Why I Adore...

It's hard to begin describing my love of particular VHS brands here in Australia given that were 5 of them that I really love though if I had to pick there is one that I would have to say was my co-favorite of all the ones that graced Video Store shelves in the 80's and 90's.

And that is Roadshow Home Video.

But why this brand, why not one like Warner Home Video or RCA/Columbia Pictures/Hoyts Video both of which I do like but there was something special about Roadshow Home Video's catalogue in 1982-1985 in particular that is really worth talking about.

One of those is that the releases felt home grown, no doubt due to Roadshow being an Australian company so the tapes themselves felt like a nice piece of your homeland inside your machine, especially when it came to promoting its homegrown movies like Mad Max, Attack Force Z and even the Channel 10 miniseries about the Dismissal.

Roadshow began releasing home video titles in 1982 with the David Cronenberg horror film Scanners, a surprising pick given that it was said for many years that George Miller's Mad Max was the first Roadshow Video released (which wouldn't surprise me given that the tape opens with a small history lesson about the company whereas Scanners doesn't.)

But it wasn't until 1983 that the brand really took off with many hit titles hitting the shelves at just the right time with VHS as a format starting to make a big splash, that year Roadshow moved into releasing titles on video in Stereo (some of those titles were Venom with Oliver Reed, The Beastmaster, Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii and Brian de Palma's Blow Out)

83 also saw some personal favorites of mine on the brand released, two of those that stand out are First Blood and Summer Lovers, both films had their theatrical release here in Aus in December of 82 and I enjoyed both very much.

First Blood has been a personal favorite of mine for a long time for its combination of exciting action, great performances and heartfelt emotion of a man who returns to life and find there's nothing here for him, Sly Stallone, Brian Dennehy and Richard Crenna were all fantastic in the film and there was some great direction by Ted Kotcheff.

Summer Lovers on the other hand was far from perfect as a film but for what it strove to achieve it was pretty good, Daryl Hannah and Peter Gallagher had some nice chemistry, the Greece scenery was gorgeous and Valerie Quennessen was just wonderful, showing a real presence on screen very few actresses have, it's enormously sad she died so young and left so much behind (Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert would later name the film as one of their underrated gems.)

1984 and 85 saw the brand go from strength to strength, continuing on what was established in 82 and 83 as well as starting to use longer trailers for promoting their titles as well as a mix of the shorter ones that graced the earlier releases.

Some of my favorite titles promoted during this era were Razorback, Never Say Never Again, Cross Country, Street Hero (with a use of "Wilder World" by Dragon), Silkwood, Blame it on Rio (with Michael Caine and Joseph Bologna the voice of Dan Turpin in Superman TAS), Beat Street, Flight 90: Disaster on the Potomac and Jimmy the Kid (the trailer being narrated by Don "Inspector Gadget" Adams who starred in the film) even though I have a more mixed reaction to the films themselves.

1985 would see the brand change into what it is today, Village Roadshow Home Video though some of those titles would be promoted on some of the early Roadshow titles such as The Falcon and the Snowman, The Terminator and Avenging Angel to name a few.

Also promoted during this era were titles like Cannonball Run 2, The Man from Hong Kong, 1984, Target Eagle with Maud Adams, The Philadelphia Experiment and the Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai to name others.

But with all that out of the way I'm sure your all thinking "What do you love most" about these releases and the brand as a whole.

Well that answer is twofold, the first is that it represents a time when movies had a sense of reality to them and were cheap to make somewhat, most movies now rely heavily on digital special effects to bring characters to life and it rarely works as the audience can tell that it's a computer generated character and as a result of a reliance on CG, overall spending budget's for films have gone up as well whereas back then there was more of a reliance on practical and optical effects and as a result it kept the budget down.

The second is that it also represents a time before I was born and being a history buff I love to read about that period of the 80's (heck even the decade as a whole as well as the early 90's) and to know what the new releases were at that time as well as what was popular is a great thing to be able to know.

And so that is my piece about my love of Roadshow Home Video and some of the titles that were released under it.