At the beginning of December I was alerted to a very interesting auction on the e of the bay. This particular auction was for a box of random VHS tapes, or as the seller so colourfully described as "LUCKY DIP A BOX OF MYSTERY VHS VIDEO TAPES, WHATS INSIDE THE BOX???".
When two words like 'mystery' and 'tapes' are thrown together into a sentence, well, you can imagine how fast my heart was pumping.
The little VHS fairy appeared on my right shoulder telling me that the box would be filled with nothing more than Jane Fonda workout tapes, and on the left shoulder the devil himself appeared and planted the seed in my brain that maybe the seller knew nothing about rare tapes, and maybe, just maybe the box had the potential to be a Video Nasties dream haul. My mind was made. I placed my bid.

I purchased the tapes two weeks before Christmas and asked my wife if she would wrap each tape up individually, that way I would have 25 mysteries as opposed to just one, she reluctantly agreed.
Unfortunately the tapes didn't arrive in time for the big day, or even in December at all, prompting me to leave the following feedback on the sellers page - "The biggest mystery was the delivery date."

On January 11th the tapes finally arrived, and I wasn't exactly in the greatest of moods when the doorbell rang either, so instead of getting excited I simply ripped the box apart. What fell out were nothing more than mainstream sell through releases and simply bad films in general. The fairy was right!

It's amusing to me that the rarest tape among this bunch is a pre-cert Shakin' Stevens video. Had it have been delivered on time, I might have found it all a little more worthwhile. Never again.

See the full gallery on Posterous

The original ebay link can be found here.

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This is an original piece of art for the Albert Finney film 'Loophole' ('81).
It is approximately half quad size and produced on board. I do not know whether it was produced for a cinema poster or for video, nor do I know who the artist was.

Visually, the piece is quite appealing, however it has 2 major fold marks, which run down the centre horizontally and vertically and a piece of acetate overlay which is stuck to the artwork.

Even so, it is a one of a kind piece and would look beautiful displayed.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Please note that this is not mine (if only!), it comes from a friends personal collection and I thought i'd share. In my opinion this is far too lovely to be sitting inside some box. He's also currently listening to offers of over £80 for it.

Another simply stunning piece.

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This piece was produced for the UK cinema quad of 'National Lampoon's Animal House' (78) - I do not know the artist.
It is the original artwork and an amazing piece, produced in several layers, all in superb condition. The top layer is an acetate, with an overlay of breaking glass from a picture frame. The second layer is the picture frame itself. The third layer is the picture within the frame, of the students in the fraternity.

The artwork is approximately quad size and produced on board.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Please note that this is not mine (if only!), it comes from a friends personal collection and I thought i'd share. In my opinion this is far too lovely to be sitting inside some box. He's also currently listening to offers of over £350 for it.

Another simply stunning piece.

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This piece was produced by famed exploitation/horror/science fiction artist Tom Chantrell for the science fiction exploitation film 'Prisoners of the Lost Universe' ('83).
It was used for the US one sheet and also American video releases. This is the original artwork and is also signed by Chantrell himself.

The artwork is approximately one sheet size and produced on board. It comes with an acetate overlay (which is damaged) and lettering. The artwork itself though is still in lovely condition.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Please note that this is not mine (if only!), it comes from a friends personal collection and I thought i'd share. In my opinion this is far too lovely to be sitting inside some box. He's also currently listening to offers of over £400 for it.

Another simply stunning piece.

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This piece was produced by artist Sam Peffer for the sexploitation film 'Emmanuele 3' ('77).
It was used for the UK cinema quad release and is the original artwork. It was also used as the basis for the Hokushin pre-cert carton release.

The artwork is approximately quad size and produced on board. It comes with an acetate overlay with lettering cleverly placed so as to hide the naked breasts of the ladies on the art. When lifted, the breasts can clearly be seen in all their glory as seen in the pics.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Please note that this is not mine (if only!), it comes from a friends personal collection and I thought i'd share. In my opinion this is far too lovely to be sitting inside some box. He's also currently listening to offers of over £400 for it.

Another simply stunning piece.

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This piece was produced by famed exploitation/horror/science fiction artist Tom Chantrell for the Mary Millington classic 'Whats Up Superdoc!' ('78).
It was used for the UK cinema quad release and is the original artwork, signed by the late Tom Chantrell. It was also used as the basis for the Hokushin pre-cert carton release.

The artwork is approximately quad size and produced on board.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Please note that this is not mine (if only!), it comes from a friends personal collection and I thought i'd share. In my opinion this is far too lovely to be sitting inside some box. He's also currently listening to offers of over £500 for it.

