well, another one from the 80s that is. a few months ago i wrote of a (poorly written yet) boss film magazine i found down the market. that one can be found via clicking here, look you see. that said, or if you will linked, should you be enthusiastic about all things chronological then you may wish to read this one first, for it is an even older edition of a publication (periodical) what i gone done found.
be warned, though, for i am going to showcase precisely none (zero) of the things depicted on the cover of this magazine. a magazine, by the way, called Movie Star. the April 1981 edition, which with how they date such will have come out in March 1981, so that makes it just about on the button 45 years old at the time of this being published here. cost was 40p (forty pence), which was about half the price of a packet of cigarettes then. indeed that will be of some relevance.
so yes, the cover selling point was an interview (of sorts) with John Hurt. around this time he will likely have been one of the most successful British actors, after Alien and i would have imagined The Elephant Man was around then. also Champions, but i rather suspect that was a few years later. quite a hefty article on Popeye too, which was being given a hefty push as likely being the biggest film ever made. didn't quite turn out like that.
rather than post any of them articles though, and as warned above, i am just putting up a few adverts from the magazine. truth be told i think the magazine is a 50-50 (perhaps 52-48) split between articles and adverts anyway, and i suspect the adverts were the reason people bought this. you have to always bear in mind we had no "internet" or similar then, going to the shops or mail order from adverts in magazines and newspapers was jolly well it.
no doubt i am going to repeat myself with some comments here, so deal with it in your own mind now. or, you know, skip my writing anyway and just look at the pictures. like the one above, for instance, which is interesting for all sorts of reasons, one of them being renaming The Deer Hunter as 'Deerhunter'.
people of this century (the kids, etc) won't understand a time when you could not watch (within reason) whatever the heck you wished in your own home. that there "internet" thing has made it a bit of a free for all, with absolutely nothing "banned" or unavailable. 1984 onwards saw all (official, legal) videos have to have a BBFC certificate. before that legislation it was a touch of a free for all. hence you being able to get The Exorcist on video, when it was declined a certificate for cinema release. Warner had no problems issuing it on video in the UK as there was no requirement for a certificate. with great interest i see Project Video, along with others in the magazine, offer Babyface. a rather explicit slice of adult entertainment (as in that sort of thing) which happens to be very funny and certainly would not have been given a certificate by the BBFC. oddly it features the song Chicken Man, which would famously get used a few years later as the theme for the kids tv show Grange Hill.
just what, exactly, is (or was) an E180? that's a three hour (180 minutes) blank video tape. by the end of the 80s you could get them for a couple of pounds, but that's not too bad an early 80s price.
if in 1981 you had what might (in a respectful way) be called a niche interest or hobby then you had very little chance of seeing documentaries about it on the three (3) tv channels available. home video was quite the game changer, as you can see in the above advert. back then if you were interested in something like airships or sea disasters it was most likely your only way of indulging was books down the library. sure, yes, £40 for a video on one of these subjects seems rather steep these days, but realistically that was the only choice you had.
for a kind of quasi comparison, i seem to recall a documentary from somewhere around 81, 82 or 83, reporting on the "rising scourge" of pirate videos being sold at markets, in particular in London (innit). as such things stick in my mind i can recall someone selling videos of football matches taped off of the tele for £40 ago. one has to remember that football matches (with the exception of the FA cup final) were rarely show live. given a choice between paying £40 for a video of airships or the same on a video of West Ham vs Fulham, well, it would totes be airships, thanks.
at least i assume RCA leads, as this will be when it was all as simple as the European Economic Community (EEC) or even European Community (EC), long before it became the European Union (or EU). yes, this is all a go at the French, yet (as usual) a valid one. if you ever wondered why your fancy new TV has a preposterous, bulky "SCART" port, that's because the French invented it (hence it being useless) and they insisted all EU video equipment have a SCART port. effectively it's a way of connecting devices to produce a lower quality image than you get with RCA. not content with that the French also insisted on "inventing" secam, which is a poorer quality pirate version of pal. considering how they took the basic idea of a car and made it all worse i suppose it is no surprise that they looked at the wonders of home video entertainment and immediately sought a way to make it rubbish.
