Deadly Strangers (1974)The entire budget for the VHS box art must have been a sandwich found in the office refrigerator after a three-day weekend and a partly drained coffee cup with a cigarette butt in it.
This box art was a poor copy of one of the original theater posters. Of the several available this was the worst possible one whoever produced this VHS tape could have chosen.
A lot and I mean a lot of 80s VHS box art was very inexpensively and amateurishly produced, often not much better than what could be found in a high school art class. Puzzling, since one would think reproductions of the varied original poster art would have been available. It would have looked far better and appealing even given an inexpensive printing process.
For the DVD issue of the film the art is still not all that attractive. It consists mostly of solid colors but a least this time it depicts a recognizable Hayley Mills. Taken from another original poster for the film it is simplistic but is marginally more appealing. Undoubtedly both covers were chosen for their color scheme in relation to a very inexpensive printing process, but even muted colors and details from some of the other posters would have looked a lot better.
So when did this film come out on DVD. I have the original vhs, and a poor copy on dvd, but never knew there was a major dvd realease of the great Hayley Mills thriller! All of her British films deserve a decent release and decent box art, here in the U.S.!
ReplyDeleteThe DVD isn't Region 1 so it won't play in the US. It was issued back during a period of the video store era when a flood of inexpensive copies were produced to fill shelves and inventory, late 80s to mid-90s I think. Few DVDs were created from masters and were instead made from VHS tapes of varied quality (a problem that exists today in many blu-ray releases). I was lucky to find that old VHS and was reluctant to play it more than once, worried the machine would eat or ruin the tape.
ReplyDelete