A simply stunning piece.

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I have been collecting VHS tapes since the age of 13, now 26, and i've gathered together a collection of well over 2,500 tapes. As most of you are aware i'm a lover of post-certs more than pre but that's largely down to my age, although i'm more about the movies themselves rather than their rarity or value. My wife is due to give birth to our first child in March and as such my VHS library has to go into storage until such time as we can move into a bigger place. Anyway, here are a few pics of my collection; See the full gallery on Posterous As you can see from the pictures above, the room is a little cramped, with each shelf double stacked and jam packed with tapes. My hope is to have them all out on display one day, even the 600 or so I have in the attic. These are the few Video Nasties, DPP and 'Unofficial' Nasties that I have amassed so far; See the full gallery on Posterous Here are the pick of my pre-cert tapes; Over the past two years I have invested more money in pre-certs as most are fading out. Charity shops have stopped stocking them, carboots have dried up and ebay seems to be the only place of purchase, if you are prepared to pay the prices.  See the full gallery on Posterous My favourite label above all others is Medusa, a label that put out some of the most obscure but simply brilliant 80's movies, most notably horror. Again, I have attempted to gather as many as I can but may have missed the odd 20/20 collaberation. See the full gallery on Posterous I have tons more on various labels that I just haven't got the time to share at present, labels like Vestron, New World, CIC, CBS/FOX, New World, RCA, Warner and so on. My collection may be in storage soon but this does not mean that i'm not on the lookout for more titles, my wants list increases by the day. I may even post a copy of my wants on here. I've been given some great help this past year and hopefully it can continue. It will be a very sad day when the room is finally taken down but I know it's only temporary.

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With every top 10 list comes a bottom 10. I've seen some really awful movies this year but thankfully not many of them have been released in 2011, which made the task of finding 10 movies quite difficult for me. Most were decent, far from awful, but these few were truly terrible.
A few on the list are present because of expectation more than anything else, some directors should know better.

1 - Red Riding Hood
2 - The Resident
3 - Sucker Punch
4 - Unknown
5 - Hall Pass
6 - Shark Night
7 - Zookeeper
8 - Mars Needs Moms
9 - Horrible Bosses
10 - Your Highness

Honourable mentions;
We don't even need to speak about Yogi Bear (2010). 

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This list is compiled of my favourite older movies seen for the first time in 2011.

In addition to the many new releases that I have caught this year, I have also seen well over 200 older movies for the first time. Some completely blew me away, others bored my eyes to the point of sleep. Thankfully these handpicked titles are the better ones.
I found it far too difficult to cut the list down to just 10, hopefully you can forgive me.

2 - Body Double (1984)
3 - Freebie and the Bean (1974)
4 - The Silent Partner (1978)
5 - Into the Night (1985)
6 - Charley Varrick (1973)
7 - Poor Pretty Eddie (1975)
8 - Venom (1981)
9 - Crusing (1980)
10 - Hardcore (1979)
11 - Last Embrace (1979)
12 - Of Unknown Origin (1983)
13 - Sorcerer (1977)
14 - Who Can Kill A Child? (1976)
15 - American Gigolo (1980)
16 - Thief (1981)
17 - 52 Pick-Up (1986)
18 - Rollercoaster (1977)
19 - Bells aka Murder by Phone (1982)
20 - The Hidden (1987)
21 - California Split (1974)
22 - The Night Before (1988)
23 - The Hot Rock (1972)
24 - Dressed to Kill (1980)
25 - Cobra (1986)

Honourable mentions;
Taffin (1988), 8 Million Ways to Die (1986), Quick Change (1990), The Club (1980), Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984), Loverboy (1989), Youngblood (1986), Two Crippled Heroes (1980), Pulsebeat (1984), Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985), Trojan War (1997), North Shore (1987), Christmas Evil (1980), Dead Heat (1988) and Raw Force (1982). I could just go on and on...

As you can see, 2011 has been a very good year for older movies. 

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Although there are tons of movies that still haven't made it to British screens, plus the possible list breakers that I have yet to see - Hugo, Snowtown, The Skin I Live In, Midnight In Paris, The Tree of Life, Melancholia and Take Shelter to name but a few, the following movies are the ones that have made the biggest impression on me throughout the year.

As we go to press, I have currently seen 124 new movies this year.

