Last year, I was too late for a large size shirt, and like a dolt I didn’t buy a medium. So, the gameplan was to definitely, absolutely get one this year. Luckily, he had one large size shirt left, which is now mine. I prefer large t-shirts, though mediums work too, and if he hadn’t had a large, that’s what I would have went with; one way or another, I was getting a Supe shirt!

A dream realized! I babbled last year about how I kept missing out on Bob “Hoolihan” Wells. It kept being either his line was too long or he was doing something on stage. Bottom line was I had never met him…until Ghoulardifest 2014. I had pretty much decided beforehand that this year I was going to meet Hoolihan. And as you can see, I, erm, did. Really cool guy! (Hoolihan, I mean.)

I met Arch Hall Jr.! I may have missed his band, but no way was I going to miss the man! The star of Eegah!, Wild Guitar and other 1960s flicks, this is a guy I had to meet. And no kidding, he’s just about the nicest guy in the world. Incredibly personable and outgoing, I wish every celebrity out there was like Arch. Just the coolest.

Chillin’ with Jungle Bob! My buddy! I first met JB waaay back in 2000 (at the long-gone B-Ware Video), and I still have a lot of fun talking with him nowadays. Great guy, and he gets props for always pickin’ up them big damn spiders he has; I couldn’t do it, man.

Jungle Bob’s official website!

There I am with the cats from The Midnight Movie! The Midnight Movie is a newer discovery of mine. Technically, I’ve known about the show for quite awhile, but I could never find it. Until I did: in Northeast Ohio, if you have Time-Warner Digital Cable, it’s channel 180, Saturdays at midnight. It’s probably been there forever and I’m just a chucklehead. Anyway, I’m really diggin’ the show; they play a lot of movies you don’t see too often on the horror hosting-circuit. Really nice guys, too.

Finally: the obligatory photo with Big Chuck & Lil’ John. I got one last year, I got one the year before two years before that, and I’ll probably get one next year. Why? Cause it’s Chuck & John, that’s why! Their names are in the title of the whole show! I’ll plaster my walls with photos of me with Big Chuck & Lil’ John if I want to!

That pretty much brought us to the end of the show (just for us, I mean; there were a few hours left). However, there’s one important thing associated with the show that we skipped last year but had to do this year:

There’s a Big Boy very, very close to the LaVilla, and we almost always make it a point to stop by after leaving the ‘Fest. If I recall correctly, we just ran out of money last year, and since I don’t know of any other locations even remotely close to me, I’ve been jonesin’ for one of their big ol’ burgers, big time.

That’s a thing of beauty! A big honkin’ “Super Big Boy!” Big Boy after Ghoulardifest just seems so right, and man, their burgers are good.

Real quick: a closer look at my loot. This isn’t quite everything I brought home, but it’s some of the coolest.

There’s my beloved Superhost shirt. I could put this on with some red shorts and go running around the neighborhood if I so desired. Maybe I’ll just wear it while I read my interview with Supe himself over and over and over.

My autographed Arch Hall Jr. CD. When I heard he was going to be signing autographs all weekend, I hoped he’d have one of these CDs for purchase by the time I got there, and as luck would have it, this was the last one! Cool winnins! This is packed with Arch’s music; well worth having! It’s now a prized part of my collection.

Since I finally met Hoolihan, it stands to reason I couldn’t leave without his autograph. I didn’t feel like lugging my American Scary book back to Ghoulardifest for autographs this year, so I instead opted for one of these swanky Hoolihan pictures for autograph purposes.

So, that was Ghoulardifest 2014. My brother and I had a lot fun, as we always do when going to this show. Had a good time, got some cool stuff, and ate a delicious burger. I’d call that a successful trip.

ProScan VHS VCR Model No. PSVR81

It’s all about the contours with this one. I’ve got so many VCRs at this point that anything outside of the mid-1980’s ‘sweet spot’ almost has to be all about the contours (in other words: it’s gotta look cool, or have enough features to make up for not looking cool, which in and of itself is cool. Dig?). And boy, this unit has “style” to burn; the sleek black casing and overall elegant design practically scream “classy product, yo!” Which is why I pretty much flipped when I happened upon this deck at a thrift shop recently. It actually took me a moment to realize it was a VCR; at first glance the design, as well as the fact that the flap-door blends right in with said design, fooled me into thinking this was a stereo receiver or something. The second I realized it was instead a slick-lookin’ VCR, it became mine (well, I held on to it for dear life; it didn’t *technically* become mine until the appropriate amount of cash was thrown down at the register, but you know what I meant).

I have only limited experience with ProScan products, but according to this Wikipedia article, they seem to be on the higher-end of things. The sole ProScan product I had prior is the best Laserdisc player I’ve ever owned: a really terrific unit with auto-flip (i.e., no getting up to flip the disc) and some other snazzy features. This is the player I always have hooked up (yeah, I still watch Laserdiscs from time to time; love ’em) and it has always performed like a champ. So yeah, what experience I have with ProScan has been 100% positive.

I don’t know what year this hails from, but my gut told me around 1995, and this page more-or-less confirms that feeling with a “1994-1995.” It looks like a product of the 1990s, but in a good way. I’ve mentioned time and time again my ambivalent feelings towards the electronics of the era, but there are exceptions, and this unit more than any other qualifies.

(The deck I talked about in this post exemplifies the “cheap 1990s” look I usually avoid; strangely, that post and the VCR it’s about I had both completely forgotten about until it showed up on my WordPress dashboard as having been viewed by someone recently. It took me a moment to even remember where I stored the thing; that’s how forgettable some 90s electronics were/are!)

Eagle eyes will notice that this deck uses the VCR Plus+ get up. I never had any first-hand experience with VCR Plus+, but basically you could input the number codes found next to listings in TV Guide and whatnot into the VCR and it would automatically record the program. I don’t think I ever had a deck that used VCR Plus+ (back in my ‘real’ taping days, I mean), I always manually set the VCR timer, which wound up being a good thing, because I got complete versions of programs that would have been cut-off by running over their timeslot otherwise (VCR Plus+ didn’t adjust for that sorta thing, from how I understand it).

Oddly enough, despite the fact it means fairly little in regards to a VCRs functionality, at least nowadays, I’ve seen units with the VCR Plus+ moniker marked higher than other VCRs at thrift shops and the like. Maybe that’s just skewed perception on my part, but it sure seems like that’s what folks are doing, and if so, it fills me with a burning rage you can’t begin to fathom.

The thing actually says “Hello” when you turn it on. That’s adorable. It’s a small touch, but it adds an even more classy quality to a machine that already looks pretty darn spiffy. Sure, it’s just a small gimmick that doesn’t really mean anything, but it sure doesn’t hurt.

