I love Japanese VHS and have a pretty good collection of them. While I have yet to scale the epic heights of Castle Banzai and all those Ninja films (my Tough To Kill brother, Paul, is living in a monumental stack I'm sure)-I just love finding these films. There are still a few to locate, and without those tapes there certainly never would have been a Tough To Kill book.
So, here are some big scans to preserve the artwork, the rare stills and the boundless enthusiasm of these old designs. Formats get smaller, but VHS clamshell boxes from Japan are eternal. If you like these, just let me know and I'll keep on scanning-there are a lot to do!
INTERZONE--This is an odd duck of a post nuke eurotrasher to say the very least. You can read a tandem Tough To Kill review here.
MASTER OF THE WORLD--Alberto Cavallone goes CaveManCrazy! One of my favorite finds...letterboxed no less. Dig the step by step gore on the back cover...wow!
SFX RETALIATOR--Silver Star produced weird movies, but a trashy rip off of F/X with Robert Ginty, Cameron Mitchell and Linda Blair? Awesome and a must see for the fake tank. My review is here.
TOUGH TO KILL--This is a great release, it contains the D'Amato action classic in widescreen and demolishes the US DVD release for clarity and sound quality. There is more artwork for this film on my blog right here.
2 comments:
There's a few dollars to be made in putting together a book of just Japanese VHS covers for sure. They are for sure just so very cool. Splash art Japanese word splurge over the covers adds to the burning desire to have & to hold. Okay I know its excessive to have multiples of some of these movies just because of some different art work (Mind you Mr. Zuzelo I suspect an entire tree of multiple Comic book collectors issues lay around the Zed Zone) I love the rarer colour splurge art on the Japanese Video Tape for Cobra Mission. The regular version is a grey tone. Love those artist impression poster art VHS covers for the Mark Gregory Actioners.
If my comic collection could talk...too much paper! I have the gray edition of Cobra Mission myself. I'd love to see a Japanese VHS book, it would be easy to do and put on Lulu :)
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