Captain Power: Video is Enjoyable With or Without the Toy

Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future: The Intruder

Fond at a local thrift store in April 2012

My girlfriend works at a thrift store, which is great for a junk collector like myself.  She spotted this VHS for me,  and many, many things jumped out at me while holding the cover.  At the top of the cassette it says “POWER ON! To The Interactive Video Revolution!” … wowiw zowie.  Then there is an awesome space-airbrush art illustration that would lead one to believe that this was an animated film, however at the bottom it clearly states “A Live-Action Videocassette” which lit up my eyes like rockets on the back of a super star destroyer.  The back of the cassette had even more in store, with a drawing of someone pointing a space ship firing lasers at a television with a disclaimer reading “Light rays are for illustration only”  it went on to elaborate  “ACCESSORIES INTERACT WITH CAPTAIN POWER ON VIDEO!  Fire at targets – they actually fire back” and more “Video is enjoyable, either with or without the toy”.  Holy crap what had I found!?

       The first thing that I did when I got home was to stick this puppy in my VCR, I wanted  the video revolution to start!  I began to watch it, and immediately knew I had struck gold, and called over my brother.  I was struck by how high the production values where and said to my brother “this must have cost like a million dollars an episode” .  The episode was complete with well done matte paintings for backgrounds, some fairly advanced CGI for 1988, a few b list actors, and very nice model work.  During various parts of the episode the baddies chests flash with seizure inducing brightness, which I found out after some research,  is how the toy/video interaction works.  Also discovered in my research, was that the budget for each episode was roughly 1 million dollars, yipes!  This is on par with the budget of an episode of Star Trek the Next Generation.  Check out this ridiculous TV spot as for more details.

    Allot of the visuals are ripped off shamelessly from Star Wars, even Captain Power’s adversary Lord Dread is a cross between Darth Vader and the Borg (although you could say Star Trek TNG ripped them off).  The closing credit sequence of a trench run is so similar to Star Wars, that I’m surprised George Lucas didn’t sue these guys like he did with Battlestar Gallactica.

Looks like this cassette came from Jay’s Video in Brooklyn, enjoy.  -Wiley

Drop off time and location: April 16 apx. 8Pm Brookline J.P. Licks

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Don't Panic!

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (BBC Miniseries)

Found at local thrift store in March 2012

The best thing about this VHS cassette is that it’s the entire BBC series of THGTTGG on one 194 minute cassette.  In order for that to be possible, the VHS must be recorded in SLP (Super Long Play) mode which is fairly low quality. This cassette version  puts all 6 episodes together in a movie like way, taking out the opening and ending credits between episodes.  This is both good and bad; the music for the credits is awesome and the animation is pretty cool too, but the linear presentation does make for easier view-ability.    

                There are so many things about this series that I like that I don’t know where to start.  The production values of the show are low, and it’s super cheesy, but that doesn’t detract from story and in some ways it actually ads to it.  The narration for the Hitchhikers Guide excerpts is spot on, as are the animations.  An interesting factoid about the animations is that while they are made to look like computer animation, they are in fact hand drawn.  Back in ’81 computer animation was super expensive, John Carpenter had another “innovative” approach for saving money on computer animation.   In Escape From New York, the “computer” wireframe sequences of NYC were actually made by slapping tons of green tape over a model of NYC.   The look of the faux computer animation is really cool and very 1980’s stylized. 

           I’ve viewed the series on DVD before, and once I even found a double cassette version, but I liked this presentation so much that I watched it all the way through, and then did it again 2 days later.  People always say that the book is better than the movie,  and in this case some say that the radio show is better than the book, but this mini-series adaptation captures the feel of the book very well.  You will laugh at the delivery of Slarty Barfast, you will cry over the quality of Zaphod’s second head, and in the end you will wish there was more.  This one is so good that I almost want to keep it, hope it goes to a good home. 

 

So long and thanks for all the fish –Wiley

Drop Off Time and  Location: April 16 apx. 8pm Brookline J.P. Licks