just to add a bit of colour (so to speak) to this post and there's an advert for some "adult" entertainment for you. yes, very much that sort of thing. once again it does, mindful of the free for all of today, seem absurd that adults were prevented from watching whatever (legal) they wished in their own home from 1984 onwards. i mean yes, i get the point of certification, for that allows people to make their own decisions. but stopping adults entire from their own choices? presumably all it did was pump up prices for "black market" tapes of this nature.
oddly, or as it happens, i think that i have one of the "preview" tapes advertised here for £15 tucked away somewhere. no, it's not the one advertised here, or even the same film studio (or whatever) but, all the same, more or less the same idea. and very much uncensored, from what i recall.
my main point of interest for the above was that one had to pay £20 just to join this video rental club. at first that sounds rather staggering, but then again it was not uncommon. video rental tapes were not cheap at all, costing somewhere around £20 north or south of £100, depending on the popularity. you would have to rent it out at least a dozen times to make profit, so getting a deposit of renters was wise, as i am taking it as a given the idea was to prevent people renting a tape and not returning it. or if they did not return it at least you got some money off of them.
indeed Mr & Mrs Jones have some interesting choices of films they are going to watch. particularly their wish to rent The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which was very much refused a cinema certificate off of the BBFC, but up to 1984 could be rented on video. now you can indeed pick up DVD copies fairly easy at charity shops or from markets. print is a bit small but once again Babyface is proudly being advertised there. from memory "big" John Holmes is in it. haven't seen it in years, but i all of a sudden have an inkling to watch it again.
further filth for you on offer in the bottom advert, then, all the way from Dorset (no less). or somewhat cheaper if you purchased all six (6) titles they had. yet it is the top advert of these two, off of Bolton video, that caught my attention. assuming The Alien is just Alien, it is that they are offering Straw Dogs what stands out. once again i am fairly sure that was one of the banned by the BBFC films which did not get a cinema release in the UK. indeed i am obliged to point out that, according to the full tilt version of The Parrot Sketch off of Monty Python, Bolton is (as point of fact) a palindrome, so Notlob.
partially interesting that Notlob Video Centre, like many others, were offering Jaws 2 but not, it would seem, the original (Jaws). nope, sorry, no idea why not, but there's a noticeable lack of any Spielberg films being offered. or Star Wars for that matter. why no Godfather Part II is easy, at least on a guess. it was 190 minutes long, to be sure, and i don't think a longer video tape than 180 minutes was in existence or wide use. still, from what i recall of it Jaws 2 was pretty decent.
to move, with some regret, away from the filth and the banned, more niche interest stuff on offer in the above advert. once again (sorry) this must seem outlandish to anyone who(m) wasn't there at the time. i would be fairly sure all these kind of tutorial things are available online and for free on that internet thing, with it most probably being "you tube" that you can find these on. not too convinced that one could learn kung-fu off of a video, but then i have never tried. rest of them seem plausible. pricing for the language ones (£60!) seems steep, but then that was a revolutionary new way to get access to learning such. i would think the only alternate was a set of audio cassettes and books. yes, as overweight and out of date as i am, i would say this century i do not understand is "more better" in some respects. that we do sometimes use the internet to educate, to teach and inform is amazing. however, not sure £40 (or so) on a "video doctor" is much different from using google for medical symptoms.
would i say the era covered by this magazine and its adverts was "better"? there is no direct answer to that one. just how home video revolutionised things remains, when you think of it, astonishing, and it is video machines in homes what paved the way for all the entertainment means you have now. if they were not popular (and financially lucrative) or hadn't taken off, no one would have spent any money looking at means of enhancing the home entertainment experience to make even more money. there was something special (magical, perhaps) about being able to watch a film of your choice, at whatever time you wished and irrespective of whether the BBFC believed you should be allowed to watch it or not. it has now all become taken for granted and feels rather disposable.
sorry, sorry, but yes, i had to include the above advert, off of the back of the magazine. can't remember exactly, but pretty sure it was late 90s or early 2000s when all printed cigarette adverts got banned here in the UK. does feel quite strange seeing one again, for it has been some time since i saw one.
right, that's that. many thanks to anyone who had a bit of a read of my waffle here, but yes i do (very much) appreciate mostly it's the adverts what will have been the bit of interest. there is no way i shall be around to find out, but the mind does wonder what, exactly, someone in 2071 is going to make of something published in 2026. doubtful they will even have magazines by that stage.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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