May the 4th Be With You

バンビとゴジラの出会い

I'll never forget the first time I saw this classic. I rented Godzilla 1985 and Double Dragon from the local video store. As amazing weekend was in store. When it was my turn with the VCR, I popped my movie in and... had to adjust the tracking a whole lot. Finally when the picture became viewable, this little cartoon appeared on my TV. I now understand why the tape was in such poor condition, I must have re-winded that little clip a million times.

Will Vinton Sends A Pig To Castle Frankenswine

After the assault from the past few days of Kidding Around, I felt like you all would appreciate something... better. Will Vinton's Claymation Comedy of Horrors is a claymation Halloween special that aired in the early 90's. I didn't see this on Halloween though. My first exposure to it came from a random re-airing of it in the middle of the summer. On a local CBS affiliate no less! Back in those days I'd regularly look through the TV Guide for something cool and usually tape it.

I was always nuts for Halloween, so I had started a Halloween special tape that summer. Most sitcoms would rerun holiday episodes regardless of the time of year. This doubled for shows that had went to syndication. TV Guide was pretty dependable for a brief synopsis of what episode was coming on, so I was able to curate a tape full of specials pretty easily. 

From summer break to the actual season, I somehow made a full 8 hr VHS of Halloween specials that year. The tape is still in my Mom's possession, but I have no clue if it's even watchable. It was on regular rotation in my bedroom throughout the years. Last time I watched it the auto tracking couldn't keep up and it kept making weird squiggly noises. If you lived through the VHS days, you know the ones I'm talking about.

On it is this little show that I saw listed on a random summer evening on CBS. It's pretty fun. Basically a pig and his snail employee find a treasure map which leads to Frankenswine's (pigs, get it?) Castle on Halloween night. They encounter all sorts of monsters in a pretty great looking production. It's pretty obscure, I don't think it has much of a fan following like other Halloween specials. That's ok, not everything has to be a cult classic. I suppose anyway.

The Devil's Video, Blockbusters Video

If it's one this I particularly miss about the bygone days of video stores, it's the horror section at the local video store. Nothing could beat those Mom and Pop stores with their cardboard standees of Nightmare of Elm Street faded from the sun next to the wall of VHS horror. When Blockbuster came on the scene, they outdid everybody. Bigger stores with bigger selections. Even their horror selection spanned a few aisles.

Blockbuster even outdid Mom and Pop stores with the holidays. Instead of a generic decoration or two, they'd generally have some sort of promotion. For a while you could get Blockbuster branded tapes of classic horror at Halloween time. You've probably guessed by now that I loved it. I still remember fall of 1995 and their specific release of Halloween. Truly a magical time.

Later they added more movies to the Halloween display, which didn't always have the branding, but had the sweet sale price. Friday the 13th for a few bucks, heck yeah! I wish pictures of their Michael Myers display were easier to find. You could see him peeking at you through the windows into the parking lot. Damn creeper.

32X On VHS

If it wasn't completely obvious by my off schedule posting from yesterday, I had a bit of a schedule interruption. Which lead to me not working Tuesday night. Which lead to me watching a bunch of Sega videos on YouTube. So basically I did the best thing possible on all accounts. Which leads to the video above. I've said 'which leads to' a million times. For awhile, video game companies released these promotional videos for new products. It was pretty cool, I still got a few from Nintendo and Turbo Technologies somewhere. I now it may sound completely ridiculous in today's world of video available all the time, but at the time it was pretty magic to get one of these tapes in the mail.

Obviously I'm a pretty big fan of Sega and their systems. I've always just really dug them, you know? The Genesis/Mega Drive holds a special place in my heart and the fact that I can easily swing by Target and grab a Genesis Mini or an At Games Genesis even today is pretty great. People often marvel that the 2600 was on shelves for as long as it was without noticing that the Genesis/Mega Drive has been for sale since 1989. That's pretty amazing.

Of course that's not ignoring the bumps in the road and for awhile there Sega seemed to hit every single one of them. I can play 'what could have been' as much as I want and things still went the way they did. I could armchair quarterback how things could have worked better 'only if', but it's not like I know better. I can just say, man I wish things would have worked out better for the 32X and the Sega CD. I liked those.

Invasions On VHS

I usually skip past the previews on my videos these days. I'm not sure if these little collections of kids videos still get promo spots before the movie starts. Admittedly, in today's world of on demand... it's probably just a blurb with a picture on the series Facebook page. I admit now that my nostalgia for VHS stems from really enjoying a trip to the video store. You know, that'd be a cool store to do again. It wouldn't have to actually sell videos, but maybe oddball things like snacks and merchandising. Maybe prepaid cards for services. Look, I just want to go to Blockbuster. Is that so wrong?

Freddy can boost store profits!

Unless you're a lot younger than I realize, I don't have to remind many of you of the joys of a video rental store. While I usually stuck around the horror section in those golden VHS days, come Halloween time, that was the most popular location in the store. Everybody wanted something scary to watch Halloween night while eating a Tombstone pizza. It's just an ideal way to spend the evening while trick or treating the kids. Usually people went for the heavy hitters, Michael, Jason, Leatherface, and of course Freddy.

Well, did you know Freddy was a very profitable character? Not just in theaters, but especially on home video? In the case of the video above... well, Freddy is a smash hit money maker who's the talk of the town. You can count on his movies making your store a TON of money... especially at Halloween.

Beast Wars II on VHS

Jack-O 1995