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By Robert Freese   Super Video was a partnership between the Independent-International Pictures owners Sam Sherman and Dan Kennis with salesman Gary Eller. It was founded at a time when videocassette tapes were manufactured primarily for commercial use in video rental stores. For the most part, only die-hard fans bought a pre-recorded factory-sealed movie on videocassette, as the cost could be anywhere from fifty to a hundred dollars per tape.   The idea was brought to Sherman and Kennis on several occasions to supply their IIP catalog of movies for the lucrative home video marketplace. Ultimately, early offers were passed...

By Josh Schafer / Benny Junko   To introduce you to this installment of The Visual History of Audio/Video Plus, we’ll be rewinding back to LUNCHMEAT #7 and exhuming an excerpt from a piece by Matthew Dilts-Williams as he details and explores one of horror home video’s most beloved labels: Thriller Video. We’ll also offer up the full checklist for the Thriller Video catalog, complete with pricing from 2012. If you’re wondering how much a copy of Alabama’s Ghost was going for about 8 years ago, we got you, my dudes.      Image courtesy of Regan Ray.   The...

By Josh Schafer   VHS collectors are a fascinating breed of fanatic. Tapeheads gather plastic slabs of cinema for myriad reasons that are often personal, and slathered with passion. Nostalgia is a major factor in many collectors’ endeavors, enabling them to connect with those distant, dusty, but ever-warm and radical memories of pre-adult life. There’s also the irresistible allure of eye-popping cover art, and in the world of VHS, there’s plenty of that visual VHStimulation to go around. Other collectors are inclined to uncover obscure oddities and incredible independent efforts that only VHS could preserve. You gotta love a dope rarity in its truest form....

By Robert Freese   When I recently spoke to Greg Luce for a piece I wrote for The Phantom of the Movies’ Videoscope Magazine (Winter 2020, #113), he recalled the early days of home video, way before he started Sinister Cinema, and painted a picture of what it was like for film lovers turned film collectors in that era.   He reminisced about a time just prior to the home video explosion in the early ‘80s that saw Mom-and-Pop video rental stores appearing overnight on every street corner (surely the most fun and exciting time of the VHS/Betamax era) and...

By Josh Schafer / Benny Junko   Six-packs are a signature emblem of fun, Tapeheads. They’re the perfect equation for a premium personal party, and the ideal amount for sharing with a friend for a flow of merriment. Yeah, I’m talking about brews, dudes. But there’s another kind of six-pack that will be especially attractive to Videovores: The JVC Six-Pack of videocassettes, which is an obscure but awesome marketing move from the inventors of the VCR. Behold below, quite possibly the most party blank VHS package of all-time.      Image courtesy of Reddit.   JVC wasn’t done, either. Sometime...