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Comments
Maybe I should try to complete my set soon.
Oh wow what a blast from the past! Takes me back to the days of the old independent video rental shops, pre-blockbuster. And yes, I remember when VHS tapes were around £70, and it was only in about 1991/1992 that you could start to buy VHS films at a more affordable price in the shops. Those rental cases somehow look more glamourous and cinematic than the subsequent VHS designs.
I have various different versions of the Bond films on VHS. Not the above ones though.
Anyone have a bigger picture of the TB or FYEO?
If I remember rightly, the pictures on the back of Thunderball are actually from YOLT (or the other way around) for these rental releases (if they are first editions!).
The LALD one still looks terrific today - it's just such a dog-gone great poster. And I remember gazing at the AVTAK one in the rental shops back in the day; a striking cover to say the least... :)
Awesome stuff. The Bond VHS releases that introduced me to Bond (starting with YOLT). They had that cracking trailer before the film, that as far as Bond series trailers go, it's never been beaten imo:
I love that cover for TLD. B-)
I know that feeling. :-\"
Fair enough. I get the nostalgia aspect but I personally can't see their merit in collecting / future investment. I understand how 1st edition books can increase in value but I can't see VHS tapes selling for big money. Most people have consigned VHS to history. I do have a copy of Goldeneye on VHS as part of a collectors box set which also includes magazine, CD and Parker pen and I will keep hold of that only because it is a box set collectable.
I thought it was dead. I did. Then one day I picked up an old Doctor Who VHS tape for a couple of pounds. I thought the picture would be rubbish but I was pleasantly surprised at how good the quality was. So I've been having good fun watching old tapes that are quite watchable.
And as another poster mentioned there are movies that have not made it to DVD yet like Countdown from 1968 about a one-way mission to the Moon staring Robert Duvall and James Caan. Also Twilight's Last Gleaming, which I mentioned before in this thread, where Burt Lancaster takes over a nuclear missile silo.
I use to have quite a few Dr Who VHS. I will admit I miss the old style BBC video intro of the early releases. For me it's not just the quality of the tapes but the tapes and cases themselves. They just feel wrong to me now. Big and chunky. They would take up too much space on my shelf space. I'll probably start moaning about DVDs in a few years saying the same about them & how all home media should be simply files on a computer to save my precious space!
Apolgies for taking so long to respond, Lancaster - only just seen your post.
Yes, you're absolutely right. Spot the deliberate mistakes...
[img]<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/34422175@N05/7466141768/"; title="TB-WHV by johnsioux, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8159/7466141768_7915ac6043.jpg"; width="500" height="342" alt="TB-WHV"></a>[/img]
[img]<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/34422175@N05/7466147700/"; title="YOLT-WHV by johnsioux, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7275/7466147700_9d4c4bb51e.jpg"; width="500" height="364" alt="YOLT-WHV"></a>[/img]
Hey that's great - how could that possibly happen? Hope someone got an arse kicking for that! Never thought I'd see those again.
On Her Majestys Secret Service
It also didn't go unnoticed by Bond fans that On Her Majestys Secret Service had been 'interfered with' for video. Right from the opening 'gun-barrel' walk-on - with its sudden fade to black and clumsy cut to M's office - the mutilation was noticed. The so-called safe-cracking scene in Gebruder Gumbolds office was missing as was the interchange between Grunther and Campbell at the cable car terminal and 007's first attempt to escape the wheel-house. The sequences of the girls having egg-nog and getting their 'presents' was rearranged in spots as well.
I was so annoyed by these unacceptable cuts that I contacted Warner Home Video to ask for an explanation and was dismissed as 'not knowing what I was talking about' and that 'I should be grateful that WHV had released the film at all as it was such an unpopular Bond film.
(Later down the page, at the Time Life Releases section)
oddities - Time-Life Video (a then-recently acquired subsidiary of Warner Communications) offered the Bond films for sale via mail-order claiming them to be 'complete and uncut'. On purchasing a copy of OHMSS I discovered it to be exactly the same 'edited' version as that of evry single previous video release. Having had a gutful of this unacceptable situation, I wrote to Time-Life asking them to explain and got the following response via the mail:
"...thank you for your recent letter... we have contacted United Artists and they have explained that there was a master and it resides in the UK. The copy is of extremely poor quality. After the quality control experts viewed this (and they claim there is only just three and a half minutes missing from the original), their decision was not to duplicate this for video release."
They included a copy of a fax received from Warner Bros International which went further into an explanation:
"re: On Her Majestys Secret Service, I have been advised that our master is in fact missing a safe-cracking scene which is approximately 3 minutes long. This scene was edited out of the original camera negative before UA and subsequently WB mastered the title. The scene does exist in a print owned by the BBC. However this print is of such extremely poor quality it has repeatedly been rejected as a possible transfer element."
Make of this what you will. Personally I believe they were using the same video master they'd been using from day 1 of video. At that time I believe WHV had made the decision to trim OHMSS down to a length which would fit on a 2 hour videocassette (due to the high cost of tape stock in those days - custom length tape costs could not justified in light of the expected return of the film) - a practice common in the early days of home video.
Source:
members.fortunecity.com/blofelds_cat/007/007vids.htm
(must select the Cache option on Google to see this page as it's expired)
Die Another Day in Brand New (Never Opened) Condition
Very interesting artwork for a FRWL VHS tape, from a collection of Bond movies that only goes from Dr. No to A View to a Kill, grouping those fourteen by "The Connery Classics" and "The Moore Classics", and then of course OHMSS with Lazenby.
EDIT: I only own The Spy Who Loved Me out of this collection, but hope to find the others! They are very rare!
I have most of those. I have all the Connery Classics, and half of The Moore Classics. I love the artwork on them.