By Fred Topel | Image property of respective holders
Hiding Out
Lionsgate found some interesting old movies in their catalog to present as this Lost Collection. It’s fun to see movies with the ‘80s aesthetic but not the ones we all know by heart from John Hughes.
Lost Collection DVDs
The movies themselves do not look good. They’re supposed to be full screen but look letterboxed on all sides. They actually look like they were videotaped off TV and then transferred back to film, which definitely does not hold up in an upscaling DVD player to an HDTV set. You can see green video glitches like the old days, as well as film dust and dirt, but it creates the sort of aesthetic of watching an old VHS tape you found in your closet, especially when that Vestron Video logo comes on. It’s really like discovering lost treasures.
I was familiar with Repossessed and Hiding Out. I knew of Irreconcilable Differences and Morgan Stewart’s Coming Home. The rest are new to me, but remain in the tradition of ‘80s subgenres.
There’s The Night Before like the License to Drive/Mystery Date school of teenage misadventures. There’s My Best Friend is a Vampire in the tradition of Teen Wolf and Once Bitten.
I hope I have time to get through all of them. So far they are perfectly entertaining, obviously not original or clever enough to go down in cinematic history, but preserving that magical ‘80s aesthetic that makes things just plain watchable.
The trivia tracks are banal, just very common information. Every once in a while there may be a factoid about the TV edit that’s interesting (at least in terms of history of the obscure films) but usually it’s irrelevant or disappointing. And even the ones that say 5.1 sound don’t seem to work, so it’s truly old school mono.
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