The VHS Strikes Back

Blake’s choice this week is Secretary (2002), a film you probably wouldn’t have rented for a quiet evening with your parents. Directed by Steven Shainberg and written by Erin Cressida Wilson, it stars Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader. This independent production had a reported $4 million budget and was filmed in Los Angeles, with carefully designed interiors giving it that slightly strange, almo...

Dave’s pick this week is Convoy, Sam Peckinpah’s 1978 trucker movie starring Kris Kristofferson as Rubber Duck, alongside Ali MacGraw, Ernest Borgnine, Burt Young, Madge Sinclair and Franklyn Ajaye. Filmed largely across New Mexico, the production rolled badly over budget, ultimately costing around $12 million — more than twice its original estimate. Behind the camera, things were almost as unruly...

Chris takes the controls this week with The Living Daylights, the 1987 James Bond adventure that introduced Timothy Dalton as 007 following Roger Moore’s retirement from the role. Directed by Bond veteran John Glen and produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, the film had an estimated $40 million budget and paired Dalton with Maryam d’Abo, Jeroen Krabbé, Joe Don Baker, John Rhys-Davie...

Patreon Herb sends Dave and Chris into the Australian Outback with The Proposition, John Hillcoat’s 2005 revisionist Western, written by Nick Cave. An Australian–UK co-production made for a reported budget of around $2 million, the film was shot around Winton in Queensland, using the harsh Outback landscape rather than trying to make Australia look like somebody else’s Wild West. Guy Pearce leads...

Chosen by Gareth, Double Impact arrived in 1991 at exactly the point where Jean-Claude Van Damme was becoming one of the defining action stars of the VHS era. Directed by Sheldon Lettich and co-written by Lettich and Van Damme, the film had an estimated budget of around $15 million and was shot across Hong Kong and Southern California. Van Damme also co-produced the movie while taking on its dual...

This week's pick comes from JAC, who takes us back to 1989 for Best of the Best, directed by Robert Radler and developed from a story by Phillip Rhee and Paul Levine. Made for an estimated $5 million, the film assembled an impressively serious cast for a martial arts tournament movie, including Eric Roberts, Phillip Rhee, James Earl Jones, Sally Kirkland, Chris Penn and Louise Fletcher. Produc...

Chosen by Dave and Directed by Mike Hodges and produced by Dino De Laurentiis, Flash Gordon arrived in 1980 as a gloriously extravagant attempt to bring Alex Raymond’s classic comic-strip hero back to the big screen. With a budget reported at around $20–27 million, the production went all-in on enormous studio sets, lavish costumes and deliberately colourful, old-school effects. Sam J. Jones took...

Chris has chosen a 1995 action classic this week! Produced by action-movie heavyweights Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, Bad Boys marked Michael Bay’s feature-directing debut after cutting his teeth on commercials and music videos. Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Téa Leoni, Tchéky Karyo and Joe Pantoliano led the cast, with Miami’s sun-soaked streets providing the film’s glossy backdrop. Estimates...

Leigh's pick takes us deep into the wonderfully unhinged world of 1980s Taiwanese ninja cinema with Ninja Condors , also known as Ninjas, Condors 13 . Directed by Wu Kuo-Ren, credited on some releases as James Wu, the film was written by prolific exploitation filmmaker Godfrey Ho and produced by Chin Chang-Liang and Tomas Tang. Alexander Lo Rei leads a cast that also includes Eugene Thomas, Ge...

Chosen by Maff, directed and co-written by Sammo Hung, Wheels on Meals was a Hong Kong–Spanish co-production from Golden Harvest and Laurenfilm, filmed extensively on location around Barcelona and Tarragona. Reliable published budget figures are difficult to verify, but the international production gave the film a distinctive scale and sun-drenched European setting rarely seen in Hong Kong action...

Chosen by Dylan, Once Were Warriors was adapted from Alan Duff’s bestselling 1990 novel by screenwriter Riwia Brown. Made for approximately NZ$2 million and filmed over a demanding six-week shoot, it marked the feature-directing debut of Lee Tamahori. Much of the production took place around Ōtara in South Auckland, grounding the film’s urban Māori setting in real locations rather than a carefully...

Chosen by Dave, and adapted by David Mamet from his Pulitzer Prize-winning stage play, Glengarry Glen Ross was directed by James Foley and assembled one of the most formidable acting line-ups of the 1990s: Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, Kevin Spacey, Jonathan Pryce and Alec Baldwin. Made for an estimated $12.5 million, the film turns offices, restaurants and rain-soaked streets int...

Chosen by Chris and released in 1993, Falling Down was directed by Joel Schumacher from a screenplay by Ebbe Roe Smith. Produced for an estimated $25 million, the film stars Michael Douglas in one of his most unsettling roles, supported by Robert Duvall, Barbara Hershey, Rachel Ticotin, Frederic Forrest and Tuesday Weld. The production filmed extensively on location across Los Angeles, using the c...

