I made the artistic decision to scribble out the old movie name and try to squeeze in the new movie name on the end of the label (at least one misspelling too)
Hah for real, this photo was taken from a local Craigslist post a few years ago (I didn't take them but I did email the lister a compliment on the art) but yeah the quality on these is all over the place
Hell yeah—I assume he was using two VCRs slaved together to dub? In any case, there’s something fundamentally delicious about basic, minimal-effort/maximum-reward analog piracy that all the illegal downloads in the world will never, ever match…
When I was a kid my school had adult learning courses, and I popped my head into the video department to get one of the adults to unwittingly make me a copy of the then-banned A Clockwork Orange.
This was a thing? My family did them with shitty markers and crossed out old movies we taped over. "Don't tell Mom, The Babysitter is dead." was looking extra deep fried.
The elementary school age feeling of winning the VHS editing game when you tape the movie from TV and turn recording on and off for every commercial break. Genius.
There was something so satisfying about taping a movie from TV. Movies had more value before streaming services and it felt like getting one for free. But watching the old ads years later was my favorite part.
Wow, that's impressive, I just tried very hard to text very small and pretty so you could read the title .. also, never had a tape with only one film on it.
There was a second picture too, but wasn't as elaborate. These actually came from a Craigslist ad someone locally posted a couple years ago, and I loved the lettering so much I saved the pictures.
Thank you. I often worry I'm the only one who knows about Delirious. I know that's not the point of your skeet, but it's comforting to see it up there.
Even though it's been a long time, I'd highly recommend it. My only regret in bringing this up is that it'll be a while before I have a day off with no plans to watch it.
I think I remember Only the Lonely being alright as well, but it's been even long since I've seen that one.
Delirious is comedic gold. It’s so fuckin good and meta af (I’m probably misusing “meta”—come at me). It was the basis for the inspiration for my book Excalibur Nights where an electrician gets trapped in a YA fantasy book series. 🤣
I see that some of these have been taped at low speed to cram more movies onto one cassette. Would be interested to know the criteria for a movie deserving a tape all its own.
Towards the end I had a bunch of tapes that had labels like an etch-a-sketch where you could just pull it to erase it and write something else with the pressure pen
we had a tape that was groundhog day/aladdin/dirty rotten scoundrels and we would put it on on a saturday morning and do chores and by the time dirty rotten scoundrels started, lunch was ready and the house was clean and it was too hot to go outside.
When my dad got a colour printer at work, I used to make him print out coloured labels I’d designed in Word Art for the VHS tapes! I didn’t have the skill to do fonts by hand. Then when we got the internet (1998) I’d find the movie posters and crop the name to the correct size and he’d print those.
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https://robsheridan.threadless.com/collections/glitch-goods-video-store
Those are great though.
https://youtu.be/C_7yGv7NJ-4?feature=shared
I think I remember Only the Lonely being alright as well, but it's been even long since I've seen that one.
Hint: It also boasts Frank Stallone and is an overlooked, wonderfully directed gem best enjoyed as a dark comedy.