Remember that time I gushed about the audio level readout in this post? Of course you don’t. Anyway, I always get a kick out of it, particularly on newer (relatively speaking) units such as this one. I could be dead wrong on this, but it seems like this was a feature that was by and large phased out on VCRs as the 1990s progressed. Again, I could be dead wrong on that, but I know that I’ve found far fewer 1990s decks that sport audio levels when compared to 1980s VCRs.

In addition to the usual fast forward/rewind/play/stop buttons, the PSVR81 also features this stylin’ jog wheel, though I still call these “swing shuttles,” which was Sony’s (and others?) name for the feature. It lets you access pause, slow-motion, etc. Admittedly, I never really use the jog wheels, but I also admit that they look really cool to me. Anytime I come across a deck with a jog wheel, it’s almost assuredly a must-purchase (unless preliminary testing proves that the deck doesn’t work correctly).

The not-immediately-noticed panel along the bottom of the front features a number of other options, including a button that awards the ability to record in all three speeds (SP, LP, SLP), blank search, input select, and a set of AV input jacks. Unfortunately, I’m not seeing tracking control anywhere on the unit, which means it was almost certainly a feature accessed via the remote, which was MIA with this particular VCR.

On the back: AV inputs and outputs and antenna in-and-out jacks. See, PSVR81. Did you think I was lying? I wasn’t.

As with any thousand-year-old VCR, the million dollar question is “how does it work?” This PSVR81 runs incredibly well. Maybe it was serviced at some point in the past, but I have a feeling it was just well-maintained on top of being high quality in the first place. All of the functions perform like new, and the picture is terrific. Me being me, of course I used an old Magnum, P.I. tape for screencap purposes, because no VCR would dare chew up Magnum (but just in case, I tested tapes I didn’t care as much about beforehand).

This really is a fantastic machine, and it must have looked swanky as all get-out in mid-1990s entertainment centers. While the design isn’t identical, it actually would compliment my aforementioned ProScan Laserdisc player nicely, if I didn’t already have too many things hooked up in that particular center. I don’t know if I’d take take this deck over some feature-packed models from the mid-to-late-1980s, but this is certainly up there as one of the best 1990s VCRs I’ve ever found while out and about. Personally, it’s probably a tie between this and that Goldstar as my favorite *as far as thrift/second-hand store finds go* (a high-end Sony Hi-Fi VHS VCR from 1990 that I bought online is my best and favorite of the decade, period).

Just for fun, there’s my three latest thrift store VCR acquisitions. The Goldstar I talked out before is on the bottom, this ProScan on top (duh!), and in the middle a fairly decent Toshiba I nevertheless couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to write about. It’s a nice machine, but the real reason for my purchasing it? Jog wheel man, jog wheel.

Adorable.

VCI Home Video – The Creeping Terror (On Betamax, No Less)

 

I love this one. Love love love it. No matter how many times I type “love,” I doubt you’re going to understand just how happy I am to have this awful, awful movie on a format that’s only slightly more obsolete than VHS. I’m jazzed, man.

Why? Because I’m a complete and total sucker for The Creeping Terror. I love this stupid terrible movie beyond what is probably considered acceptable limits of, erm, acceptability…? That kind of fell apart, but suffice it to say, I’m quite fond of the flick. It’s one of the worst movies ever made, and it’s gloriously entertaining because of that.

The Creeping Terror has it all: shoddy black & white footage, limited dialogue but plenty of awkward narration, a star that you won’t buy for a minute as a legitimate star and who doesn’t really do enough to warrant being called a star anyway (but being the director/producer/guy who made this movie happen, naturally he had first dibs on leading man-status), a scientist played by the original Marlboro Man (yes, really), a random lecture on bachelor-hood and married life, a very slow-moving monster that looks to be made of shag carpet, victims that not only lack the ability to run or even walk away from said monster but actually crawl into the thing, a rather rotund man and his grandson Bobby (“Bobbbby!“), and the most awkward, goes-on-for-far-too-long dance party that you’ve ever seen.

It’s one “say what?” moment after another, and thus it’s clearly one of the worst (greatest) things ever committed to film. Fittingly, it was given the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment, but the movie is so, so out there that it’s a trip by itself.

I first saw (and taped!) the film in 1998 on WAOH TV-29, years before I saw the MST3K version, and it was the recording of that broadcast that I was most familiar with for years (rarity of rarities: Unlike most of the stuff I taped, I actually wound up watching it!). My reasons for taping it were two-fold: 1) at that time, any old horror/sci-fi flicks were fair-game for my vicious recordin’ tactics (that is, I’d tape anything and everything possible that fit my preferred criteria), and more importantly, 2) thanks to my beloved Mystery Science Theater 3000 Amazing Colossal Episode Guide, I knew the movie had been featured on the show, and even though it would be a few years before I became familiar with the actual episode, the mere fact that the movie was on the show was enough to make me want it.

That said, despite the extreme oddness of the film, it didn’t really do much for me then. Sure, it was an uber-amateurish, grade-z sci-fi flick, but I had plenty of those in my collection already (albeit few, if any, as inept). And while the MST3K treatment has since become one of my favorites, my first viewing of that episode several years after first seeing The Creeping Terror left me a little cold as well.

It wasn’t until almost 2 years ago, when I came across this thread at the Classic Horror Film Board, that my interest in the film rose to peaks I never thought it would. The thread started way back in 2006, and it’s still going! There’s so much interesting backstory regarding The Creeping Terror that the movie itself is almost (but not quite) overshadowed by it all. And since I stumbled across the thread after it was already well, well underway, it was simply amazing to watch as more and more info about the film was progressively revealed. The contributors to that thread are some of the most knowledgeable and downright cool people I’ve come across online, and the sheer amount of information I’ve learned from not only that thread but from that forum in general is something I’m certainly grateful for. If you don’t know how The Creeping Terror came to be (and I sure didn’t), you owe it to yourself to check the thread out. It’s an absolutely fascinating read.

Indeed, that thread is how I learned of the VCI home video release in the first place. Prior to that, The Creeping Terror is a film I had figured as incredibly public domain. That is, there was endless VHS/DVD releases of it out there, be it standalone or in compilation sets, not unlike The Brain That Wouldn’t Die. I’m not sure how I got that idea in my head, because while there were a few VHS releases, as well as a few DVD compilations nowadays, it turns out The Creeping Terror is not only not in the public domain, it also never had much of a life in the home video market, either. There was apparently a Rhino VHS release in the late-1980s/early-1990s, and of course the MST3K version on both VHS and DVD, but as far as I can ascertain, the VCI release under their “Le Bad Cinema” banner from the early-to-mid-1980s (there’s no video release date anywhere on my copy) was the first. Maybe it wasn’t, but as far as I can tell it was. Either way, in short order the VCI release became one of my “most wanted” videos.

