Vhs: Video Cover Art: 1980s to Early 1990s

author: Thomas Hodge
name: Wayne
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2016/03/02
date added: 2016/03/02
shelves:
review:
'VHS: Video Cover Art: 1980s to Early 1990s' by Thomas Hodge is a collection of covers from schlocky VHS releases, many of them pretty obscure. I found it to be a fun trip down memory lane.

Starting in the late 1980s and for about 13 years, I worked in the video field. First as a salesperson for a distributor. This was the heyday of the video store, and I was working out of Los Angeles. Along with big films like Top Gun and Cobra, I got to sell such gems as Banzai Runner! and Red Heat (not the Schwarzenegger film, although I sold that one too). For independent B film studios, the only way to compete was through outrageous art. In some cases, the art was better than the movie. This book is a gallery of covers from that era. The focus is on lesser known films, but I recognized quite a few. With each full cover, the release year, studio and artist is given, where the artist is known.

This is certainly niche art. There are lots of bulging biceps, explosions, big hair bikini girls and mirrored sunglasses. This is likely the kind of thing you'd find being sold as art at a gas station, but it served it's purpose. In a world of so many choices, sometimes you could only sell something based on cover art that had some appeal. This book brought back lots of memories of late nights watching a lot of really bad movies. It made me smile.

I received a review copy of this ebook from Schiffer Publishing, Ltd. and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.


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