Chosen by Mike Burton of Genuine Chit-Chat fame, Dune was released in 1984 and was David Lynch’s ambitious attempt to bring Frank Herbert’s famously dense sci-fi novel to the big screen. Produced by Dino De Laurentiis, the film had a reported budget of around $40 million and was shot largely in Mexico, with huge sets, elaborate costumes, miniature effects, and enough invented terminology to make a...

Chosen by Timothy and released in 2002, Irreversible was written and directed by Gaspar Noe, the Argentine-born French filmmaker already known for pushing audiences well outside the comfort zone. The film stars Monica Bellucci, Vincent Cassel and Albert Dupontel, with Bellucci and Cassel appearing together while they were married in real life, which adds an extra layer of intensity to an already v...

Chosen by new Patreon Chris! Released in 1985 by Paramount Pictures, Summer Rental gave John Candy one of his early big-screen leading roles, with Carl Reiner directing and a cast that includes Karen Austin, Kerri Green, Joey Lawrence, Rip Torn, and Richard Crenna. Written by Mark Reisman and Jeremy Stevens, the film arrived during that golden VHS-era window when a family comedy could basically be...

Chris has gone for an Arnie classic this week. Released in 1988, Red Heat arrived right in the thick of the buddy-cop boom, pairing Arnold Schwarzenegger’s granite-faced Soviet policeman with Jim Belushi’s wisecracking Chicago detective. Directed, co-written and co-produced by Walter Hill, the film sits somewhere between Cold War curiosity, action thriller, and odd-couple comedy, with Hill bringin...

Chosen by Dave, A Shot at Glory is a Scottish football drama directed by Michael Corrente and written by Denis O’Neill, bringing together a surprisingly heavyweight cast for a film about lower-league football, club loyalty, and men shouting at each other in tracksuits. Robert Duvall stars as Gordon McLeod and also served as a producer, with Michael Keaton, Ally McCoist, Brian Cox, Cole Hauser, Kir...

Chosen by Patreon supporter Helen, Indecent Proposal is exactly the sort of glossy 90s adult drama that makes perfect VHS Strikes Back territory: stylish, morally messy, wildly debatable, and absolutely guaranteed to make everyone in the room ask what they would do for one million dollars. Directed by Adrian Lyne, the film arrived in 1993 at the peak of Hollywood’s obsession with erotic thrillers...

Chosen by Kent and released in 1985, Brewster’s Millions was directed by Walter Hill and produced by Lawrence Gordon, Joel Silver and Gene Levy for Universal Pictures. Hill was best known for tougher, more muscular films like The Warriors, The Driver, 48 Hrs. and Streets of Fire, so seeing him take on a broad Richard Pryor comedy is one of those wonderfully odd 80s career turns that makes perfect...

Chosen by Justin, Only the Lonely arrived in 1991 as a gentler, more bittersweet John Candy vehicle than the broad comedy many audiences might have expected. Written and directed by Chris Columbus and produced by John Hughes and Hunt Lowry, the film brought together Candy, Maureen O’Hara, Ally Sheedy, Anthony Quinn, James Belushi and Kevin Dunn for a Chicago-set romantic comedy-drama with a softer...

Released in 1986, Crocodile Dundee was directed by Peter Faiman and co-written by Paul Hogan, Ken Shadie, and John Cornell, with Hogan also starring as the now-iconic Mick Dundee. Made on a modest budget of around A$8.8 million, the film was designed to be a broad, crowd-pleasing Australian comedy that could travel internationally — which is exactly what it did, with all the subtlety of a bloke wa...

Chosen by Chris, Heat arrived in 1995 as Michael Mann’s grand, granite-jawed crime epic: a nearly three-hour Los Angeles thriller with the emotional temperature of a fridge full of loaded handguns. Produced by Mann and Art Linson, the film brought together Al Pacino and Robert De Niro on-screen for the first time, backed by a frankly ridiculous ensemble including Val Kilmer, Jon Voight, Tom Sizemo...

This week, Patreon supporter Matt Bates, the Black Country Vlogger, brings us Innocent Blood (1992) for our Pain and Pleasure theme -- a film that revels in the push and pull between the two. Innocent Blood (1992) came about in a roundabout way, which is fitting for a film that defies easy categorisation. John Landis had originally been developing a vampire project called Red Sleep -- a wild premi...

This week’s pick comes from Patreon supporter Graeme—clearly a man who woke up and chose absolute emotional devastation. Directed by Shane Meadows, Dead Man’s Shoes (2004) is a raw, low-budget British drama that has steadily grown into a cult favourite. Shot primarily in and around Matlock, the film was made on a modest budget estimated at around £723,000. Meadows co-wrote the screenplay with Padd...