I tend to operate under a “sooner or later I’ll come across it” optimism. Not just with videos, but also with old broadcasts/commercials/etc., electronics, and so on. And time and time again, that optimism and patience has paid off. But, it’s not fool-proof. For example, even though I’ve had a copy for years (two copies, actually), I still haven’t come across the Vestron release of Giorgio Moroder’s Metropolis in person; I had to resort to eBay back in the day (luckily, it’s out on DVD now). Considering VCI’s The Creeping Terror is far, far more rare than that video ever was (Moroder’s Metropolis used to go for big bucks on eBay because it was, at the time, the best restoration of the film, but there were always multiple copies for sale; even though it was out of print, it was really more popular than outright rare), I knew my chances of finding a copy “in the wild” were slim, though certainly not impossible.

Still, when the opportunity to pick up the Beta version of the VCI release presented itself (and I had no idea there was a Beta release beforehand, though given the rough time frame of release, it makes sense), I jumped at it. I paid more than I really would have liked; the final total was akin to what rarer tapes were going for back in the good ol’ days (ha!) of late-1990s eBay. I’ve spent less on (some) used tape lots, but whatever. Needless to say, I was successful, as the picture above can attest.

I love the cover art. I mean, just look at it up there! It’s 1980s in all the best ways. I dig the hand drawn artwork of the era, and the cover of this particular video fits in perfectly: It’s simple, but perfect for this type of film. Though I’ll admit the absence of “The” in the title irritates me. It’s The Creeping Terror, not Creeping Terror! I got the same way with Goodtimes’ 35th anniversary release of The Blob back in the day; the cover listed it simply as Blob, which is even more awkward than Creeping Terror.

It appears my copy has some staining to the box, mostly visible on the back. I pray it was only someones drink and not something more sinister. It doesn’t smell like anything troubling, or anything at all really, which is always a good sign. Yeah, I smelled the thing. Could I be any weirder?

The description on the back is adequate enough, but not exactly spot-on. None of the film takes place in the Rocky Mountains; it’s set in “Angel County,” California. And while it’s true that a ’57 Ford (I guess it’s a ’57 Ford, anyway) does indeed kill one of the monsters (there are two of ’em), they are certainly not immune to grenades; immediately before the Ford takes the one monster out, the other one is killed by a hand grenade thrown by the illustrious “Colonel Caldwell.”

Still, you can’t fault them for a few mistakes. This is the kind of film where, without intense concentration, it would be easy to let your mind wander and your eyes glaze over. Besides, who would really want or need a deeper-than-necessary knowledge of the film (besides me, I mean)?

Also, the copyright date for the film is almost always listed as 1964, as demonstrated on the back of this box. It was made around that time, but another interesting thing I learned from that aforementioned thread is that it’s almost positive that this film was never actually released theatrically! It seems the public never saw the film until it was licensed for TV showings sometime in the 1970s! And that’s really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the wonderfully bizarre backstory of the film.

There were a number of movies in VCI’s “Le Bad Cinema” line. It was probably a smart move to tag them as such, because at least as far as The Creeping Terror goes, you’re almost certainly gonna irk a lot of people if you advertise it as a ‘straight’ sci-fi/horror movie. No one is going to buy this as a ‘real’ film, and if by some chance they did, those hopes and dreams would be crushed as soon as the alien craft landing on Earth is shown as (and I’m not kidding here) blurred car headlights and stock footage of a rocket blasting off ran in reverse. Rather than pretend this is something “legit,” it was a wise choice to play up the real strengths of the flick (such as they are).

There’s the tape itself, with a fairly cheap identification label affixed to it. So now you know. Really, what more can I say about it?

Since I have several Betamax VCRs, there’s never an issue of playing Beta tapes (duh!), but I generally prefer VHS (due to convenience plus it being the format I grew up with and still predominantly use for this sorta thing). As fond as I am of the format, given the choice I probably would have went with a VHS copy over Beta. There is a major benefit to having this on Beta, however: higher quality video (yes, people still argue about this, but Betamax does look superior to my eyes). Granted, there’s only so much that can be done with The Creeping Terror; even a pristine 1st generation film print is probably going to look shoddy to an extent, because it’s just a shoddy film in general (that’s why people love it!).

Even with the limited number of releases out there, there are worse looking versions. In fact, VCI’s version looks pretty darn good, all things considered. Sure, there’s plenty of film scratches and dust, some scenes are too dark, and some are too light, but the image itself is relatively sharp. I mean, I can actually read the copyright notice in the opening credits; a minor miracle? I really was able to pick out little details in this version that I couldn’t in others, small victory that may be.

From my very first viewing, I remember being mildly surprised that they used what appears to be the design from the opening credits of The Blob for the credits of this movie. Or maybe they technically didn’t and it just looks insanely close.

That’s the title screen up above, by the way. You’ll get a better idea of this momentarily, but the superior sharpness of this particular print was evident as soon as those wondrous words that make up the name of this movie popped on-screen.

You have no idea what a pain it was trying to get a decent screenshot of the titular character, and I still don’t think I was all that successful. I wanted an all-encompassing shot that would give those unfamiliar with the film an idea of just how goofy the monster is, but the thing is always moving around whilst surrounded by trees and shrubbery and whatnot. Plus, the screen often being on the dark side only made things more difficult for your Northeast Ohio Video Idiot Hunter. Even the back of the video box had trouble with this (scroll back up and see if y’all don’t believe me). Rest assured, it’s a giant shaggy-carpet monster with hoses of some sort protruding from its head. It looks really bad (which of course means it’s awesome). The mostly-obscured illustration on the front cover looks better than the actual in-movie monster (dull surprise, I know).

Much has been made of the “worst movie ever,” and from the screencaps of the monster alone it’s easy to see why The Creeping Terror frequently makes those lists, which I don’t disagree with. It is without a doubt one of the most inept movies ever made; I mean, even Manos: The Hands of Fate was in color and had real continuous dialogue (even if it was dubbed in later, not unlike the small bits of actual speech found in this film), and as silly as Torgo was/is, he’s infinitely more believable than the slow-moving title character of The Creeping Terror. And, hollow victory, The Creeping Terror is better than the similarly-narrated and similarly-hated The Beast Of Yucca Flats in my eyes. Kind of a wash, but whatever.

Actually, for as bad as it is, I’ve seen other movies that may technically be better but I’ve enjoyed far, far less. I’ve seen early-1970s European horror films that have actually left me depressed. The Creeping Terror, though? It’s too goofy to take even remotely seriously.

Though even I’ll admit that the goofiness can’t carry the entire movie. Despite what VCI says on the box, this movie only runs some 76 minutes, and there are long stretches where the monster eats person after person and/or stretches where there is no speech or narration, only silly music, which for all intents and purposes turns this into a silent movie. What I’m saying is the wackiness only goes so far before things become a little tiresome. Still, there’s obviously enough “huh?!” moments to save the whole thing (from a pure entertainment standpoint, at least). Otherwise, I wouldn’t love the flick as much as I do.

