batman

A couple of episodes of Travelling Man with Leigh Lawson. Excellent.

moonfleet

I watched again "Dracula Prince of Darkness", the murder in the crypt is a really gory one !!..., with the man hanged by the feet, bleading abundently...

Who knows, by the way, what is the painting, behind him when entering in the cave , a surrealistic one, with demons in it ......

Moon.

"Very difficult !" "Craazy!"

dpgmel

Watched Keith Michell in " The Hellfire Club " an early 60's piece of nonsense, from watching the film you'd wonder why The Hellfire Club was so named.

Harleybloke

I'd forgotten how great this is! Fantastic cast and I really enjoyed the special features!

.....You couldn't hear it, if they were shooting at me with howitzers!

doojeen

No bother! I regard VHS as an old and dear friend that I have no intention of turning my back on. I've had countless hours of enjoyment from my video collection and intend to continue watching them indefinitely, regardless of any shortcomings, in the same way that I still enjoy listening to my vinyl records. Anyone else feel the same?

Steve Crook

Definitely. DVD has its uses but I use VHS more than DVD

Steve

dremble wedge

One Russian Summer

An adaptation of an unfinished Lermontov novel set in 18th century Russia with Ollie Reed as a landowner and John McEnery as a wanderer who rouses his peasant workforce.

A portentous screenplay and some dodgy thesping harms it, but it looks fabulous and Ollie seems to be having fun (especially when he gets to share a bath with Claudia Cardinale!)

Lord Lionheart

The Lady Vanishes - Being a Hitchcock fan as I'm sure many people are I watched this movie really hoping to like it. I'm a huge fan of the Robert Donat version of The 39 Steps and hoped for something equally as entertaining. For me TLV was just too dated, which was surprising as it was made ( or released) 3 or 4 years after The 39 steps.
From the opeing scenes featuring a model Alpine style village complete with solitary toy car being pulled along the road to the long pauses with almost silent movie style shots of the leering Italian magician, it was also quite obvious who the bad guy was from his first apperance. Cecil Parkinson was interesting up until his unintentionally hilarious death scene. Mrs. Froy was quite well acted, again until the final scene, where a septagenarian leaps through the window and is last seen sprinting through the woods ( or I should say a stuntman dressed in old lady's tweed is last seen sprinting away at probably a world record 100 metres back in the 30's). Charters and Caldicott as two upper-class English cricket fans have their moments, including some double entendre moments with regards to sleeping with the maid, but the scene where Caldicott gets shot in the arm is again unintentionally stiff upper-lip comedy. Googie Withers looking attractive along with the 2 other ladies is another highlight. I'm sure the movie has to be taken into context as an early talkie and I have no attached nostalgia as I do with the 39 steps, but I even remember Blackmail being a lot better as an early Hitchcock effort than TLV. Interesting from a historical perspective to see how much Hitchcock developed his technique but really quite dated and at times funny at inappropriate times. Makes the 39 Steps look even better when viewed in contrast to this effort.

Harbottle

A couple of cracking episodes of Manhunt, it must be said some of the early episodes were less than wonderful but a series worth sticking with I think. Confessional (E17) with a very young Brian Cox and the really excellent Death Wish (E18). This is pretty much a two hander between James Maxwell and Peter Barkworth, which put me in mind of the excellent Public Eye episode The Man Who Said Sorry with Alfred Burke and Paul Rogers.

moonfleet

But VHS has the inconvenient of non multiquoted languages:cool....if only I could have all my VHS in DVD !! (I got got three copies of "Night of the Demon", where is the magical to turn it into good numerical ones ??....I know, peer to peer)

Moon.

"Very difficult !" "Craazy!"

Steve Crook

I have so many films and TV shows on VHS that it would take years to copy them all onto DVD - so I won't bother.

There are other advantages with VHS like that it doesn't use compression techniques that make it miss frames. But DVDs do let you jump directly to the scene you want. They both have their uses, and their limitations

But really, none of them are as good as projected film

Steve

moonfleet

Next room in my castle will be the projection one !!....I'm just thinking on the Kubrick's theory of "which color for the reflecting walls ??"

Moon.

"Very difficult !" "Craazy!"

doojeen

Snap! I'm so glad that I'm not a lone voice crying in the VHS wilderness. I'm still knocked out by video technology - the amazingly intricate combination of mechanical and electronic components in a VCR, which most people no doubt take for granted:

HowStuffWorks "How VCRs Work"

"The drive mechanism in the VCR has to extract a good long piece of tape from the cassette and wrap it around a variety of rollers, drums and heads in order to play the tape. It is absolutely amazing that a VCR ever works!"

Caine

It's been a few years since hearing the dreaded stomach churning sounds of some favourite, treasured & totally irreplaceable VHS tape being scoffed by an evil, sadistic bastard grinning VCR.

That's something I don't miss!

julian_craster

VHS tapes are fine, but only if you are viewing them on a small screen tv set (say 28ins or under)

BUT............some commercial DVDs are of atrocious quality, far worse than a good VHS tape - so not just bootleg DVDR discs !