HELLO AND WELCOME TO VHS WASTELAND, YOUR HOME FOR HIGH RESOLUTION SCANS OF RARE, STRANGE, AND FORGOTTEN VHS COVERS. EACH OF THESE BIZARRE GEMS IS SCANNED AT 200 DPI. SIMPLY CLICK ON THE THUMBNAIL OF ANY VHS COVER TO DOWNLOAD THE FULL HIGH RES FORMAT. WE WILL BE ADDING A NEW COVER DAILY, SO BOOKMARK THIS SITE AND CHECK BACK OFTEN. WE'D ALSO LOVE SUBMISSIONS FROM YOU. IF YOU HAVE A VHS THAT IS WEIRD OR RARE, JUST EMAIL US AT MADHATTERDESIGN@GMAIL.COM. REMEMBER TO SCAN THE FRONT, BACK AND SIDES OF THE VHS AT 300 DPI. WE WON'T ACCEPT LOW RESOLUTION FILES. WHILE YOU'RE HERE, GRABBING OUR AWESOME FREE VHS COVERS, FEEL FREE TO CLICK THE "DONATE" BUTTON ON THE LEFT. IF ENOUGH PEOPLE SEND US SOME CASH, WE MIGHT BE TEMPTED TO KEEP BRINGING YOU THE COOLEST, HIGH RES VHS COVERS ON THE NET. BUT IF YOU GREEDY, COVER GRABBING... I MEAN... YOU WONDERFUL VISITORS TO OUR SITE, DON'T COUGH UP A DONATION, MAYBE WE'LL JUST FIND SOMETHING BETTER TO DO WITH OUR TIME. LIKE GO MAKE NACHOS. MMMMM... NACHOS. SO HELP A BROTHA OUT AND DONATE A LITTLE DOUGH TO THE CAUSE.

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VHS HISTORY LEASON : ACTION INTERNATIONAL PICTURES (A.I.P.)

This is a TRUE independent distributor. A.I.P was founded in 1986 by low-budget director/producers David A. Prior (SLEDGEHAMMER - 1983), David Winters (THE LAST HORROR FILM - 1982) and Peter Yuval (KILLER WORKOUT - 1986) as a way to distribute their poverty-row productions. A.I.P. (which, probably uncoincidentally, shares the same initials as the biggest independent of the 50's, 60's and 70's: American International Pictures), began by right off the bat distributing home-made productions like MISSION....KILL and NIGHT WARS, mixed in with international pickups such as MIAMI HORROR and STRIKER. While their action and horror productions, like ALIEN SEED, SPACE MUTINY, THE SATAN KILLER and the horrendous ELVES, were strictly low-rent (and unintentionally hilarious), A.I.P. did manage to release a few notable films, including the sadistic ROAD-KILL, Richard Haines' technicolor gore comedy ALIEN SPACE AVENGER, the immortal soldiers thriller THE LOST PLATOON, Lucio Fulci's DANGEROUS OBSESSION and Jose Larraz's slasher flick SAVAGE LUST. Many of A.I.P.'s in-house productions starred David Prior's brother Ted, a capable and muscular action star who, unfortunately, never went on to bigger and better things and a lot of their films contained appearances by B-movie actors, such as David Carradine, Robert Ginty (remember him?) Cameron Mitchell and Erik Estrada. Action International closed up shop in 1994, partly due to the Richard Pepin/Joseph Merhi company (PM Enterprises) turning out superior action and horror flicks (they would eventually cease to exist in 2000) and partly due to major video store chains no longer looking to stock their shelves with low-budget DTV films (up yours Blockbuster!). This was one of the last true independent video distributors. { text from critcononline.com }

VHS HISTORY LEASON : MGM/UA HOME VIDEO

Here's another label which lived a very long life. MGM started out as a major film production company, cranking out films since the early 1920's. Their huge library of films was ideal for the home video market, so in 1979 they joined forces with CBS Home Video to form MGM/CBS Home Video. In 1981, CBS broke off with MGM to join with 20th Century Fox to form CBS/Fox Home Video. That same year, MGM joined with United Artists to form MGM/UA Home Video and that partnership lasted until 1998, when Ted Turner bought the MGM library and renamed the label MGM Home Entertainment. For seventeen years, MGM/UA released thousands of films on VHS, including many that have still yet to see the light of day on DVD. MGM/UA is most fondly remembered for releasing their films in those big cardboard boxes that opened up like a book (They also had a blue piece of tape shaped like a giant "I" that stuck to the middle of the right hand side or bottom of the box, either covering a portion of the artwork or the credits. If you tried to remove it, more times than not it would destroy whatever was below it.). Time has not been kind to those big boxes, as they have faded or wrinkled due to the ravages of time, but who can't help but remember seeing those big box releases, like GYMKATA, EQUALIZER 2000, THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN, HOSPITAL MASSACRE, FORBIDDEN PLANET and FINAL EXECUTIONER lining the video store shelves. MGM/UA had exclusive deals with Cannon Films and Roger Corman's Concord Films during the 80's and many of those big box releases command high prices on the collectors' circuit due to their rarity and the fact that they have never been released to DVD. MGM/UA was also one of the first major VHS companies to encode their tapes with the Macrovision process to curtail piracy and illegal copying. Nearly every MGM/UA VHS tape produced was Macrovision encoded, so if you ever think of buying their tapes to back up to DVD, just remember that you will need a device to bypass the encoding. If I were to show you cover scans of every MGM/UA tape produced, I would probably take you days to get through them. { text from critcononline.com }