Just for the fun of it, here’s some comparison screenshots between my Betamax copy and the version I recorded off of WAOH TV-29 way back in 1998. Of course, since my Betamax copy is a commercially-released version recorded in the high-quality BII mode and the one I taped back in ’98 was recorded some 16 years ago in low-quality SLP off an over-the-air broadcast on a low-power independent station and on a good-but-not-great blank tape, there’s really no direct comparison between the two versions, but hey, let me do this. It brings me joy, and don’t I deserve some of that in my life?

(For all of these, Beta’s on the left, ’98 recording’s on the right. Got it? Good.)

Remember that time I provided a screencap of the title screen? Here it is again, only twice-over. As the comparison demonstrates, the WAOH broadcast is always much grayer than the Beta. Furthermore, the sharpness of the Beta version is particularly evident here.

This is our “hero,” the “star” Vic Savage, aka A.J. Nelson, who is responsible for the film. Vic Savage is a pseudonym, y’see? Does our leading man inspire confidence in his Creeping Terror-stopping abilities? I’ll let you be the judge.

This is from the infamous “Bobby!” scene, in which the grandfather you’re seeing above goes searching for his grandson by stumbling about and constantly shouting “Bobby!” in the most annoying manner possible. Spoiler alert: They both get eated.

I’m not sure which is more infamous, the aforementioned “Bobby!” or this “Community Dance Hall” scene, in which we’re shown several minutes worth of repetitive shots of people badly dancing while the same tune plays over and over and over. Spoiler alert: They all get eated.

Man, The Creeping Terror on Betamax. I can’t quite place my finger on why, but it just seems so right. I’ll venture a guess that this was the only release of the movie on the format. Quite a leap, huh?

In lieu of the film as-is, less adventurous souls may opt to hunt down the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment on DVD, or VHS if one was so inclined. But even with Mike & The Bots, the film is pretty out there. ‘Course, if you’re feeling brave, the uncut version is also available on DVD, in a number of various multi-movie compilartions. As far as DVD goes though, your best option really is to hunt down the MST3K version, which, despite featuring the ever-annoying double-sided disc, has both their episode and the uncut movie.

As for me, I’ve got the MST3K version (on VHS and DVD), I’ve got the uncut version in a 12-movie DVD set, I’ve got my old WAOH recording, and now I’ve got this swanky VCI Betamax copy, which has immediately become a treasured part of my collection.

That’s a lotta The Creeping Terror, far more than should be allowed.

Cool recommended readins:

The Classic Horror Film Board Thread

Jabootu’s Bad Movie Dimension Review

The IMDb Page

Satellite News’ Mystery Science Theater 3000 Episode Guide Page

Blockbuster-Branded Batman & Robin VHS (1998)

I get excited over the weirdest stuff. For instance, take this thrift-store-find from a few nights ago; I was legit stoked to come across it. Maybe it’s because I’m a Batman Batfan and totally remember the massive hype (and even more massive letdown) that was the summer 1997 release of this movie. Maybe it’s because I miss the all-but-dead video rental store days (and have been looking for something to pay tribute, albeit belated, to the now-gone Blockbuster). Or, maybe it’s simply because I already had a Blockbuster-branded copy of Batman Forever and in my weird little world this compliments it nicely.

Aw, who am I kidding? It’s all of those. And more?

Despite the fact the movie is one of the worst things ever, I have an inexplicable fondness for the film. Well, not really for the film per se. More for the time period and where it falls in my lifetime. Going further into all that would be a huge digression, so let me stay kinda on track here. Batman & Robin: I remember the release, I remember (and sampled) the Taco Bell tie-in promotion, and I remember the revelation that it apparently made theater-goers cry. I wouldn’t know, though; we tried to go see it, but the only available-to-us showing was sold out, so we settled for, I’m pretty sure, Men In Black.

(I’ve kinda made up for not seeing it in theaters, not that it matters, though: this is my actually my second copy of the film on VHS, and I even have the stupid thing on DVD and freakin’ Laserdisc. Now if I can just find a Betamax copy, my collection will be complete*.)

Despite there being other Batman movies released to theaters in the 1990s, Batman & Robin feels the most overtly 1990s-ish to me. No doubt that’s due to my memories of that summer of ’97. At any rate, the fact remains that I have a copy of Batman & Robin with Blockbuster stickers slapped on it, and on the freakin’ VHS format to boot. Thus, it goes without saying that I am currently experiencing an all-encompassing 90s rush that’s threatening to drive me straight-up nutz; it’s taking every ounce of my energy to refrain from playing a Smash Mouth CD** whilst watching an episode of Boy Meets World. That’s what everyone was doing in the late-1990s, right?

I’ve seen the film, and it lives up (or is it down?) to the reputation it has acquired. It is not a good flick. Yeah, I know, big revelation. That said, I find it more gloriously entertaining than the higher-regarded Batman Forever, even if that entertainment is only derived from how jaw-dropping bad it is. I cannot believe this was a major Hollywood production. But, look at the damn tape. I don’t care what you say, everything about it is 1997 in a nutshell. Don’t ask me to explain, because I can’t (and considering the movie can and probably has been used as a torture device, maybe that’s a good thing).

The pic above is worth clicking on for a super-sized version, because the description on the back is kinda out there (yes, I know the Blockbuster sticker obscures some of it). My favorite part is the mention of “New very special effects…“, as if these special effects are substantially more special than your usual , run-of-the-mill special effects. I love this tape.

Also, “From our Batfamily to yours“? That’s adorable Give me a break.

According to Amazon, the VHS was originally released on October 21, 1997. Upon first finding this tape and seeing that January 6, 1998 date printed on the sticker, my initial thought was “so soon after release?” But, I figure, there were probably plenty of copies put up for rental following the release date, then once the “fervor” died down, nearly as many put out for sale. Plus Christmas sales, plus johnny-come-latelys, etc., and well, 1/6/98 actually seems kinda late to the game. Also, 1/6/98 was when this copy was presumably put out for sale, it’s not a sale date. So who knows when Blockbuster finally unloaded this burden video. Anyway, it was put out for sale in ’98, which is why the title of this post is dated “1998” and not the probably-more-accurate “1997.”

My aforementioned copy of Blockbuster-Batman Forever features all of the same branding, except it also features a cute little sticker on the front proclaiming the low, low bargain price of only $4.99. Batman & Robin features no such pricing identification, and the sticker on the back, as evidenced by the photo above, is silent on the matter. I don’t know what “*” means in regards to what some unlucky video purchaser paid, but I assume it meant “cheap.”

Oh now that’s just precious. Remember the days when Blockbuster was the go-to place for not only the hot new movie hits, but all of your entertainment needs? I’m pretty sure we rented more video games there than we ever did movies. Nevertheless, the sticker brings back serious memories.