My Top 10:

1 - Drive
2 - Captain America
3 - Hanna
4 - Source Code
5 - Super 8
6 - Cell 211 (2009)
7 - Submarine (2010)
8 - Attack the Block
9 - Rise of the Planet of the Apes
10 - Moneyball

Honourable mentions;
Take Me Home Tonight, Warrior, The Guard, Cedar Rapids, 50/50 and Tangled (2010).

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The immensely talented guys over at Last Exit to Nowhere are currently holding a 30 second homemade movie competition on their site. My brother-in-law and I decided to enter it, the theme was always going to be VHS related.

Plot
A VHS collector accidentally takes the last exit to nowhere when he watches an obscure pre-cert tape.

Shot on location inside my mini video vault of obscurity.

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It's no great secret that I have become increasingly more obsessed with the memories of my local rental store Video Vision. The place that I would visit every Friday and Saturday night with my best friend at the time and rent the most obscure titles. Obviously we were seriously under age so his Mom would come along with us to get the tapes. We would spend an age in the horror section scanning the racks to find the most attractive box art, films which we knew would be terrible but we didn't care, the artwork did as it was intended and had us sold. Films like Lurkers, Frenchman's Farm, Lucifer, Satan's Dog and 976 Evil.

I find it hard to believe that my old place of worship is now a Curry house, and the horror section reduced to nothing more than a drinks bar. In memory of my old rental store i've been compiling a few pictures of other video shops around the UK.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Many of these pictures have been taken from a private forum that I am a member of, I hope they bring back some memories of your old stores.

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After the success of the Gallery of Horror tape sale I arranged to go back to the store to purchase some more, but this time I was armed with a few hundred pound. Unfortunately the guy still hadn't had time to sort the entire room out but he did have considerably more on show than last time. The majority of the tapes he had were American and Japanese with only a few British tapes among the piles. Time was not on my side so I quickly scanned the tapes and started making piles of the ones I was most interested in. After half an hour I had compiled over 40 tapes, I had to leave so many behind once again but I know I can get them whenever.

Because i'm cheeky, when the guy was away for a few brief moments I managed to take a few snaps of the US big boxes, I really would love to go back and own them all.
Some very rare titles indeed;

See the full gallery on Posterous

(Check out the signed Evilspeak tape)

I was then armed with the task of sorting through the 40+ tapes and selecting the best. There was no way I was leaving the SUPER VIDEO releases behind, as brittle as those titles are the ones I bought are in fantastic condition. The artwork is printed onto the clamshell case too, a very cool label that i'm going to start collecting. I think there are only around 32-36 titles but they are super rare. I'm very pleased with what I was able to pick up;

See the full gallery on Posterous

As you can see there are some Spanish, Australian and a few other releases too. I posted pics on the same collectors site as I did with Gallery of Horror and my inbox has once again filled up with offers. I've already had an offer of £70 on The Abductors, £50 on Howlings of a Winter's Night, £30 on Violent Blood Bath and that's just for starters. I'm in no need for extra cash though so i'm keeping these. I don't make a habit of selling tapes. That Island of Death on Star Video is also mega rare as it's the Spanish uncut version, I believe all other countries only released it cut.

I'm very pleased with my finds, these tapes don't come up very often and it's nice to know that I have first pick. I've also offered him £50 for a very rare title but he's had other interest so i'm awaiting a reply. Looks promising though.

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Last week I walked into a fairly obscure bookshop in town, it's one i've known about for some time and even visited once before but finding it open is one thing, finding the main owner in too is another. Luckily for me on this occasion it worked out well.
For months now i've been trying to get the seller to let me at his private VHS collection, I know he has some rare tapes and i've been desperate to have a rummage. After a brief discussion about certain tapes and movies in general he lets me go upstairs to have a quick look, but warned me that I wouldn't be able to get at much due to the room being a complete mess. Sure enough the door opened and the clutter stared back, there was no way I could get to them all, instead only managing to grab a few handfuls.
The tapes were priced at £10-15 and I only had small amount on me so I took some pictures of the piles of tapes that I could reach, and then I had to decide between a few that I had picked out that intrigued me. I decided on a rare late 70's TV movie called Dead of Night and a very obscure title called Gallery of Horror.

See the full gallery on Posterous

It wasn't until I got home and uploaded my finds to a collectors forum that things took a turn for the unbelievable. After a few hundred comments on the thread and me confirming that the Gallery of Horror tape was indeed the British Trytel release, it started a frenzy on the site and my inbox began to fill up with offers, very large offers too.
Apparently not many of Trytel's releases were ever found, possibly only two before my discovery. Nobody on the site had seen another and it could well be the only tape in existence, truly a very rare and one-of-a-kind VHS. The same cannot be said for Dead of Night, a £10-15 tape on a good day.

