Solid Guild Memories

First films I ever rented (Well my Dad did the renting) were Scanners & Mad Max from a small sweet shop/video shop on Muirhead Avenue. July 1982.

 

Muirhead Avenue

Prescot Road
My first ever memory of a video shop. I was never a member of this store but I used to ride past it on my BMX and look at the posters for Cannibal Ferox & Breaker! Breaker!

Rocky Lane
This was the site of the old Channel 6 video. Our first membership video shop. It really started here for me. I have hundreds of VHS tapes bought from this very store while to was closing down. Superb.

This logo brings back many many memories for me. Used to freak me out in a very strange way.

VTC

One of my fave video companies of the early 80s. My friends and I would wait for their latest releases because we knew they would be cool. They obviously were not but what the hell.

  

     

   

Avenging Angel

Avenging Angel (1985)

 Betsy Russell is Angel (taking over from Donna Wilkes in the first movie). Angel is an ex hooker turned lawyer and she’s pretty smart (Yeah right!). 

Angel hits the streets again when the cop who got her off the streets four years ago, Lt. Hugh Andrews, is killed by a crime organisation trying to take over Hollywood Boulevard. Angel pulls together some of her old street buddies to help with a spot of vengeance.

Rory Calhoun slums it again as Kitt Carson, some kind of old western movie star.

Susan Tyrell as Solly Mosler, an old foul-mouthed ex hooker with no redeeming factors whatsoever.

Barry Pearl is Johnny Glitter, a waste of space who basically throws glitter around (Always good on the vengeance trail).

This film stinks on every level possible. It doesn’t actually know what it wants to be.....A tough revenge thriller or a not very funny comedy. I chose the latter.

Betsy Russel is gorgeous as hell but she has the acting ability of a purple wheelie bin.

Best things about the film are Ossie Davis who turns up in a couple of scenes as a police captain (Must have needed a bill paying) and the great Frank Doubleday (Assault on Precinct 13 & Escape From New York) as the son of the crime boss.

Robert Vincent O'Neill proves why he didn’t make a career out of directing as he lets this baby fall straight through his hands (If you see the film you’ll understand what I mean by that line and how clever it is).

Waste of 90 minutes

Best line – IBack off or I’ll blow your balls into space

The Prize of Peril

Prize of Peril (1983)

In the future the biggest show on TV is “The Prize of Peril”. One contestant can earn himself $1,000,000 if he can just stay alive for four hours. Five ‘Hunters’ try to stop him by chasing him around France in Mini Coopers. Yes! In the future Mini Coopers will be the car of choice.

If you’ve seen Schwarzenegger’s Running Man you will know the story. Crazy game show host and an underlying attack on what the public like to watch....

Violence!

And Mini Coopers!

I really would have enjoyed seeing the Austrian Oak climb into a Mini Cooper.

This low budget effort was made four years before Starsky’s (Paul Michael Glaser) version of Stephen Kings book (Under his Richard Bachman pseudonym). In some ways it’s better than the Hollywood treatment as it deals a lot more with the politics of the media and what they are willing to do to keep us in at night.

Ratings are everything and they will KILL to keep their advertising revenue up.

In Arnold’s version there is a lot more action, funny one liners and a nice happy ending. This goes down the route of King’s original novel, not a Hollywood ending in sight.

It’s dubbed (Not bad) and it has a couple of helicopters to make it look like it has a bit of a budget. We have a plane crash, an electrocution in the Metro, a bit of blood and a blimp! That’s right.....A Blimp!

Director Yves Boisset makes it move along at a really nice pace without ever really getting that futuristic feel. It looks like it was made in 1983, which it was.

All in all I enjoyed The Prize of Peril.

Best line – Is your face so ugly you make me look at your ass!!!!!!

Oh I laughed!

Please Rewind

I'm going to be revisiting some of my old VHS over the coming months and reviewing them in a (hopefully) entertaining way. If you don't like dodgy movies stay away from this blog. If you like films with crazy plots, terrible acting, lousy dubbing and fantastic box artwork then you are in the right place.

Enjoy.

In the beginning

 A long time ago — before HD & Blue Ray — in a galaxy far, far away, there was VHS.

These strange items were like huge audio cassette tapes that were placed into massive machines. They would wiz, splutter and grind to produce pictures on your TV

These  pictures were known as FILMS! MOVIES! VIDEOS!

 You had to enter large shops (One or more on every main road) and rent them usually based only on strange cover art that lied about the content inside. You could not find anything out about these things (No IMDB then). Your viewing pleasure was based only on an explosive (animated) cover or a fictional blurb on the back.

This was the age of VHS - And I want it back!