Back in the late-90s when I started doing the whole Ebay thang, there were some VHS videos that were going for what we I call “the mighty dollars.” DVD hadn’t quite taken off yet, and thus VHS was still the predominant format. That market would eventually drop hardcore, but at the time, if you had a copy of the M*A*S*H series finale or Giorgio Moroder’s restoration of Metropolis on VHS (or even better, Laserdisc), and they were in halfway decent shape, you stood to make a good chunk of money fast. Well, collectors being collectors, rental store stickers such as the ones on this tape were seen as detriments. Not that I’m arguing with that; if you’re spending $40-$50 for a VHS, preferably it should be in the best shape possible. I don’t recall ever being too bothered as to whether a tape had stickers/fading/etc. or not, as long as I got what I was going after, but that sort of thing could and did affect prices for other collectors.

Nowadays, I really don’t mind finding these kinds of markings on tapes (obviously). They add a nice bit of historical value. I’ve got an ancient VHS copy of Jaws with Fotomat stickers all over it, and I actually care more about those stickers and the earlier release date than I do the movie (I know, I know, it’s a classic, but I just don’t like Jaws nor any of the sequels nor any of the countless rip-offs it spawned). This copy of Batman & Robin could never be described as “mint” or “fresh outta da shrinkwrap,” but since copies are plentiful and generally worthless (for so, so many reasons), these Blockbuster stickers add a whole different dimension to the thing, one that many may tend to overlook.

Plus, there’s a lot of people that would claim that the Blockbuster stickers on this thing are worth more than the movie itself. I’m not gonna argue that, either; Batman & Robin is really bad.

To be completely and totally honest, and this shows just how friggin’ strange I am, I’ve specifically been looking for a copy of Batman & Robin just like this to go with that previously-mentioned Batman Forever, if only because they represent the 1990s rental store period so well. Since copies of the film are plentiful and Blockbuster stores were plentiful, I’m kinda surprised it took me as long as it did to actually come across one. Victory is mine?

There it is, a Blockbuster-branded copy of Batman & Robin, from back when people relied on video rental stores and before the internet became so widespread that it went and spoiled everything for movie studios/tape manufacturers that were hoping against hope that potential-purchasers hadn’t heard just how unrelentingly bad a movie was/is.

‘Course, I’ve just written over a thousand words about a film and the VHS release of said film that, for all intents and purposes, isn’t really worth it. This begs the question: the hell’s wrong with me?

(And hey, look, the last owner was indeed a friend and rewound when he or she reached the end! Thanks, Blockbuster!)

* = I know full well there’s not a Betamax release of Batman And Robin, settle down.

** = While I do indeed have an extensive music collection, I don’t actually own anything by Smash Mouth.

An Interview With Larry Manetti

By now, it’s obvious what a huge fan of Magnum, P.I. I am. The show has been such a big part of my life, or at least my TV-viewing life, for so many years that I naturally take a huge interest in anything having to do with the show. It’s why I spent the mighty dollars on a Betamax tape lot to get a copy of the original broadcast of the series finale, and it’s why my mind was completely and continuously blown when I conversed via email with one of the stars of the series, Larry Manetti. Rick himself! Mr. Manetti was gracious enough to grant me an interview, and needless to say, I’m stoked. I can’t thank him enough for the honor.

Of course, Mr. Manetti has been involved with a lot more than just Magnum. He was Robert Conrad’s co-star on Black Sheep Squadron (aka Baa Baa Black Sheep,) he’s appeared in numerous movies and television shows, and he even has a recurring role on CBS’ Hawaii Five-0 remake, as Nicky “The Kid” Demarco. Just take a look at his IMDb page! Pretty darned impressive!

He’s also an author:  I have been the proud owner of his Aloha Magnum book for years (that’s my slightly wrinkled copy above,) in which he recounts his career, including his time on Magnum, his co-stars, and even some recipes! Believe me when I say it’s a phenomenal read. I mean, sure, I’m a fan of Larry and Magnum, P.I., but even beyond that, it’s just a genuinely great book. I think I’d love it even if I wasn’t a fan. And to be honest, this interview is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg; in order to get a look at more of his career than just one facet, inevitably (and I knew this going in) I wound up asking some questions covered much more in-depth in his book. To get the “whole story,” you really gotta read it. Order it here, you won’t regret it! In fact, check out all of Larry’s terrific official website.

With all that said, let’s get down to business! Here now is my interview with actor Larry Manetti…

***********

Me: What jobs did you hold before becoming an actor?

LM: Selling Encyclopedia Britannica door-to-door. Selling cars and a tile a salesman.

Me: When did you first decide you wanted to go into acting?

LM: After I did a United Airlines commercial.

Me: What can you tell us about your earliest TV work? What was it like getting there, and what did you think when you finally got there?

LM: After my first show, I called my Dad and said, “I did it, I’m in the movies!”

Me: Was there ever a time when you were just completely fed up with the acting business and ready to throw in the towel, before deciding otherwise?

LM: Never.

Me: You had several appearances on Emergency! What can you tell us about working on that show?

LM: Walking on eggs, it was the very beginning.

Me: You had a role in an episode of The Rockford Files [1979’s “Nice Guys Finish Dead”] that co-starred Tom Selleck. Was that your first time working with him? What was it like working with the late James Garner?

LM: First time I met Tom Selleck and working with James Garner was like working with my Dad. Great guy!

Me: That role on Rockford lead to your casting on Magnum?

LM: Yes.

Me: Did you have any idea that Magnum would become as popular and iconic as it was/is?

LM: Not a clue.

Me: There was a Magnum, P.I. reunion of sorts on NBC’s Las Vegas back in 2007, featuring you, Tom Selleck and Roger E. Mosley. How did that come about?

LM: Selleck’s show was in trouble and they asked TC and Rick to pump it up!

Me: Any thoughts on the long-rumored Magnum movie?

LM: It’s been discussed many times but to no avail. Tom would do a 2-hour television movie with the original cast if NBC took a brain pill!

Me: How often do you see/speak to your Magnum co-stars nowadays?

LM: At least once a month, and I do autograph shows in the USA and Germany.

Me: How often do you see/speak to your Black Sheep Squadron co-Star Robert Conrad nowadays?

LM: All the time. We both do radio shows on CRNTALK.COM.

Me: Do you have any particularly favorite roles?

LM: I love each and every TV and movie role I made. Only because God gave me the chance to become a successful actor.

Me: You guested in a 1993 episode of Quantum Leap [“A Tale Of Two Sweeties”]; What was it like being on the set of another Donald P. Bellisario show?

LM: I kept looking at Dean Stockwell. Tough show but it came out terrific!

Me: What can you tell us about your recurring role as Nicky “The Kid” Demarco on CBS’ Hawaii Five-0 remake? Will you be back next season?

