The Golden Age of VHS Trailers and Promos
Wherein I wax nostalgic for the bygone era of trailers and commercials on VHS tapes
The other day I was playing Music Box Trivia, which is the trivia at the Music Box Theatre here in Chicago. One of the categories was pirates. It was a “guess the image” round, and one of the images was from Cutthroat Island1, a notorious box office bomb starring Geena Davis and Mathew Modine. While I have seen Cutthroat Island at least once, I’ve seen the trailer countless times because it played in front of some VHS tape I had in the 90s. I can’t remember which VHS it was, but it must have been one I watched a lot because I remember every beat of that trailer. I used to rewatch movies a lot with my mother. It’s from her that I got my habit of serial re-watching films2. So I’ve probably seen the trailer at least 100 times. This made me think about all the VHS tapes that I had over the years and the trailers that were on them, which then brought me down this spiral of nostalgia that I am now sharing with you!
I can’t remember now if this was on the VHS for Groundhog Day or Little Women, or some other Columbia-TriStar release, but on one of those tapes there was a promo for Columbia’s Barbara Streisand collection. I remember it so vividly, with clips from Funny Girl, Funny Lady, and The Owl and the Pussycat. The clip I remember the most distinctly was from “the unforgettable” The Way We Were when Robert Redford is going to leave her and she goes, “You’ll never find anyone as good for you as I am, to believe in you as much as I do, who loves you as much!” and he says “I know that.” and then she emphatically goes “Well then why!?” and it was all very dramatic. I didn’t know anything about this movie, but for years I did know that Robert Redford left Barbra Streisand and she was mad about it and I wondered why he would do that! About 15 years later I finally watched The Way We Were and sadly the scene did not live up to the hype. Not because it isn’t a great scene (it’s so good and the film is one of my all time favorites), but because I had, in those 15 years, created in my head a whole movie that didn’t really exist based on seeing that one clip completely out of context.
Another tape I remember had a promo for the Columbia-TriStar Romance Collection which had a strange collection of films on it, including the romantic fantasy film To Gillian On Her 37th Birthday and whatever film the trailer was on I must have also watched a lot because whenever I think of Michelle Pfeiffer I think of her saying “Go play with the live girls!” in that trailer and yet I didn’t even see this film until just a few years ago. It was even weirder than I could have imagined from that VHS trailer (and sadly not very good.)
There was also a trailer for The Godfather Saga on some Paramount film that I owned, and I recall hearing Nino Rota’s score and the “Love Theme” and just absolutely being bewitched by it. I honestly thought The Godfather was a romance for most of my childhood and into my teen years because of the way that trailer was cut. In my mind it was all about Pacino and Diane Keaton and their romance and heartbreak and him slamming the door on her face. When I finally did watch The Godfather it was a great film, but again it was not what I expected. I had wondered why so many men loved a movie that was a grand epic romance, and it turned out that’s because it’s not a grand epic romance (although, of course, there is lots of romance in the films3.)
There were also advertisements on some of my most-watched VHS tapes. On my tape for The Land Before Time there was an ad for Pizza Hut where a kid gets dropped off at another kid’s birthday party and his mother is giving him all kinds of advice on how to be polite, meanwhile the footage shows him having a wild and crazy time. I’ve actually only been to Pizza Hut once (my hometown does not have any chain restaurants), and I was shocked, shocked that it was not as fun as this ad made it seem.
On the VHS of All Dogs Go To Heaven there was a commercial for Downy where a couple of kids find a lost dog that they try to hide from their parents, covertly sneaking the dog into the house. They borrow some towels from the laundry room – next to some conveniently placed bottles of Downy – to dry the dog off after washing it in their perfect claw foot tub. Of course they make a mess and their parents get upset. But later the kids have the dog give their parents some daisies and all is forgiven and the dog gets to stay! I have never used Downy (I’m allergic to most laundry products) but I always have a soft spot for them because of this cute commercial and just how fluffy those towels look.
On the VHS for Lost World: Jurassic Park there was a commercial for Mercedes-Benz because they drive Mercedes-Benz jeeps or something into the forest to hunt dinosaurs, which is a bit weird when you think about it. The promo was cut to Marlene Dietrich singing “Falling in Love Again” and it showed vintage footage of different Mercedes-Benz models throughout the decades. I was definitely beguiled by the old-timey vibe of it all. I had a widescreen VHS of Lost World: Jurassic Park and, again, I watched it way more than I will ever let on. At the end of the credits there was a trailer for Jurassic Park The Ride. One time I fell asleep and then the ride commercial came on and it woke me up and I had never seen it before (I confess I had not gotten that far through the credits before) and I was like what?! It was like a little Easter egg. It was amazing. I did eventually go on Jurassic Park The Ride with my family once at Universal Studios in Burbank and we all got soaked to the bones and had a blast.
