My dad had loads of videos. Stuff taped off telly or stuff he bought off car boots and charity shops. I used to watch loads of it. A lot of Bond movies, Star wars and older sci-fi like invasion of the body snatchers. The ones that really stood out though were his Hammer horror and the vincent price/corman poe movies. We also used to go to the local libary and the off-license near home both had great selections as well.
I think though the real obsession came first when I picked up Jonathon Ross's incredibly strange film book. Mainly for the section on Russ Meyer as I was 'at that age' and all the photos of huge boobs were very appealing (some things don't change) Surprisingly though I actually READ the book and enjoyed it. I remembered reading the descriptions of Cannibal holocaust/ferox, evil dead ect and thinking that I HAD to see these films. My collecting obsession with comics began to fall by the way side as I actively hunted for banned and outlawed films!
The other thing that kick-started my obsession was the Soavi film STAGEFRIGHT. The bloke at the off license would buy in anything horror related (also any action films, preferably Dolph lundgren, vanne damme ect) so the few italian exploitation pics that were actually still getting releases would hit the shelves alongside the latest Friday 13th/nightmare on elm street. I was blown away by the style and ferocity of the movie, it was unlike any of the western horrors I had been watching and I wanted more!!
Incidentally, with the early stage fright VHS releases there was one with gold lettering and one with plain. The gold lettering version was more uncut.
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