LM: I’ll be back till the show ends. It’s a great cast! Good to be back in paradise and Peter Lenkov, the producer, is the best! He was responsible for writing “Nicky.”

Me: What do you think about TV nowadays? Any favorite shows?

LM: Think it’s great! There are several shows I love, Castle, Law and Order, New Detective.

Me: Any other projects you’re currently working on?

LM: Producing 2 TV mini-series: The Ronald Reagan Story and Double Cross: The Story of The Chicago Mob.

Me: Besides acting, what are your passions?

LM: Smoking cigars and collecting knives.

Me: Anything you’d like to say to your many fans out there?

LM: Whatever it is in your life, go for it. If you want it bad enough it will happen. Love to everyone and thanks for you loyalty and support! Don’t forget my book, ALOHA MAGNUM!

***********

Does it get any cooler than Larry Manetti? No way does it any cooler than Larry Manetti. Once again, I extend my thanks to Mr. Manetti for not only granting me this interview, but also for all of the entertainment he’s provided over the years. He is, as we in the hepcat profession say, “the man.”

Visit Larry’s official website here and be sure to check out his book, Aloha Magnum. It really is a phenomenal read, and anyone interested in Larry, Magnum, P.I., 1980’s TV, TV in general, or just plain entertaining reading owe it to themselves to pick up a copy, which can be ordered direct from Larry here.

There I am, cool readins a cool book. (Admittedly, my attire isn’t very Magnum-esque, but it was the only semi-tropical clothing I had immediately available. I guess my desperate lack of usable aloha shirts is pretty obvious, huh? Such are the perils of living in Northeast Ohio, I guess…)

Mystery Science Theater 3000’s Retro TV Debut This Past Weekend (Also: The Musings Of A Lifelong MSTie On His Early Fandom.)

*Standby for shameless gushing.*

This past weekend, Mystery Science Theater 3000 made its Retro TV debut. I don’t want to say that all is now right with the world, but there’s little doubt that it’s just a little bit better place to live nevertheless.

I talked about this right after the announcement that MST3K reruns would be returning to TV via the Retro TV network, which in Northeast Ohio, is WAOH TV-29 in Akron, WAX TV-35 in Cleveland (the station formerly known as “The Cat.”) I’ve been counting the days (sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively) to July 5, and now that the “big event” (as I have deemed it) has occurred, well, I’m ecstatic. Lemme ‘splain a bit…

Mystery Science Theater 3000. The show with the robots and the theater seats and the so much ripping on the bad movies. I could go into more specific details, but for the sake of whatever, let’s condense the summation to this: A guy and his two robots are stuck in outer space and forced to watch terrible movies as part of a mind-monitoring experiment, ostensibly in the hopes of ultimately ruling the world with “the worst movie ever made.”  Their only defense? Mocking (or “riffing”) the movies mercilessly.

Of all the shows I love or have loved, of all the shows I am or was an admitted fanatic of, in my own bizarre little world of personal mythologies, MST3K is and always be the “big one.” So much of what makes me, well, me started with MST3K. If I’m being honest with myself, perhaps not so much my initial fascination with movies or my need to continuously collect more of them; that had begun about a year before I discovered MST3K. But, there is little doubt that MST3K launched that fascination into the stratosphere (figuratively speaking, I mean; using the term in a literal sense would probably mean death or at least serious maiming on my part). After MST3K had the hooks in me, I was never the same.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 first started at a local TV station in Minneapolis in 1988, went national in 1989 on what would eventually become Comedy Central, and moved to the Sci-Fi Channel in 1997, which is where I, at 10/11 years old, came in. Since I had a growing interest in old horror and sci-fi films already, it stands to reason that I was far more familiar with the Sci-Fi Channel than I was Comedy Central. When the initial promos proclaiming the series was moving to the channel began airing, I was already tuned into Sci-Fi. Indeed, prior to those advertisements, I was wholly unfamiliar with MST3K. I may have passed it while channel surfing, but that would have been the extent of my familiarity with the show.

An added bonus following my discovery of MST3K was that I began actively searching out the oddball titles, the weird, forgotten flicks, even films that evoked a certain time period I wasn’t around for (I’m looking at you, downbeat 1970’s movies! Relay my well-wishes to Keenan Wynn!) BUT, that was just a side-effect of MST3K fandom. The real benefit of becoming a fan was that it absolutely introduced me to a world of sharper, funnier comedy. It became (and remains) my first, biggest, and longest-lasting TV obsession.

Readers of this sad blog will no doubt have seen my numerous long, blabbering soliloquies of love posts regarding our Northeast Ohio movie hosts: Ghoulardi, Hoolihan & Big Chuck & Lil’ John, The Ghoul, Son Of Ghoul, Superhost, and so on and so on. The fact of the matter is that my love of them initially began with MST3K, which as previously mentioned isn’t even a local product. I remember Superhost from his waning days on WUAB TV-43, I had caught Big Chuck & Lil’ John a few times before & during 1997 (and I certainly knew them as local personalities from all their local endorsements and whatnot) and I was probably vaguely aware of Ghoulardi, But MST3K was really the genesis of my whole movie-hosting fascination (even if I don’t necessarily consider MST3K quite the same thing, though I’d be hard-pressed to explain why exactly I don’t.) After MST3K, there was a new appreciation for this sort of thing, which in turn lead to fandom for, respectively, Son Of Ghoul and The Ghoul, which continues to this day (and at points has reached the same fevered heights.)

Unlike some, I didn’t quite get hooked on MST3K right away; rather, it was kind of slow burn, a gradually building fandom. Initially, I was more interested in the movies, and the running commentary courtesy of the silhouettes at the bottom of the screen was an amusing bonus. But, the more I watched the show, the more I found myself digging it for more than just the featured movie of a given episode, though in all honesty the movie still did, and does, have a lot to do with how a particular episode “strikes” me (again, figuratively speaking. I’d hate to think of an episode physically punching me in the face!) The first half of the initial Sci-Fi season (in actuality the show’s 8th season on national TV, though finer points such as that were unbeknownst to me at the time) featured black & white films from the Universal library. That was the “slow burn” period of my fandom. Some of the movies I liked (The Deadly Mantis), others left me kinda cold (The Undead).

It wasn’t until the spring/summer of 1997 that things hit the fan for me (figuratively I mean, because…aw forget it, I’m tired of that gag.) It began with the May 31st airing of The Giant Spider Invasion, which I tuned into due to my burgeoning but not-quite-solidified fanaticism. After the initial shock of discovering that they were even allowed to run color movies wore off (remember, I was 11 years old, I had no real prior knowledge of the series, and in general never really knew what the hell I was talking about anyway,) things clicked into place, the stars aligned, and I finally, completely “got it.”