I quickly decided that the tape would be better appreciated by a serious collector of very rare tapes, plus the money would come in very handy and fund future hauls of mine, possibly even allow me to go back and purchase some more from the guy's collection.
I listed the tape on ebay a few days later and started the auction at £200, this was way lower than my highest emailed bid. After only a few hours on ebay the tape quickly spiralled out of control and then settled around the £400 mark, it stayed that way for the remaining few days before shooting up once again in price in the last few minutes. £430, £450, £500, £520 and then finally selling for £561.99. An unbelievable price and return on a tape that I paid £10 for.

See the full gallery on Posterous

I'm just glad that it went to someone I know, a serious collector and someone who will really appreciate it. It's not a film that excites me but I will admit to being slightly gutted when the sale reached its final stages. Maybe one day i'll come across another...

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While searching through ebay earlier on in the week I stumbled across a job lot of VHS which was for sale, the starting bid was 99p. After some careful consideration I set my price limit and left it in the hands of the VHS gods. Luckily I won the lot for a little below my top offer, and seeing as though the seller was very close to me for collection, I don't think I did too bad. The guy then emailed the next day and we agreed a collection date and time. On the same email it stated that he had a further 2 to 3,000 tapes in the garage that I could look through and select a few titles, and for free.
I was warned beforehand though that the garage contained nothing more than re-issues and certainly nothing of any interest for me. The trouble is, as any collector will tell you, it only takes that one tape...
He also had quite a few US cartons in there too but he said he wanted to keep them back so I looked no further. I couldn't punish myself. I'd lalso ike to point out that the guy in question is a former collector of VHS and these tapes in his garage are the remains of a few old bulk deals on ebay, chance purchases if you will in the hope that he could find some gems among them.

There are some great films below but there are also a lot of mainstream stuff, I mainly grab these due to their original cases but also for upgrades (for larger ex-rental cases). There are still some post-cert tapes in my collection which are in the smaller cases, something which bothers me no end. I upgrade when I can for as cheap as possible.

In total I purchased just under 150 tapes today but I will only be sharing a third of them due to already owning the others, they were purchased simply for upgrading purposes and so have not been included. The odd double has been included though, just because they were great finds.

See the full gallery on Posterous

See the full gallery on Posterous

In addition to the VHS tapes that I snagged, the guy also told me that he had a large amount of CED Videodiscs that I was more than welcome to. These things weigh a ton and I can see why they never took off. The artwork is amazing though and who knows? I might one day find a CED player and then I can screen these stunners.

See the full gallery on Posterous

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As well as owning almost 2,000 VHS tapes, I also have a small number of movie posters that I have been steadily accumulating over the years. I mainly collect UK quads and Silkscreen prints but i'm also quite partial to the US one sheets and Belgium movie posters, the latter seem to be gaining a bit of a reputation at movie fares for their obscure artwork and print.

UK Quads;

See the full gallery on Posterous

Silkscreen Prints;

See the full gallery on Posterous

Belgian Posters;

See the full gallery on Posterous

US One Sheets;

See the full gallery on Posterous

Other Posters;

See the full gallery on Posterous

The (European) Evil Dead poster is twice the size of a standard UK quad, it's huge, whereas The Go-Kids poster is 1/3 the size of a quad. That particular poster may have been up in a rental store at some point.

The Bad Biology, Criterion and Viva VHS posters in the 'Other' set were all sent to me my Scarecrow Video in Seattle. I purchased the Race With the Devil one sheet and they packaged it up for me, when I got home (back to the UK) I found them all inside. It's just another reason why that store is the greatest on earth, bar none.

I also own a 10 foot cinema standee of Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant, it was given to me by a friend. Added to that I also have various mini-quads which aren't really worth adding on here. These include Shaun of the Dead, Collateral, The Terminal, Elizabethtown, Win a Date With Ted Hamilton and various others.

You wouldn't believe the amount of movie related stuff i've gathered over the years, anyone for a Frog prop from Magnolia?

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After a few dry spells hunting around the carboots and charity shops of late, I didn't hold out much hope for this bank holiday weekend. And it appeared to be heading for yet another dry patch when the first carboot we stumbled across had about 9 cars and a burger van, I don't think I need to tell you that we didn't stay long.
The next boot was much better, I had only found about 4 or 5 decent tapes but the signs were good. Then came rows upon rows of nothingness, not a single tape in sight, that was until we reached the final row. I could see a pile of tapes on the floor but it wasn't until I got closer that I realised I had struck pre-certed gold. Or at the very least, silver.

