VivaVHS

I've been dying to get around to my RCA list for ages now, and the time is finally here.

The ex-rental RCA tapes always had the best trailers and the red cases are iconic. If you were very lucky, you'd open a case to find the standard black cassette with the red flip-up cover. And on that cover would be the super cool (to me anyway) RCA branding in white lettering.
When I did the Alternative Covers blog a few months back, these along with CBS/FOX were the prime examples of such wonder.

From the spine on the cases you will notice how differently they were distributed and sleeved. Some have the red, white and blue stripe across, and some have a huge barcode slapped right in the middle. Some were even re-distributed by 'The Hollywood Collection' and sorted by the films genre.

My only regret is not owning more of these, but i'm sure i'll correct this with time.

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The History:

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is the home video distribution arm of Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation. It was established in 1978 as Columbia Pictures Home Entertainment.

The company was formerly known as Columbia Pictures Home Entertainment (1978-1982), RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video (a joint venture with RCA, 1983-1990), Columbia TriStar Home Video (1990-2001), and finally Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment (2001-2004), before taking on its current name in fall 2004. In some territories, it still goes by its previous identity, however this may not be the case for much longer. In the United Kingdom (and other foreign countries, mainly in Europe), it was known as RCA/Columbia Pictures International Video during the 1980s and early '90s.

As RCA-Columbia Pictures Home Video and as Columbia TriStar Home Video, the company distributed many films from New Line Cinema and a number from CineTel Films as well as films from Miramax Films on VHS.

As most of you know by now, I am a huge fan and also an avid collector of VHS.

On every available Sunday I visit various car boots and markets around my area, gathering up as many films that I can on the worlds greatest ever format. I’ll usually come back from each trip with about 10-20 films, and spend no more than £3.
You can pretty much pick up a tape these days for around the 10p mark from most sellers.

I told myself that I wasn’t going to buy any more for quite some time though, due to having zero space left in my Apartment for them. Unfortunately this all changed when I received an email the other week, informing me of some guy on Twitter who was throwing out his VHS tapes to help create some space in his own house.
It didn’t take long for me to decide if I wanted them or not. The alternative was to see them tossed into the skip and then sent away to be destroyed. I don’t think I could have lived with myself had I taken up that particular option.

I collected all of the tapes last Sunday afternoon, and below are a few pictures of what was inside the magic treasure chest of VHS:

I mainly collect pre-cert original tapes, but I guess that in a few years time (maybe even sooner), VHS will have completely faded out from car boots, charity shops and market stalls everywhere. That would leave only eBay and Amazon as the two main places left to purchase them. I figure it’s best to stock up now on the mainstream titles and pre-certs (wherever possible) and store them in my library for a lifetime of movie watching. It’s very rare that I see any Betamax or Laserdiscs anywhere other than the internet, and I’m getting the feeling that VHS will soon follow suit.

However, I also believe that VHS will once again have its day and become just as popular and collectible as vinyl still is today.

Next up on the Film studios list is my Palace collection. To me, Palace will always remembered as one of the main distributors of Horror movies.

During the mid to late 80's they issued a collection of Horror tapes labelled 'Palace Horror'. Each tape in the series was wrapped in a vibrant, bright coloured cover. They even had a cool 18 logo at the top of each case and spine (as pictured). It featured a skull bone which symbolised the number 1, and a skull for the 8.

In the series were the following titles: Vampire At Midnight (need), Dream Demon (need), Edge Of Sanity, Trick Or Treat, Night Of The Demons, Basket Case, Brain Damage, Creepers, Evil Dead II, and The Hills Have Eyes.

Although I don't own all of the titles in that particular collection, I still own most of them in other cases/covers.

Palace Logo 1;

I still find it odd that Palace managed to distribute such films like Grifters and King Of New York. I'd love to know if they issued other similar films (non Horror).

Palace Logo 2;

I have finally arrived at one of my largest Studio collections, CIC (Cinema International Corporation).

I have tried to seperate all of the different types of CIC tapes that I own. You will notice below that there are quite a few pre-cert films, whenever I can find any, i'll pay through the nose for them. The best looking CIC tapes to me, are the ones with the horizontal lines on the spine of the case. They just look so good in a collection!
It's like they took my somebody's bedroom wallpaper from the 80's and decided to adapt the same style to their VHS cases.

Back in the heyday where most of the obscure VHS tapes were overpriced and largely unavailable, I paid a lot of money for certain film titles. I remember a guy called Ron who used to work at a market that I would visit once a week. He would have his large VHS stall full of classic movies, some original but mostly full of reissues. He would also have a rack above his stall which he labelled 'Banned, Rare and Deleted'. I don't think I need to explain which films he used to display there, but he had alot of CIC films on the rack like; 'The Keep' and 'Streets of Fire' along with stuff like the original 'Last House on The Left', 'Hot Bubblegum' etc.

The one in particular that I really remember was 'Delirious', the Eddie Murphy live stand up show (a personal fave of mine). He used to have this displayed every week with the hefty price tag of £50 placed upon it. I managed to pick mine up for around the £20.00 mark and most recently 50p from a carboot.
I had to mention this guy as he made me pay £25 for a reissued version of Suspiria, only for me to find the EMI original a week later for £2.

"As advertised on Crimestoppers."