I’m not one to wax nostalgic for VHS as a format, unless the film was shot on VHS. I really am a stickler for home video releases to be in the proper aspect ratio and aim for as pristine a condition as the film is supposed to be presented. I first learned about aspect ratios from my mother. She took a film class for her Masters program, which she completed via correspondence in the 1980s4. The video store in my hometown, Top Hat Video, had a handful of international classics that she was supposed to watch but most of them were not widescreen. Later she saw a thing with Martin Scorsese talking about the importance of widescreen (and why pan and scan was so horrible). After that she started buying widescreen VHS tapes so that we could watch all the films properly. We had a lot of those international classics like Spartacus and Lawrence of Arabia, Bridge on the River Kwai, Seven Samurai, and then things like Passenger 57 (a favorite of mine) and every Lethal Weapon movie, all on widescreen tapes.
She would only buy a VHS tape if it were widescreen, so most of our VHS tapes were widescreen. Every once in a while I’d buy a romantic comedy that wasn’t widescreen or my dad would get something. He found a copy of Metropolis at the used section of some video store when we were visiting relatives in Los Angeles in the early 1990s. I don’t recall what store it was, but it was not a Blockbuster. It was somewhere in the Valley and it was right near a TCBY Treats. That’s all I remember. VHS and frozen yogurt! He was so excited to share it with us. It was such a terrible print, but obviously I was smitten with it. He also did that Columbia House thing where he got like 10 films for $.10 or whatever the deal was and one of them was Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, so we definitely watched that one a lot.
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Recently I was home and I was wondering what happened to all the VHS tapes. I know I took some of them with me to college and I eventually sold them like an idiot, but what happened to the rest of them? In our back room I found, still in its slipcase and everything, the VHS of E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, a film that I’ve only seen once when I was four years old. It scared me so much I haven’t watched it since. I still have visceral dreams about it 35 years later. I remember its scenes deeply. I remember Elliot in his backyard. My backyard growing up looked so much like Elliot’s backyard that I just knew I was going to get abducted by aliens some day. I remember the Reese’s Pieces. To this day every time I see Reese‘s Pieces I freak out a little. But the main thing I remembered from this VHS was the green sprockets and the green hinges on the tape. It was so deeply remembered in my brain even though I hadn’t seen this VHS tape in 30 years that when I found it in the back of my parents’ house the green was the exact shade of green that I remembered. It was so freaky! I left the tape there.
So yeah, I am waxing nostalgic a little bit here about VHS tapes. But really, I’m waxing nostalgic for the tangible quality of it all5 and the random trailers that the studios would actually put out on their home video releases. DVDs did this as well, but you could easily skip past them in a way that was not really possible on VHS (unless you hit fast forward, which was its own adventure). I do think there was something really ineffable and downright magical about the trailers, promos, and commercials there were on VHS tapes, especially when you were a kid. You got a peek at films that were made for older audiences and you could just make up what they were about. Somewhere in the back of my mind my little kid brain misses that.
Not the image used as the header. It was a much deeper cut image, which is why I know I’ve seen that trailer so many times it’s just part of my DNA now.
I very rarely re-log films on Letterboxd because you do NOT need to know how many times I’ve seen The Age of Adaline.
Justice for Apollonia!
Younger readers, yes that really used to used to be a thing.
I do still buy Blu-rays, etc. and my older DVDs all have random assortments of trailers, etc. on them, but it’s not quite the same.
I love this! I don't have as many clear VHS trailer memories, except for what I believe was the "Little Women" VHS we had. I remember "The Baby-Sitter's Club" (set to "Dreams" by the Cranberries) and "Secret of Roan Inish" trailers. I just remembered the BSC trailer several years ago and it all came rushing back to me - I was so psyched to find it on YouTube! I only just saw BSC and Roan Inish for real in the past few years, too - the imaginary films in my head were just too good.
A cousin of this is the movies that were recorded from TV. There’s a lot of tv spots that I remember from specific tapes my dad had. And if there was 2-3 movies on one tape, those movies are linked on my mind.
The Warriors preceded Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. So I saw the ending of the warriors so much.
We also had a Three Stooges marathon recorded from TBS. The TV spot for Fatal Instinct is seared in my brain.