MINDLESS MUSINGS

Glory Days of Home Video #1

I grew up during the dawn of home video players and video rentals. (in my old man voice)” Young people today could never appreciate the massive advancement home video was at the time!” Before that the only way you could see a movie was at the cinema (or Drive-In) or on television.

Television had stricter guidelines around profanity, sex and violence, so chances are if the movie you watched had any of that stuff it would be cut out, and often rather shabbily as I remember. Just think, if the film makers deliberately wanted to conceal any of the ‘mature content’ they would work it into the scene. For television some editor gets a list of what needs to be cut, and they just have to get rid of it. I can remember laughing with friends at school about how stupid some cuts looked.

In Australia in the late 70s and early 80s there were 5 different ratings for movies

G – General viewing: kids shows or family friendly stuff.

PG – Parental Guidance Recommended: a little bit of the darker and dirtier stuff (I remember the cinemas having a different one for this. NRC – Not Recommended for Children).

M – Mature audiences: this was where most of the action, horror and raunchy comedies or erotic stuff was. I’m sure we never had a problem getting into these ones as kids.

R – Restricted Audience: no one under 18 allowed: pretty much the same kinds of content as the M rating, but with more freedom to push the envelope.

X – The Shady Rating: Basically porn. The line between porn and erotica is definitely a post of its own. This stuff was not shown at the regular cinemas (that I am aware of).

Television never showed anything above an M rating and most of those movies were cut to bits. An R rated movie might have big chunks missing – sucked hard! The only way to see the ‘real’ movie was at the cinema. Do you see the frustration for the kids? We could never see an R rated film!

“That’s not true” I hear you say condescendingly. I ask you to recall the perceived distance between the ages of 12 and 18 when you were 12. With that aside, remember that the only way to see the uncensored version of an R rated movie was at the cinema. Movies have limited run times and once they were gone it was pretty much it.

We didn’t really have any theatre houses showing old movies in Sydney that I knew of. I am always amazed when I see the US 42^nd street style cinemas that just pumped out all kind of old and obscure movies non-stop – heaven to any film lover! When I was young (there it is again) you might catch an old movie as part of a double feature or a late-night screening in the cinema or as the ‘other’ film after the feature at a drive-in, but that was it.

When a movie had run its course at the cinemas it went into mothballs until some arbitrary time period had passed (it seemed like years) and then it popped up on Television. I remember the disappointment of seeing a movie I had really wanted to watch in the TV guide and that fucking disclaimer in brackets beside the title (modified for television) – fuck off!

Let us not forget the ultimate pain when watching a movie on television – fucken ads!!! Just like the uneven editing of censored content, the ads just interrupted the movies at intervals the viewer was never sure of. Mercifully a little care was taken not to cut to commercial in the middle of a scene, but it still ruined the flow of the whole experience.

TV series writers had fine-tuned the art of leading into commercials. They would always try to have some type of intrigue or exciting incident to ensure the viewer was keen to keep watching. Film makers did not need this and therefore the pacing was used very differently. TV companies need to have so many commercials shown during the movie and they’ll squeeze them in no matter what – rhythm be damned!

Home video – you little box of magic. It opened up the whole world of cinema in a way only the super-rich with their own private theatres could experience. Okay most of us were watching films made for the big screen on tiny pissweak television sets, but it didn’t matter to us. We were watching full, uncut and uninterrupted movies in the loungeroom; and if we wanted, we could rewind it and watch it again! Fantastic!

In the beginning these little beauties were very rare so people would go to the house that had one and find a spot – kids were usually on the floor. In the very early days, the offerings were quite limited, so the tapes rented could be quite eclectic. “Okay we’ve got The Wizard of OZ, Friday the 13^th & a Marx Bothers movie”. We loved it.