It may be that you are totally assimilated into the DVD age but it also may be that you are, like me, still with one foot in the VHS video age and also, like me, you may have a huge stack of VHS tapes in big boxes gathering dust and no idea what to do with them.

When I stay at my Mum’s house I’ve got an old TV and VHS player in my bedroom and I sometimes go through my box of VHS tapes and find something to watch.

Here’s one example, take the movie Charlie Bubbles for instance. That may not ring a bell to you as I taped it from channel four way back in the eighties and I’m pretty certain I’ve never seen the film broadcast again, which is a pity as it’s a great movie.

It stars Albert Finney who also makes his directing debut in the film and co-stars Billie Whitelaw, Colin Blakely, and has an unlikely appearance by Liza Minnelli. It’s written by playwright Shelagh Delaney who wrote the play ‘A taste of Honey’, which was also made into a wonderful movie.

Charlie Bubbles is a writer, played by Finney who has a sort of gloomy and despondent view of the world and he returns to Manchester to see his son. It’s great for a Mancunian like me to see Manchester as I remember it growing up. The film goes on to show the clash between Charlie’s working class background and his new life as a writer. In one of my favourite parts of the film Charlie meets a friend of his father who asks “are you still working or just doing the writing?”

Charlie replies thoughtfully that he is ‘just’ doing the writing.

Pixabay.com

Another great movie I have on VHS and not often seen on TV is ‘Seven Days In May’. Burt Lancaster plays an army officer who attempts to overthrow the US government in a coup d’état. Kirk Douglas sees that something strange is going on and alerts the President played by that fine former silent movie actor Frederic March. Interestingly, part of the movie was filmed at the Kennedy White House. Perhaps President Kennedy wanted to send a message to his Generals!

What’s quite interesting is that there seem to be movies that are shown time after time on TV, films like Die Hard for instance. (Hey, I love that film but I don’t need to see it every other week! ) Show me some movies I haven’t seen for a while! Some great films I’ve got on VHS are Saturday Night and Sunday Morning again starring Albert Finney, and A Kind Of Loving both films looking at working class life in the sixties (they used to call them kitchen sink dramas.)

Another great movie, just perfect for a wet and windy Saturday afternoon is one I found in that box at my Mum’s the other day, it’s ‘Angels with Dirty faces’ starring James Cagney.

I remember watching this years ago on a Saturday afternoon. I was watching it with my Dad and strangely me and my Dad were brought up on the same movies only I saw them first on TV and he saw them originally on the cinema screen. Like all great movies my Dad was pulled into the film, totally reliving it and right at the end he said:

“Cagney’s going to cry in the gas chamber, they’re going to ask him to cry!”

Yes, my Dad blew the ending of that movie for me but something else I found on a tape was sadly ruined by a complete technology foul up.

Lee Meriwether in the Time Tunnel control room. (Picture courtesy Wikipedia)

I found an episode of the Time Tunnel, a sixties sci fi show that I’d not seen for years. It was re run back in the eighties when I was at the height of my TV recording passion. I stopped the tape, nipped downstairs to make a cuppa, got myself settled again and pressed play. I time travelled right back to my childhood watching ‘two American scientists trapped in the swirling maze of past and future ages’ as the TV voice over used to say. James Darren and Robert Colbert were the scientists and Lee Meriwether was the lady back at the control room trying to get the guys back home.

Half an hour later the screen went blank. I’d run out of tape!

Wonder if the Time Tunnel is on DVD?

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