These cost me 50p each. Well, in actual fact they were 50p each or 4 for £1, and taking into consideration the fact that I purchased 23 tapes from him, they cost me much less than that. All of the other tapes that I found ranged in price from 20-50p too.

The Best of the Bunch:

See the full gallery on Posterous

The Best of the Rest:

See the full gallery on Posterous

Unfortunatley the lot appeared much better than it actually was, this was down to the dreaded bootlegs that had been sneaked in. I always check tapes on site, even if they're really cheap, so I noticed the authenticity of them right away but I still bought them as they cost £1 and the films are on the tapes too. Blood Vengeance is one i've been meaning to get around to screening for quite some time, now it's possible.

Bootlegs:

See the full gallery on Posterous

In total I spent just over £10 on the entire lot, maybe this dry patch isn't so bad after all.

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First of all, let me point out that this was not pre-planned. The tapes just have a way of finding me, it's like we're connected.

A few months ago my wife and I had purchased a UK quad poster of Scream for my parents' 30th wedding anniversary. The moment I presented it to my Dad the bug had bitten him and he is now a collector, not to mention a rival, of UK quads. I now look back with regret and wish we'd have bought them a set of steak knives instead.
Since hanging Scream on the wall, he has gone on to purchase the quads of The Monster Squad and Rules of Attraction, two of my favourite movies of all time. You can tell i'm a little bitter about the whole thing. "It was me who showed you the way!", and various other nonsense I like to shout at him from time to time. Anyway, my Dad needed them framed so I told him where I get all my work done, a local place who if receiving regular business will knock you up a few quad frames for a real bargain. He ordered them a few weeks ago and today we had to go and collect them from town. I took along my framed Mean Machine poster which I needed taking out and replacing with my recently acquired Vanilla Sky quad, I was very excited about having that on wall.

See the full gallery on Posterous

After selling his collection he opened up his store, which specialises in rare out of print DVD's, books and posters. He also told me that he still had a few hundred rare tapes in his storeroom. I thought said room would be a few miles away but apparently it was a few doors down. He asked a friend to mind the shop and we headed for his lock-up. As I walked in there was already a collector who had situated himself towards the far end of the room, working his way through the various titles. I only had time to have a quick scan and forgot my phone so I couldn't take any pictures, but the guy had Dutch, US, Japanese and various other foreign pre-cert tapes. He knew the prices of them though but said that he didn't have time to list them on the net anymore so they were mostly for sale at £10 each. I found some absolute crackers and plan to go back at some stage, but I did manage to afford two tapes.

One was Sisters Of Satan, a Mexican movie from 1978. It's a huge chunky US box on the Academy label and the cover art is fantastic. I had never heard of the film but the guy said not only was it one of his favourite horror movies, it was also one his favourite movies of all time. The second one I bought was called Video Nasty, but not all is as it appears with this one. On first glance it looks like a cheap early 80's Deadly Spawn effort, but when I picked it up I noticed that the box was empty. I opened it (like all lovers do) and found a demented ghoul type demon popping out at me. Apparently these were made circa '85, right around the time of the Video Nasty era. When all the video stores were getting raided of their obscure tapes, some producers decided to create a little bit of fun, and so these were made and placed on the shelves in certain stores for hapless movie lovers to come across. I've certainly never seen anything like it before and it's just yet another piece of VHS history to take away with me.

Sisters of Satan (1978) NTSC tape:

See the full gallery on Posterous

See the full gallery on Posterous

The guy has promised to show me all of his old books/guides, VHS catalogues, movie posters and the rest of his VHS leftovers. I noticed some absolute gems among the piles but I couldn't bare to have a proper run through as I was in a hurry. The next time i'm there i'll be taking a credit card with me.

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I search the internet on a daily basis for all sorts of VHS tapes, be them pre-cert or otherwise. The only trouble with purchasing tapes online is the postage costs that are involved. A single tape will cost you somewhere in the region of £2.99 in stamps alone these days. So i've decided to only use the net for the tapes on my 'Most Wanted' list only and try to collect all others from job lots that come my way.

The latest job lot offer was from a guy who had over 1,000 titles from an old video store that had closed down a while back. I could tell from some of the pictures he had sent me, that the tapes were mostly late 80's to mid 90's stuff, an era of film that I have a keen fondness for.

