Cue the brass fanfare and softly-focused lasers, you found-footage dilettante. We're going back to the Home Video Theatre.Which of course rested on the countless distributors that forged and colored the Golden Age of Betamax. Their upfront animated logos were the first thing we saw when we watched films from the comforts of home, and as such open up a portal to a near-past intersection of marketing and design.The unearthing and compiling of these artifacts apparently has become a sort of cottage industry, with nostalgics and other folks on the internet with a lot of time on their hands cobbling together hypnoptic meditations of distro chintz. Just look at the above reel, which features some of the heavy hitters of '80s B-list horror. Or this 20-minute tour de force of Greek video distros from the '80s and '90s:This super cut features an intro by none other than voiceover OG Patrick Allen.There are plenty more where these came from. Poke around and you'll find plenty of clips of invidividual distributors. Or, jack into the dirt-cheap VHS underground, because of course that's (still) a thing.@thebanderson
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