20th Century Fox – The VHS Years

11/06/2020alxkdd

This 20th Century Fox VHS trailer tape turned up on ebay recently, it was odd to see as I’d never come across this series of tapes before despite having worked in the video retail for a good few years by that point, I figured I would have seen these tapes around somewhere. Unless that is they were for Rental stores, which is very possible as well.

Anyway I knew it would be very mainstream titles on it, but was hoping for at least some sort of dealer info or maybe a fun intro, but now, it’s simply 7 theatrical trailers played back-to-back with nothing else. Still it is interesting to see how different films looked and felt even just 19-years back, there’s no superhero films and only one sequel. I’ve uploaded it now to our YouTube channel, take a watch below.

Featured on the tape are:

Legend Of Bagger Vance

Say It Isn’t So!

Tigerland

Dr Dolittle 2

Monkeybone

Men Of Honour

Anti-Trust

And heading back about 20-years from this tape, here’s a look back to the very early 1980s and the second in the CBS / FOX The Hit List trailers tapes!

SONY Trailer Epics – Volume 1

19/05/202019/05/2020alxkdd

One of the most sought after series of tapes that we’re looking for is the Trailer Epics range, which started back in 1983. There are a few reasons we’re after these tapes so much, firstly the original releases can be up to 3-hours of pure trailers from multiple different distributors, so they’re a goldmine of rare finds. Secondly the early releases were hosted by Nick Wenham (editor of Video Trade Weekly and Popular Video), who would appear on screen and introduce the tapes and any extra features on there, these intros are a great glimpse back into the early days of VHS and are so fun to watch.

The first series of Trailer Epics releases was sponsored by TDK, but recently I found out that SONY became the sponsor from December 1986 when the second series of VHS compilations started up. The tape below turned up on ebay out of the blue, it’s the first new Trailer Epics tape I’ve found in years, sadly Nick isn’t featured on the tape anymore, but it’s still 90-minutes of trailer action and now we have a little bit more info about the series. Also the sleeve to Sony Trailer Epics Volume 2 also turned up on ebay around the same time, so we can get a glimpse of that here as well.

SONY Trailer Epics – Volume 1 – December 1986

Watch the tape in full right here:

The back cover to SONY Trailer Epics Volume 1

SONY Trailer Epics – Volume 2 – January 1987

An finally the four TDK Trailer Epics tapes we have in our collection:

If anyone has any of the Trailer Epics tapes, or if you know anything more about how these came about, then please do get in touch, we’d love to hear from you!

O.C. & Stiggs meet the Mystery Trailers

04/08/201604/08/2016alxkdd

Thanks so much to everyone who made it along last night to our Check The Gate 35MM screening of Robert Altman‘s very obscure O.C. & Stiggs, we hope you all made it through this very strange film in one piece. It was the perfect way to experience this unique entry in Altman’s filmography, on the big screen from a pristine looking 35MM print! A huge thanks to Paul and everyone at the Prince Charles Cinema for inviting us to be part of the season and big thanks to Park Circus for providing us with such a high quality print.

Plus we got to find out what was on the Mystery Trailer Reel as well, above are my notes I took while the trailer madness played out on the big screen, so what was on there? Here’s the full list:

Night Crossing (1982)

Sammy’s Super T-Shirt (1978)

Porky’s (1981)

The Rose (1979)

Never Cry Wolf (1983)

Water (1985)

The Peregrine Hunters (1978)

Crime Busters (1977)

The Fury (1978)

Firepower (1979)

Cocoon (1985)

Deep Waters (1978)

So we got super lucky with an incredibly fun and random selection, particularly the 3 super rare Children’s Film Foundation trailers, I knew there must have been a good reason I picked this reel up. Discovering what was on it with everyone last night was the perfect way to start the evening! Hope you all enjoyed them as much as we did!