Unusual Pre Cert Empire Strikes Back Pal VHS

[jonnyholywoodni]

Hi there,

I've had this VHS in my attic for a few years. I picked it up in a car boot sale in Northern Ireland. The box is a damaged and the tape itself looks like there is some white mold or something on it. I've not tried playing it yet but have a VHS player I could try using it on.

I've looked online a lot over the last few years to try and find a copy that looks like it but the cover seems quite unique. Maybe it was a Republic of Ireland copy or a rental copy?

I would be very grateful if anyone has any information on it? Does the mold mean it's likely to be unwatchable and not be worth very much? I understand it's not a toy so maybe not appealing to most collectors but thought it might be very rare and that could make it interesting and valuable to the right person.

Any information would be very gratefully received.

Thanks

Jonny

[theforceuk]

Nice, not seen one like that before. Very cool.

[coomber75]

new to me never seen that art work before

[UKS]

That’s a pirate.

[jonnyholywoodni]

Thanks for the responses. I didn't think a pirate would have been so well packaged with a cleanly printed cover and sticker on the tape. I suppose that would make sense given I can't find any other copies that look like it.

[SublevelStudios]

Never seen this before, my first thought was pirate but I'm not so sure now. It's feasible that this is an early regional edition of the film, or possibly even produced by a chain of stores specifically for their outlets.

I'm constantly amazed at how much certain videos fetch these days, a copy of the ESB SFX video can be upwards of £100 and some I've seen fetch way beyond that. If this can be attributed to a region then I reckon value could be easily over £100 and who knows, it could really fly in auction.

Great item and really great to see new stuff surface in the year 2020!

[stu70]

Would the VHS release be on Paramount? I thought they came out on 20th Century Fox or CBS Fox, also the mention of Georgetown Productions on the label is odd as they produced the Friday the 13th films and were owned by Paramount Pictures. Certainly never seen one like that before.

[SublevelStudios]

Would the VHS release be on Paramount? I thought they came out on 20th Century Fox or CBS Fox, also the mention of Georgetown Productions on the label is odd as they produced the Friday the 13th films and were owned by Paramount Pictures. Certainly never seen one like that before.

Good point - and one I missed completely It still looks very good for a pirate copy IMO though, it wasn't as easy to produce print like that back in the 80's and it all looks vintage to me so some considerable effort/money went into creating it. But then there was really good money to be made from bootleg videos back in the day!

Might be worth posting this up on the COLLECTING STAR WARS BEYOND THE TOYS facebook group to see if anyone else has ever come across this before.

[UKS]

Paramount allegedly only used that logo that appears on this VHS between 77 to 80. This aligns with the copyright 1980 on the video.

Which is far before it came out on video in 1984 - perhaps before ESB came out in the cinema.

The BBFC started classifying videos in 1984 when ESB came out.

The write up on the back of the box contains factual errors and the blurb does not (even in fragments) turn up on google.

Lucasfilm would not sanction that. There is no lucasfilm copyright on the tape. The logos on the tape are not legitimate for the time the tape would have been released.

Georgetown made Friday the 13th in.... 1980. Someone has taken the tech blurb from Friday the 13th for this product.

It's a semi well made pirate.

[Cazza]

Yep, reckon that's got to be a pirate. VERY cool though!

[edd_jedi]

It's a shame about the condition of the tape as that could help identify it (eg what copyright notices, film companies, trailers etc are on it.) But in that state I wouldn't try and play it. Not sure if there is such a thing as a tape cleaner?

[theforceuk]

I reckon a specialist could repair the tape, but not really worth it?

[Alisdairmac]

You could ask in the star wars home video Facebook group