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!

Starburst – The Video Screen VHS Sales

17/05/2020alxkdd

The Video Screen were a regular advertiser in Starburst, they promoted themselves as “The first science-fiction mail order firm” and sold VHS tapes of new releases at a time when more people were into renting them than being able to own them. Here’s a selection of their ads from the magazine. I’ll be picking up a tape of Hawk The Slayer for sure!

Starburst issue 39 – 1981 – The Video Screen 5A Rainsford Road, Chelsmford, Essex

Video Screen SB39 1981

Starburst issue 47 – 1982

Sci-Fi VHS SB47 1982

Starburst issue 63 – 1983

Video Screen SB63 1983

The Prisoner – The Six Of One Film Compilation

10/05/202010/05/2020alxkdd

The Prisoner – possibly the ultimate TV show of all time, it’s always held a deep fascination for me after having watched the Channel 4 showings back in the 1980s. Six Of One is the long standing appreciation society of the show and they released this VHS tape back in 1983 compiling various features and films that they’d accumulated up to that point. I found this tape on ebay one day while going through various searches, I was very pleased and intrigued to find out what was on it. Now it’s worked it’s way to the top of the Upload To YouTube pile and you can watch it yourself now, here’s the front cover:

Here’s the text from the back of the sleeve:

“Between 1976 and 1982 – Dix Of One’s “first series” – considerable media coverage was generated. Much of it was in the form of newsprint but television has pointed it’s camera on more than one occasion. Most of his material, at least in original form, is regrettably now lost – in fact only the Harlech TV film of the ’79 convention remains.

In order that Six Of One’s many facets could be preserved in visual form I started collecting “pieces of the action” on super eight film with a view to compiling not so much a history, more a bag of liquorice allsorts with everyone’s favourite memory hopefully somewhere in the bag – and this forms the basis if this cassette.

In addition you’ll find the aforementioned Harlech TV films, Rockumentary Film’s superb promo for The Time’s record and – of course – Six Of One’s own venture into moviemaking “By Public Demand”.

Some of the items have been going around the amateur club circuit for some time and are deteriorating fast but have been included for the sake of completeness. Anyway, here’s your bag of liquorice allsorts, so dip in just where you like. Enjoy! Enjoy!”

Larry Hall

Sheffield, 1983