Max Kreisky of Anachronismo! and True Tales of the Illuminati is back to discuss commercials for Hollywood Video and Blockbuster, plus other stuff related to The Princess and the Goblin.
Image Description: The twitter profile of the last Blockbuster Video store in the world, locates in Bend, Oregon. Text reads, “@BlockbusterBend Catering to the locals of Bend since 2000. The last Blockbuster in America!! We are locally owned, & Love the support! Location: 211 NE Revere Ave, Bend OR.”
We’d discovered that Sally Ann Marsh, who voiced Princess Irene, was a musician with a pop hit that was out at the same time as the film, so naturally we kicked this off by watching the allegedly childhood-ruining video from her band Faith Hope and Charity, “The Battle of the Sexes”.
This reached number 53 on the UK pop charts.
After that, we checked out Sally Ann Marsh’s newer music video, “Alien Hive Theme” by Brand Violet.
This one got us into some interesting territory with regard to contract law and… butt stuff? Yeah, don’t listen to this one with kids or at work. Though honestly, that’s probably true most of the time of this podcast.
Then we moved on to the video store talk, and Max revealed that he’d once found Fritz the Cat (the first X-rated animated film) shelved next to Feivel Goes West in the children’s section.
But we were really here to talk about commercials, right?
Right!
We watched a Hollywood Video commercial from 2000
And then this one from 1997.
We concluded that it had better birds and overall production value than Birdemic.
The last Hollywood Video commercial we watched was this one.
We were really afraid of how this was going to go based on the thumbnail, but then were surprised by how charming it turned out to be.
This led us into a brief discussion of literary pigs, and animals who eat many things, and eventually Sarah Gailey’s American Hippo, which Max was reading at the time of our recording this podcast. We enjoy the work of Sarah Gailey and recommend this book!
(Y’all can google hippo poop spray yourselves, though.)
We also watched this Blockbuster Video commercial about “the perfect video store”.
It acted like 3 nights was luxury, but Hollywood Video counter offered with 5.
The last video we watched was a clip of The Young Ones, a comedy variety show (sort of) created by Rik Mayall, who voiced Prince Froglip in The Princess and the Goblin. The clip we watched was underwhelming, so instead, we offer this bit in which they write a letter to a bank manager.
Geoffrey would have chosen that clip originally if he had thought it through more, though honestly, we still don’t know that Max would have liked it. The Young Ones, as Geoffrey notes, is an acquired taste.
Finally, it appears that the last two Blockbuster Video stores in Alaska closed in 2018, but there is one lone Blockbuster Video still operating in Bend, Oregon, and you can find them on Twitter as @blockbusterbend.
Wow, what a difference!
After These Messages: Video Stores with Max Kreisky