The next week, MST3K was absolutely appointment television for me. The movie was Parts; The Clonus Horror, and the fire from the previous week turned into a full-out inferno. There was no turning back now. I was hooked, absolutely, and I’ve remained hooked ever since. Was it The Giant Spider Invasion episode or the Parts: The Clonus Horror episode that’s really responsible for turning me into a full-blown MSTie? It could go either way, and I tend to go back and forth. Spider was first, but Clonus had the bigger effect and is the episode that I hold more memories for and really feels more like the first. Plus, I think Parts: The Clonus Horror is a genuinely interesting, though not without faults, film. I guess in the end it doesn’t really matter.

All throughout the rest of summer 1997, I watched Mystery Science Theater 3000 every chance I got, but alas, my ability to actually view the show was temporarily halted. At the time, the Sci-Fi Channel was a premium cable channel. I guess “premium” is the right term for it. You needed the cable box to pick the channel up, anyway. At the end of summer ’97, Dad decided he no longer wanted to pay for said cable box, and considering I was only 11 years old, had little say in the matter. So, out went the cable box, and with it, access to my favorite show. I had a few episodes recorded, I was able to get a far-away Aunt with Sci-Fi-access to tape a few more for me, and several episodes had been released on VHS by Rhino by that point, so I wasn’t completely Bot-deprived, but nevertheless, I had no *ordinary* access to my show, and this, needless to say, troubled me greatly.

Over the next several years, more and more episodes were made available on VHS and later DVD, I discovered the numerous tape-trading sites out in internet land, and even Sci-Fi joined the basic cable line-up, which allowed me to walk over to a much-nearer Aunt’s house to record episodes on Saturday mornings, something I took advantage of until January 31st 2004, when the final MST3K (The Screaming Skull) aired on Sci-Fi and thus TV in general…until now.

So, maybe now you’ve got some understanding as to why I treated the show’s Retro TV debut to something akin to the Super Bowl. I’m sure many people, fellow MSTies included, probably saw it as something neat but not necessary. Not me, though. It wasn’t for lack of MST3K, either; I’ve got a lot of episodes, and I think the majority of the series has been officially released on DVD by this point. Unlike 1997 me, I really have no shortage of the show.

No, my excitement stems from the fact that, frankly, I think a show as great as Mystery Science Theater 3000 needs to be on ‘real’ TV. Pristine DVD copies are terrific, of course, but there’s just something about knowing it’s out there, being broadcast over the airwaves. Furthermore, as mentioned waaaay at the top of this post, our Retro TV affiliate is WAOH/WAX. This is the same station that Son Of Ghoul airs on! After my ability to watch MST3K ended with the summer of ’97, I desperately searched for something like it to fill the void, which eventually lead to my discovering Son Of Ghoul. It wasn’t a “well, I guess it’s good enough” replacement either; SOG provided a somewhat different but nevertheless intensely fanatical, erm, fandom in me that continues to this day. Both shows airing on the same station is something I could have only dreamt of so many years ago, and the fact that it is now happening is, I don’t know, poetic justice? That doesn’t apply here at all, does it? It’s fitting to me, is what I’m tryin’ to say.

Plus, I haven’t been able to watch MST3K over the air in “real time” since 1-31-2004, and not in my own home since that summer of 1997. So, that’s nice.

Following the initial announcement, my fervor was further stoked with a “coming soon” promo on Retro TV, which began airing soon after. It kept me more excited than any 10-second promo that consisted of a more-or-less static image and some sound bytes has a right to. More importantly, the fact it was airing several months in advance showed (to me, at least) that Retro TV was going to go the extra mile for the show. The commercial for Rifftrax’s live Sharknado only bolstered that feeling; if it weren’t for MST3K’s impending Retro TV arrival, I just couldn’t see that promo airing on the station otherwise.

Further proof that Retro TV was going to treat MST3K as something special was the later announcement that it would be airing twice on the weekends: Saturday at 8 PM EST, with an encore on Sundays at 5 PM EST.

This, however, presented a problem for your Northeast Ohio Video Hunter: Son Of Ghoul airs every Saturday from 7 PM to 9 PM. Usually, whatever was on Retro TV at 9 PM wouldn’t be preempted by local programming, so I figured we’d get at the very least one hour of MST3K before Off Beat Cinema at 10 PM. Prior to the 8 PM announcement, I had been presuming that MST3K wouldn’t be replacing the Saturday Off Beat Cinema, which in turn had replaced Wolfman Mac’s Chiller Drive-In (the normal Sunday Off Beat Cinema has continued before and since.)

Oddly enough, for as fanatic as I can be about this sort of thing, if the last hour of MST3K following SOG was all we Northeast Ohioans were going to get, I actually could have lived with that. I wouldn’t have preferred that situation, but some is better than none. And as it turned out, the un-preempted last hour after SOG is exactly what happened. Something about it just seemed so right for me: The show that MST3K lead me to, followed by the show that lead me to it…or something like that. It’s an entertaining three hours, is what I’m getting at.

Luckily, the Sunday 5 PM encore saved things for me, as that aired complete and uninterrupted. I was seriously concerned that infomercials would take MST3K’s place, but come Sunday, all was well.

The fact that MST3K was coming back to TV, even if only through reruns (running the gamut of the entire national run of the series, seasons 1-10,) was such a source of excitement for me that the actual episode that was premiering became sort of an afterthought…

Retro TV kicked things off with the third episode of the first season, the 1942 PRC cheapie The Mad Monster. It’s a mega-low budget werewolf film, and needless to say, it ain’t very good (a bad movie on this show?! Go figure!) Here’s the deal with the first season: like any good show, there was a period of groove-finding. That is, it’s a hit-or-miss episode at best. I’m not a big fan of the first season anyway; I mean, sure, I generally like it, but after seeing the heights the show reached in the following seasons, it can be tough to go backwards. Add to that an installment of the Radar Men From The Moon serial they covered, which I’ve traditionally been pretty lukewarm at best on, and well, it’s a case where you’ve really got to look at the bigger picture.

Keep in mind, I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth; I understand Retro TV logically has to start at the beginning, and it’s probably better to get these weaker episodes out of the way first rather than throwing them in the middle of a run of strong episodes, and rest assured, the vast majority of the Retro TV line-up is downright killer (the list has been modified a bit since the initial announcement. You can read the current retro TV package courtesy of Satellite News here.)

It’s also easy to forget in this day and age of rampant DVD releases and/or otherwise easy access, that for years the season one episodes were scarce. At a certain point, as per request of The Brains (the affectionate MSTie name for the showrunners) the early episodes just weren’t shown on Comedy Central. Eventually some were ran again, but bottom line is that they were greatly downplayed in comparison to episodes from the rest of the series. SO, the fact that some of them (only two at the moment – The Corpse Vanishes is the next episode coming up before they head, briefly, into season two) are running at all, well, they still have that “hey these are kinda rare!” aura, even if they’re really not anymore. I wasn’t even watching the show during the Comedy Central days, and they still sort of feel that way to me.