I managed to find a promo tape of 'The Blues Brothers' (pictured) on CIC about a month back. I thought I always had the original (the dark blue one), but this one has an extra 6 minutes running time compared to the one I had so I have replaced it. I have a few tapes where the running time differs by a few minutes but I always thought it was on the pre-cert horror movies like 'The Burning', where all of the released pre-cert tapes were recalled and re-recorded over the top with the 'cleaner cut' version and then re-released.
It's the reason I have two copies of 'Once Upon A Time In America' and also two copies of 'The Manitou'. The running time on those is a little out too.

My favourite of the CIC issues, were the John Huges Collection tapes (pictured). I'm pretty sure i've collected all of the ones which were released but I was shocked to find that 'Planes, Trains and Automobiles' wasn't cased in the same way. Never mind eh!

Next up on my list is my VTC collection. This along with EMI and Embassy, is one of the smallest but greatest that I collect. Not alot of tapes were ever released by VTC (Video Tape Center) but I always remembered them to be the most valuable. I have a pricing guide which places such VTC titles as; Alien Terror and Tanya's Island among some of the most highly sought after tapes ever released.

I managed to pick some of these up for about £3 back in the late 90's, but there was one film that was a little more difficult to track down. That film was Superstition (aka The Witch).

I was always bugging my Dad as a kid to tell me his favourite horror movies because I was obsessed with being scared, and one movie that he wouldn't shut up about was Superstition. He was describing a scene where a blade came off a workers saw in an old house and ripped through a Priest's chest. That was all I needed to know so I went to every carboot, market and internet site that I could find to track it down, but nobody had it. One guy had a copy of it but wanted £25.00 for it. I was that desperate I paid it.

We screened the film on the night that it came in the post and I absolutely loved it, which is why it has become my favourite VHS from my entire collection. The funny thing is, about two weeks later I was at a market and came across the original VHS tape of it on VTC (pictured below). I was happy but I could have cried as it only cost me £5. I love the arwork!

"You'll believe it just before you die..."

Before we move on with the rest of the list, a few people have been asking me to upload some images of my entire VHS collection. That is obviously a very difficult task as I own over 1400 tapes, with a further 2-300 in the attic due to storage space. I thought the best possible way to showcase them all, would be to present them in a very short film, enjoy...

In 1982, television producer Norman Lear bought the company, changing the name of his own TV company TAT Communications to Embassy Television. The company was already producing such network hits as; The Jeffersons, One Day at a Time, Diff'rent Strokes and The Facts of Life. During this period they launched Silver Spoons, Square Pegs, and Who's the Boss?.

In 1983 it set up its own home video division, prior releases from its film catalog had been handled through Magnetic Video. In 1984, Embassy Pictures was renamed to Embassy Films Associates.

In 1985, Norman Lear sold Embassy to The Coca-Cola Company, which also owned Columbia Pictures at the time. Coca-Cola kept Embassy's television division alive; under Coke's ownership the hit series 227 and Married... with Children began. Embassy Television was renamed Embassy Communications in 1986, then ELP (Embassy Limited Partnership) Communications in 1988. Coca-Cola sold the theatrical division to Dino De Laurentiis, who folded the company into De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, and the home video division to another entity which became Nelson Entertainment, run by Barry Spikings. Nelson Entertainment was owned by Nelson Holdings International (NHI), a company based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Nelson Entertainment, in addition to primarily handling the Embassy library for home video, also financed theatrical films in conjunction with Columbia Pictures. They were one of the primary partners, along with Columbia, in the formation of Castle Rock Entertainment, due to the home video success of co-founder Rob Reiner's Embassy-produced films which they still handled.

In 1988, Nelson handled the physical manufacturing and distribution duties of their home video company to Orion Pictures, and some of their film productions were acquired by Orion as well. In 1991, Nelson was sold to New Line Cinema, who renamed the video division New Line Home Video and also briefly took over Nelson's stake in Castle Rock Entertainment.

Some other great films were released on the Embassy label, most notably; Phantasm, The Onion Field, The Exterminator, Scanners, Swamp Thing, Zapped!, Eddie and the Cruisers, The Sure Thing and Rad.

I recently decided to rearrange my VHS collection from alphabetical, to a much more structured and aesthetically pleasing method, Film Studios.

Many ideas were rolling around in my head at the time. One being sorting them into their age classification, another option was by genre, and another one was by chronological order. All options looked very time consuming, but of course fun for me.

When I finally settled on Film Studios, I quickly realised that this would not be possible due to many films being release by two studios on one VHS cassette. Another, and rather more problematic scenario would be how to actually locate my films. Would I have to remember that the VHS I own of 'Once Upon A Time In America' is the Warner Brothers/Weintraub one? Or do I have the EMI version? Hmm... It appeared to be all memory based, like Rob Gordon's Vinyl in High Fidelity.

After much deliberation and also moving the best part of 400 films to the floor, I had a change of heart and decided to place them back into alphabetical order. An order in which they will remain for many years to come. I did however manage to get one positive thing out of 'the move'. It helped me remember how amazing the various Studios look on the VHS boxes.

Over the next few months (skipping May), I will be gathering together all of my films (most of which are in their original cases) and will be posting them on here for the whole VHS world to see.

I will try and skip the more mainstream movies that I own, like from the mid to late 90's, and instead concentrate on the 80's and below tapes.
I do own alot more WB tapes but it's pointless putting films like Dennis on here so i'm sticking to the earlier one's.

Some of the studios include CIC, CBS FOX, EMI, VTC, MEDIA and even SC VIDEO.

I thought it would be best to start with Warner Brothers. Here I have tried to focus on the large ex-rental cases, these best symbolise my memories of the local video store (Video Vision) which closed down about 8 years back.