By THOMAS HODGE (Schiffer Publishing; 2015)
This is the British follow-up to 2011’s All-American PORTABLE GRINDHOUSE. As with that book, VHS VIDEO COVER ART consists of VHS cover scans hailing from that medium’s golden age. I prefer the previous book, but this easier-to-obtain 2015 volume is highly recommended nonetheless.
The complier was Thomas Hodge, a.k.a. “The Dude Designs,” a British poster artist and obsessive VHS collector. He of course includes a textual introduction, which refrains from attempting a history of the VHS era (as PORTABLE GRINDHOUSE unfortunately did), focusing instead on Hodge’s passion for the format and its cover art, which “represents pure unabashed creativity in design. It was a time when distributors actually turned to an artist for a film’s creative direction, and that’s what they got—inspiring, imaginative and awesome creativity.”
The covers on display were chosen, according to Hodge, “purely on artistic merit to highlight the artwork in its own right and display the amazing variety of styles of these often overlooked design gems.” Taken as a whole, two things about this book are immediately apparent: 1). The vast majority of these covers are deeply misleading, as they’re in most cases infinitely more gripping and imaginative than anything in the movies they purport to advertise (the stirring TNT JACKSON cover pictured here won’t prepare you for the inertness of that 1974 film, and the retina-searing, action-oriented advertising for DEAD-END DRIVE-IN gives a wholly inaccurate idea of that 1986 film’s gist), and 2). The widely held idea that the US has the market cornered on exploitive advertising is wrong, as much of this UK-centric art is positively jaw-dropping in its shameless pandering (the 1976 mob thriller THE DEATH COLLECTOR is represented by two separate VHS covers, both called ENFORCER II, with covers that replicate the iconic poster art for RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART TWO and COBRA).
Included are depictions of a man’s bubbling face in mid-scream (pictured on WARNING SIGN, 1985), a snake emerging from an open mouth to bear its fangs at us (THE KISS, 1988) and a woman’s scantily clad torso sprouting from a computer screen (DANGEROUS LOVE, 1988). Equally outrageous are the front cover taglines—“John’s got a half brother. Half brother, half something else”…“An eye-popping, teeth chattering, mind-blowing movie!!!”—and back cover descriptions, which contain gloriously overheated morsels like “In THE DEAD OF NIGHT beauty is only skin deep, but terror grips the very soul” and “when all that’s left is hate, nothing cuts as deep as COLD STEEL.”
Also included are the release dates of the VHS covers and the artists responsible for their fevered imagery. Those talented individuals deserved a great deal more than they received for their efforts, and now, with the release of this book, names like Luis Rey, Philip Richards, Graham Humphreys, Laurent Melki, Enzo Sciotti, J.R. Gilkes and Renato Casaro will hopefully get some long-overdue appreciation.