My main concern here is that someone that has heard of MST3K and may be familiar with the Rifftrax/Cinematic Titanic projects will tune in, not be impressed, and come away thinking the show is wildly overrated. Give it a few weeks guys! Things get good with season two and great with season three on up! Don’t judge until you’ve seen Pod People!

To the episode’s credit, despite my general feelings toward the season (particularly the earlier half of the season,) I did find myself laughing or at least chuckling more than I expected to. I wouldn’t say any part of the episodes amounts to “home run” status, but if nothing else, it’s enjoyable.

And there are a few nice bits, host segment-wise. The bit where Tom Servo hits on a food processor is particularly memorable, at least as far as the first season is concerned (it’s also a remake of a skit originally done at KTMA.) The show got much better in following seasons, but there are always moments, always the flashes of brilliance, that made MST3K so, erm, brilliant.

From previous experience, I knew that our feed of Retro TV isn’t always the clearest. Not compared to the local broadcasting that airs on the channel, and certainly not compared to things broadcast on most other stations, and that holds true for MST3K in Northeast Ohio. It’s really my biggest and only actual complaint about being able to watch my favorite show on ‘real’ TV again. Even then, it’s a fairly minor quibble. That said, when I tuned in following SOG on Saturday night, initially I couldn’t tell if they were even playing MST3K. The quality was so dark (which wasn’t helped by the terrible print of the movie in the first place) that I wasn’t sure until I heard the riffs being thrown at the film. When things are light onscreen, it’s not so bad, but for large stretches of the episode, it was difficult, even impossible, to see the theater seats (see above.)

Those were my observations at least, and mileage may vary in other markets or even elsewhere in Northeast Ohio. But, at the end of the day, none of that really changes the fact that it feels damn good to see images like the one above playing on my TV screen. Mystery Science Theater 3000 is back on the air, where it should be. And for me, I can watch it on the same station as Son Of Ghoul. You have no idea how beyond cool I find that. Most of the episodes being broadcast feature movies in the public domain, so I hold no illusions of some of my all-time favorites such as Agent For H.A.R.M. or the aforementioned Parts: The Clonus Horror eventually showing up.

But that’s okay. I’ll watch this stuff endlessly no matter what they air, because I love the show just that much. I guess when it comes right down to it, I’m not that far removed from my 11 year old self, watching the show all throughout that summer 17 years ago.

“Gee, that was a swell movie!” Wait, wrong show.

GoldStar GHV-8500M Hi-Fi VHS VCR

I found this absolutely terrific VCR at the State Road Goodwill two days ago. It’s been awhile since I’ve had a really good VCR/electronics find, at least one worth writing about, but boy, I fell in love with this one the instant I laid eyes on it. There was some random guy in the general vicinity of it when I first spotted the beast, and your Northeast Ohio Video Hunter was indeed prepared to do some violent shovin’ if it came to it. It didn’t, though. It never does.

It’s a GoldStar GHV-8500M Hi-Fi VHS VCR, complete with cool flip-front door to protect the precious insides. There doesn’t seem to be a lot about this particular model online. A Northeast Ohio Video Hunter exclusive?! Bonus cool winnins?!?! I’m not pathetic enough to believe THAT, but still, it doesn’t appear that this is an especially well-remembered model.

The sad fact of the matter is I just don’t have many GoldStar products. As far as VCRs go, most of the GoldStars I come across are newer, cheaper-looking models, and thus are quickly passed up in lieu of other things more befitting my increasingly limited funds. This one though, it just looks classy. I can’t find a date on it anywhere, and online searches turned up only a kinda vague 1990-1991, but the style of it looks early-1990’s to me. I want to guess 1993, because the flip-front door (which is really what attracted this thing to me in the first place) reminds me of the last Betamax ever released in the U.S., the SL-HF2000. Not exact, of course, and nowhere near as cool, but reminiscent nevertheless.

Anyway, my 1993 guesstimate isn’t that far off from 1990-1991. It’s from somewhere around there, at least.

Boy this thing is slick. It absolutely seems like a higher-end model to me. It’s Hi-Fi, it’s got the cool flippy door, and it’s got extra RCA jacks in the front. SIGNS O’ QUALITY, MAN. The number of options found inside the flip-door isn’t the most extensive ever seen on a VCR, but the few found here is still more than many other units from the same time period (in which you’ll have the standard power-play-rewind-fast forward-pause-eject buttons, the channel select buttons, and not a whole lot else.)

There’s the back of the unit. More RCA jacks. Helpful power cord. So now you know. See, GHV-8500M. Did you think I was lying? I wasn’t.

The side of the unit, featuring some slick an’ stylish contours. So now you know. The molding on the side ultimately doesn’t mean anything, of course, but it does give the underlying impression that this model is “somethin’ special,” I s’pose.

I absolutely love the fact it has a digital read-out of the audio levels. More evidence it may have been a higher-end unit. The cheapo models I’ve come across don’t have anything even close to that sort of thing. Usually, when I come across VCRs with this feature, the audio levels are found in the form of LEDs. I think I prefer them in the classic green and red LED form, but that’s no knock on the digital version found here.

Luck o’ the Irish, it works! When I tried the unit out in Goodwill, sans any kind of picture obviously, it seemed that it worked fine except that it acted a little wonky when rewinding. At only $5, I gladly took the chance, because as previously stated, I really like this thing. But now that I’ve had the sucker hooked up, I can see that it was just reacting to the old-school memory counter hitting 0000. I really, really don’t like this type of counter; my feelings towards this style falls somewhere between annoyance and outright rage. I didn’t think anyone was even still using that system by the early-90’s, but hey, there it is. It’s probably the only thing about this VCR I don’t like, but since it’s not like I’ll be using this thing 24/7, it’s not too big of a deal.

Speaking of the counter, I can’t get any kind of related-display to show up on the VCR itself. I’m thinking this was a feature only accessed via the original remote. Since the original remote did not come with this unit, it’s a feature seemingly forever barred to me.

One more thing: when you insert a tape, the VCR practically vacuums it in. This isn’t a fault with the unit, it’s clearly how it was designed to handle tapes, and just like the superfluous molding on the side, it makes you feel like you’re going first-class.

From start to finish, this is a slick unit; it must have displayed terrifically in the home entertainment centers of the early-1990’s. It has just enough late-80’s/early-90’s style to look, erm, stylish, but still fairly simple overall without going the full route to straight-up cheap lookin’ (that is to say, it doesn’t look as low-quality and generally unappealing as many of the VCRs manufactured in the 1990’s tend to, despite the plasticy gray appearance.)

Works good, looks good, this one’s definitely a keeper.