I wonder how many people out there remember having VHS T-120 videotapes with three movies on them that you recorded off HBO or Showtime or wherever, with the tab in the front broken off so you didn't accidentally record over them. Something that today's kids will never experience is having one special movie always associated in your mind with two other movies, none of which would otherwise have anything to do with one another, like: ALIEN NATION THE DREAM TEAM SEA OF LOVE Oh, sure, you could still make some popcorn and watch those three movies right in a row if you're lucky enough to own them all on DVD (I do), but it's just not the same. And no streaming service is going to suggest "People Who Like This Might Also Like..." , you know?
And you had to put tape over that tab if you needed to record over your movies. The pro level among us have performed surgery on VHSs or cassettes if something broke in the shell, removing the tape and transplanting it into a new shell.
Some tapes could hold five movies! The only thing the movies on a lot of those tapes had in common was that they debuted on HBO (or PRISM*) the same month. (*Philadelphia Regional In-Home Sports and Movies also showed Flyers games which was the reason my parents had it. It would also also show softcore flicks late at night that they must've known about but never stopped me from setting the recording timer.)
@@joefelice5062 I remember performing that microsurgery! "Let me go get a pair of tweezers and a small non-magnetized Phillips-head screwdriver...." (You shouldn't use a magnetized screwdriver on a videocassette because it'll affect the magnetic tape.) You had to unscrew all five screws, all the way, tap or shake them out onto the table, and put them in a bowl or something so they didn't get lost (I usually saved those little screws in a pill bottle in case a screw from another videocassette got lost....and then I'd lose the pill bottle). You have to have the "donor body" ready, too, sacrificing a blank tape (which was a precious commodity!). Lift out the reels and throw that broken shell into the trash (good riddance), and throw the reels of the blank tape away (humming "Taps" as you did it). Then you had to thread the tape itself between those rollers at the top. And the cassette had these little levers with these tiny metal springs inside to hold the reels in place so they couldn't be over-wound or rewound by hand in the wrong direction (you had to take a pencil and poke it into the hole at the bottom of the cassette, hitting that little catch inside to release the levers if you wanted to rewind the cassette by hand....it wasn't worth the trouble; just let the machine do it). So you had to be careful that the reels dropped into the shell just right to engage those little levers. If everything inside wasn't in place just right when you put the shell back together (which was verrrrry careful work because of those larger metal springs inside that gave the reels some bounce inside the shell; you had to hold the cassette together firmly by hand when you put the first screw back in), you cursed out loud and had to start over. (It's almost like the innards of a videocassette were specifically designed to defeat your efforts at transplanting it, with a lot of little moving parts and tiny things that you could easily lose if you weren't paying attention to what you were doing. If a fellow were paranoid, he might think that manufacturers wanted you to simply throw the cassette away and just buy a new one because it wasn't worth all the hassle....imagine believing that.) But what a feeling of accomplishment when you popped that rebuilt cassette into the player and it WORKED! What a success! You saved the show! You're a genius! Grin big and enjoy the movie! It was tough to fix Disney tapes at all, because they were held together with these weird screws that weren't Phillips- or flat-head (those Disney bastards!). You'd have to destroy the shell to get at the reels (without damaging the tape), and then sacrifice a blank tape (which was a precious commodity!), in order to keep watching your copy of _Darby O'Gill and the Little People,_ dammit! Or, y'know....whatever Disney movie it was you wanted to save....
It is nowhere near as bad as they were saying but if the plot was just ripped off which it seems it was I can get why they were leaning to hate it from the start.
Roger Ebert sure called it right about Lorraine Bracco!! The very next year (1990), she earned a well-deserved nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her strong performance as Karen Hill in *GOODFELLAS.*
I'm interested in seeing SING. It's on my DVD wish list along with other music-themed dramas LIGHT OF DAY and THE IN CROWD that are likely missing from the format due to music-rights issues.
I love troop Beverly Hills, I just wish it was just about the kids and Shelly long and their adventures. I don’t care for the romance part of the movie but I still love it.
Agree with them that in Dream Team they could have cranked up the crazy in the film. Great cast, Keaton, Lloyd, Furst & Peter Boyle. But the movie was kind of dull looking back. Could have been a great film there if the script was better
Because Siskel (and even Ebert) have a tendency to one-dimensionally compare movies that have the most remotely similar premises. Having said that, they were right about The Dream Team (in my opinion). It's a movie that I badly wanted to be funny, considering the plot + the talent were nearly a winning formula (in '89, at least). Instead, it's a movie that just kind of exists.
John Greene It made a ton of money for its almost non-stop replaying on cable. It's a fun, harmless movie with a brilliant performance by Shelley Long.
