Successful Gimmickry!

Ladies and Germs, I spoke to you last week of an awfully clever idea MPI and Dark Sky Films had to cross promote their new release, The House of the Devil. In order to keep with the decidedly 80s throwback vibe, Dark Sky packaged the dvd copy of HotD with an authentic G-Damned VHS version of the film!

And today, the Cap'n got his grubby mitts on said VHS copy (along with a Blu-Ray copy and extra dvd copy that might end up as a prize for some future contest), so let's take a look at this bad boy, mmhm?

First things first: much respect for the "clamshell" approach. Not only does it look like a rental I could've seen at Carbonated Video or The Video Bar, but it has the weight of "old ass videotape" that dvds just don't replicate. The "new release" doesn't hurt things either. As a child of the 80's, I've seen many a tape that looked suspiciously like this.

I realize that my photo taking leaves something to be desired on the "text" front, but the most important part is the "Caution" section, which is spot on for the time period. It says " Caution: This film contains satanic references and graphic violence." In fact, only the Copyright 2009 indicates in any way that this wasn't just some lost film from the era.

Look at that shit. It's been a long time since I saw a new videocassette as is, but they made a concerted effort to keep it on the level. In this picture and the next one you can kinda see the "Gorgon Video" logo above the title. It also opens the tape, so if you haven't seen Faces of Death in a while, get ready for a pleasant reminder.


How do you like that? Me, I likes it plenty.

If I have one gripe about the VHS tape (and yes, I put it in my VCR), it's that the film is presented "letterboxed" instead of "pan and scan". Normally I abhor all panning and scanning, especially in this age of widescreen tvs, but there weren't too many letterboxed videotapes that I can remember from the early 80's (it happened much later in the game; I can remember "letterboxed" copies of the Star Wars Trilogy and, of all things, Die Hard). In the interest of maintaining verisimilitude, I do wish that they'd created a faux "full frame" copy for the tape.

Stay tuned in the next day or so for a review of the film proper, but I had to share this geekiness with you folks tonight.