Roadshow Home Video: The Next Generation

For a while now I've written columns about my fond memories for certain VHS brands here in Australia, first was the big R Roadshow releases that existed from 1982 to 1985 and the other was for CEL cassettes that existed mainly in the mid to late 80's.

But this one is for one that to me is very special and that is for the next incarnation of Roadshow Home Video cassettes, the next generation as it were when it first came into being in late 1985 under the Village Roadshow banner with the big yellow V and the Terminator-esque music that accompanied it.

My fondness for this particular brand began in my younger years when I saw a copy of the Roadshow cassette of the UK Thriller Hennessy with the late Rod Steiger in my house, you could say it was love at first sight for me as I would think about it during the day at school as well as the top sticker on the tape which had a small blue version of the V on it, can still remember an ad for "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" that showed before the movie began.

Though that particular tape would fade away over time (hey the DVD revolution made short work of a lot of tapes so I'm not the only one) my love of the Village Roadshow cassettes became more and more fond as the years rolled on with releases like Robocop 2, Basic Instinct (which previewed Romper Stomper and Fortress, two of the first Roadshow Entertainment titles), Maid to Order, Rebel which has become a rare title over the years and many others.

In 1986 Roadshow did something very cool on some of their releases, two of those were Rebel mentioned above and Sky Pirates ("Indiana Jones and the Temple of Crap" according to its director John Lamond) and that is after the movie they had a little short movie on there which I thought to be a pretty cool way for short film makers to get their work seen in a big way so major kudos for that short lived venture.

Part of that fondness also extended to the spin off labels created around that same time, one of those was Premiere Home Entertainment which had a brilliant opening and closing logo with booming orchestral music, an outer space setting and a laser that reminded me of the Death Star.

And again like Hennessy my fondness also comes from my early youth and a copy of Eddie and the Cruisers 2 that was in my house at the time and was released under the Premiere label and since then I'd never forgotten the logo described above.

And again as with the Village Roadshow releases that fondness would grow over time for the Premiere releases with titles like Truly, Madly, Deeply, The Punisher with Dolph Lundgren, Death Before Dishonor which had a special double sided cover and was directed by Terry Leonard who worked on Raiders of the Lost Ark and Blood Simple the debut film by the Coen Brothers which had a brilliant trailer at the time.

And so, that is my column talking about my love and fond memories for Village Roadshow Video tapes, it's a brand that I hold dear when I think about that era and I'm sure others do too.