Thomas Hodge
VHS: Video Cover Art
Published by Schiffer Publishing
Jun 08, 2015
Web Exclusive
For all of the convenience it offers, online streaming has sucked much of the joy out of discovering movies. Scrolling through Netflix’s carousels of custom-built recommendations doesn’t give you the same adventurous feeling that scanning rack after rack of rental options at a local video shop used to. Before the Internet, the best way to get a handle on a film’s content and tone was through its cover art—and in those days, it was art. These video boxes would advertise (and often exaggerate) a movie’s offerings with colorful, lurid, and/or scandalous artwork: the best of these were usually painted. Horror films would show off rotund, hillbilly cannibals holding long strings of sausages and posed in front of glistening meat hooks (dripping with blood, of course.) A science fiction b-movie might feature an oversized alien wasp, its stinger positioned over a fearful, nubile, and scantily-clad young lady. (Invariably, the monster painted on the box would look more realistic than the one in the film itself.) A raunchy comedy would sensationalize its offerings by portraying its geeky teenage hero gawking buxom blondes in short-shorts, and be plastered from top to bottom with terrible double-entendres.
Movies just don’t advertise themselves that way anymore. (For unknown reasons, painted covers went out of fashion in the early 90s.) These may sound like the words of an old codger desperately clinging to youthful nostalgia, but if anything here rang true to you, then VHS: Video Cover Art is for you. Schiffer Books’ handsome new coffee table book was compiled by artist and VHS collector Thomas Hodge, who is well-known for creating ‘80s-style posters for modern films under the name The Dude Designs. (Horror fans will probably remember his work for Hobo With A Shotgun or The Innkeepers.) He proves an ideal candidate to curate a book like this one—his art background aside, his understanding of and passion for the work is clear from his written introduction:
“The artwork was the [video] distributor’s front line of attack. They had to sell the film and sell it in incredibly close proximity to hundreds of competitors, so each artwork had to be more creative, more outlandish, and offer more of a visual feast for the eyes than its neighbor,” Hodges explains. “Video cover art could even elevate the blandest of movies with the most incredible explosion of imagery.”
VHS: Video Cover Art contains over 240 full-page, full-color sleeve scans, divided into categories as all-encompassing as those you’d have found in the local rental shop: Action, Comedy, Horror, Kids, Sci-Fi, and Thriller. Each page includes the film’s alternate titles, distributor, release year, and, if known, the name of the artist. (Sadly, so many artists here didn’t sign their incredible, crazy paintings.) The real brilliance of VHS: Video Cover Art, however, is that it includes the front and back covers of each title featured. So, not only do you get the full effect of every wraparound cover painting, but also the movie’s promo stills, taglines, and sensationalized plot descriptions. (These are often riddled with hilarious typos and misspellings; quality control was certainly not a priority in the video market back then.) This choice elevates VHS: Video Cover Art from an offbeat art book to an honest-to-goodness treasure trove of film discovery. Diehard b-movie nuts will want to see at least half the low-budget flicks found inside the volume (and should be able to find ways to screen many of them with just a bit of Googling.)
Here’s a small taste of the unbelievable movie marketing you’ll find in this volume:
- Eliminators: “Mandroid. Mercenary. Scientist. Ninja. Each one a specialist. Together they are… ELIMINATORS.”
- Space Wars: “One of the best space war films ever made.”
- Silk: “When the heat’s on no one’s smoother than… SILK.”
- Sloane: “He takes over where the law leaves off!”
- Aerobicide: “This workout’ll kill you!”
North American readers should be warned that VHS: Video Cover Art focuses on U.K. box art—so, much of what you see here may not be the same boxes you remember ogling as a kid. That doesn’t make them any less fun to browse, however, and in the case of the book’s better-known movies, it’s interesting to see how a film was marketed in another region.
If you’re old enough to remember the glory days of VHS, this book is the closest you’ll probably come to reproducing that feeling of browsing the tape rental racks of your youth. (For around the same price of some Blu-rays, the hours you’ll lose looking at its pages come at a bargain.) VHS: Video Cover Art is highly recommended for fans of cinematic obscurities in any form.
Author rating: 9/10
Average reader rating: 9/10
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