Video World lessons from 1991

Ten things I learned from reading the October 1991 issue of Video World I found last week in the bottom of a banana box full of old high school reports:

1. Just the existence of the thing says volumes about the state of movie magazines at the time. Before the internet came along and ruined it for everybody, there used to be a tonne of different magazines produced in the UK. From the classy likes of Sight and Sound, down to the gleeful gore of multiple Fangoria rip-offs, there was something for everybody, and Video World is somewhere near the bottom of that scale, if only because of all the porn.

2.The money was really in porn. I'd forgot how much the money was always in porn.

3. One thing I do remember from flicking through this thing is that it was the first place I ever heard of Miami Blues. I still feel bad for that poor Hare Krishna and his finger, but shit that's a good film.

4. A copy of King Ralph, House 4: The Repossession or Highlander 2: The Quickening would set you back 80 pounds, if you really needed a copy in mid-1991.

5. But you could pick up a Bonnie and Clyde, Blazing Saddles or Rhe Towering Inferno for eight quid. Bargain!

6. You could also buy a portable TV for the kitchen, with the Ferguson A10r portable CTV going for  a mere 209.99. It had a 10-inch screen!

7. They wanted Sean Connery to play the hero in Warlock, but got the obvious substitution of Richard E Grant, according to an interview with Grant, promoting the sell-through version of Withnail and I.

8. Joanne Whalley Kilmer is a stunningly beautiful woman, and that's really the only reason I bought this mag when I saw it at Paper Plus back in the day, and why it's still there today.

9. Tom Savini's Night of the Living Dead remake was long delayed in the UK and it was driving British horror fans mental.

10. No really, the money is in the porn. The last third of this magazine is straight up soft porn, full of numbers to call real, live girls on sexlines and ads for porn tapes so you can jack off in the privacy of your own home. They're terrible and degrading and all that, but this stuff didn't go away, it just mutated. Porn always leads the way.