Last week we went along to the Lifeline bookfair at the Brisbane Convention Centre. This is where all of the books that get thrown into those charity donation bins each year end up. We perused the books in the unpriced section for a while, where you pay based on the size of the book, not the content, but nothing really caught our eye. We then moved over to the VHS tape tables, and discovered a treasure trove of the best and worst 90’s entertainment, at only 25 cents a tape! We came home with more than a boxful, about 34 tapes in total, and have been working our way through them ever since, suffering through the horrors of rewinding and bad quality sound.

Here are some of the tapes watched so far.

1. Crazy Japanese Tape

I picked this tape up solely for the reason that there was no English to be found on the box at all. The front cover features 2 men, both sitting down, one eating something, the other playing an odd Japanese guitar-like instrument. The only other information I can gather from the front of the box is the number 9 in a big yellow diamond (maybe this is the 9th tape in a series) and that someone once paid $3.50 for this tape. Not really a bargain when you compare it to the 25 cents I spent. The box cover turned out to be far more interesting than the contents ever could be. The tape turned out to be a karaoke video for a a band that played what I can only describe with limited knowledge of Asian music styles as Japanese folk music. The video features a couple singing and dancing at various locations around a Japanese city, riding bikes, and for some reason, in the bath as the lyrics scrolled across the bottom of the screen in big blue Japanese characters. The tape features a brief glimpse of nipple in one of the bath shots, but apart from that, this tape was pretty disappointing. I had gotten my hopes up that for a crazy Japanese game show, and was rightfully shot down. Perhaps Japan isn’t as interesting as I had once thought.

My VHS Rating: 1/5

2. Basics of Skateboarding: The First Step

I picked up this tape because Henry and I have been trying, to some degree of success, to learn how to skateboard. Between waking up the neighbours from skating in the backyard at night and looking like idiots when we try and skate out on the street, we probably need some helpful instruction and a few hints. This tape offered us hints and tips from skateboarding’s pros, and at only 25 cents I couldn’t turn it down. If nothing else it would provide us with an entertaining look into 90s skate culture.

This tape was neither helpful, nor entertaining. In fact I think this tape was made as a scam to sell to young children when they buy their first skateboard. Nothing really gets explained in this video, and the pro’s presenting obviously have no desire to go into any detail when ‘teaching’ you how to skate.

An average segment starts with the the presenter instructing, “This is how you perform a (trick name),” then they perform the trick as a demonstration, and follow up with, “And that’s how you do a (trick name)”. No additional information is given. The rest of each segment is then made up of the skater that just explained the trick performing it in a hundred ways that would be impossible for a beginner to even attempt.

My VHS Rating: 1.5/5

3. Fortress (1993)

Finally something worth my time. A 90s action blockbuster. You don’t have to look past the huge arm-gun, cheap looking robot and flames on the cover to know that this movie is going to be very bad, in a very good way.

Set in America in the not too distant future, in a time of population control, where couples are only allowed to have one child, our hero John Brennick and his wife find themselves being arrested by the military run government for being pregnant with their 2nd baby. The couple is sentenced to do 31 years hard time in the high-tech, underground prison run by the evil Men-tel corporation, who are secretly stealing prisoners babies and turning them into half robot half human cyborgs for some reason I am yet to figure out. The over the top plot proceeds with Brennick and his wife attempting to escape, with the help of a gang of their fellow inmates, of course, with plenty of action, blood and violence along the way.

On a separate note, this movie was filmed in my home state of Queensland of all places, most likely at Movie World Henry tells me, and much to my disappointment, the lead character never wears the shiny pants and studded belt outfit seen on the cover in the actual movie.

My VHS Rating: 4/5

4. A Blank Tape

When I came across a blank tape at the book fair, I couldn’t help myself. I had to buy it. You can’t buy much for less than a dollar these days, and for 25 cents I could have a voyeuristic look at what people were recording on their VCRs in the 90s. The possibilities of what this tape contained were endless. Could it be an old taping of Hey Hey it’s Saturday! Or someone’s home videos?

The only clue the box gave was a taped on post it note that read something like “nasit” or “dash”, either way it didn’t give much insight into what the tape contained. We popped the tape in and pressed play, only to discover it was a tape full of Mash episodes. Never mind, we thought, the tape might at least give us a nostalgic look at the ads that were being played at the time it was recorded, which the older style channel 7 logo in the corner told me was sometime between 2001 and 2003. But whoever recorded this tape was one of those people that cuts out the ads, which means they were watching the episodes of Mash while they taped it to watch later, rather than taping it because they were going to miss it that night. I’m not actually sure about which I think is worse.

Stay tuned for more VHS adventures, including killer snowmen, badly dubbed ninja movies, and terrible 90s porn.