We pulled up at a garage in the middle of nowheresville and met up with the guy. He said that due to a lack of space the tapes had been kept in the back of an old van for quite a number of years, and he couldn't wait to get shot of them all. He then led the way to said van, opened up the doors and told me take as much time as I needed. Luckily the tapes were all stored neatly in crates and most were clearly visible, so it didn't take too much time to go through them all.

See the full gallery on Posterous

After a couple of hours scanning it was time to assess the damage. Although the majority of these tapes were indeed late 80's to mid 90's stuff, I had still somehow managed to acquire exactly 160 tapes for my collection. Around 40 of them being upgrades. That means I already own them, either in a small case or through a later re-released studio version, but these are the ex-rental video store tapes, which were built to have better playback and withstand more viewings.
A further 20-30 of the chosen ones were tapes that I should already own but for some reason have chosen not to over the years. We're talking your average run-of-the-mill flicks here like Robocop, Hellraiser, Die Hard 2, Honey I Blew Up the Kid etc. I couldn't leave them behind.

I paid the man a few pennies and began loading up the car. Unfortunately we were unable to take any of the crates or boxes with us, which meant the tapes had to be neatly stacked into piles in the boot. It was only later when we arrived home that we re-housed them all into 6 separate crates. It was a small price to pay for practically free tapes.

Part I:

See the full gallery on Posterous

Part II:

See the full gallery on Posterous

Upgrades:

See the full gallery on Posterous

It was a weird feeling looking through the old stock of a 90's video store because that was my era. Some of my earliest rental store memories are from when I was around the age of 10 (1995), and these were the exact same tapes that used to line the walls. I'd quickly run into the Horror section and grab Jason Goes to Hell and a few others, pass them to my Mom and tell her to get them for me. She knew I was a weird kid who never got scared so she'd rent them for me and i'd spend the rest of the afternoon until night screening them all. When my local store (Video Vision) closed down they had a huge £1 sale, but I wasn't old enough to afford anything so the public came in and took the lot. I guess i'm now making up for that by collecting them in my mid 20's.

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Since the success of last weeks discovery, I have been going through my collection and ripping out any of the mainstream titles. The sort of titles that you can pick up in any charity shop for around 5-10p each. Boxing them up and placing them into safe storage. While performing this thankless task it had me wondering if I had managed to somehow miss a few obscurities from the shop. After all, I only had time to briefly scan over the many thousands of tapes in attendance, and it was getting late.
So armed with the knowledge of 'if it looks awful it's probably awesome', I made plans to go back. But this time I was taking my Brother-in-law and 80's guru Simon along with me for extra eye help. On the drive up I gave him a lesson in health and safety VHS hunting. I couldn't allow him to go through the various pitfalls and tape traps that I had to pass through last week. By the way my cut from last week is steadily turning into a scar, I just hope it's V shaped. That would make one hell of a story.

We figured it would be best to scan each room at a time, paying close attention to every title and making sure we don't miss a single gem. Simon quickly got to work on one side and I did the same on the other.
After running our eyes over a few shelves and finding no less than 13 tapes, it quickly became apparent that I had definitely missed some potential classics on first visit. I grabbed an empty crate and we began to fill it with all sorts of trashy 80's movies. The way I see it is, how many times do you see these sort of movies on tape anymore? And how long will this store keep them before deciding it may be best to bin them and free up extra space in their shop?
We had one rule and stuck by it through the entire inspection process. We'd pick out a tape if the title sounded right or if the label was a good one, quickly run our eyes over the cover art and tagline, and then decide if it looked good enough to make the crate.
Below are the movies that fitted the bill perfecty.

Part I:

See the full gallery on Posterous

Part II:

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Simon also decided to donate the rest of his VHS collection that he had been holding back (I already have the others), to the tomb of tapes that is my movie room collection. I always knew he had a few titles that I was after so I was over the moon when he brought the mystery box along for the ride.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Some of them I already own but only in the small case release, so these will be replacements for those few. Others like The Wizard of Speed and Time, i've been trying to get my hands on for quite some time now, along with both Eddie and the Cruisers movies.

Most serious collectors may find very little from my recent hauls but it's not about the value for me. I will at some point or another screen every single tape in my collection, and from the last two weeks i've found films that I didn't even know existed. I will always try and preserve the good name of VHS, even if it means keeping a few copies of films like Pretty Woman in my collection.
I shall now return to the task in hand, removing the common and mainstream titles from my room and replacing them with trashy 80's movies. Until the day I move house and they can all be united once again in one huge library. VHS rules!

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