Monday, March 30

Video Vault: Electric Video Inc.

This seems to be one of the more mysterious companies out there, dating back when Thriller Video was just getting started. With the only ones from their catalog I've tracked down being Horror/Exploitation titles, EVI appears to be among the scant first ever genre video distributors at the dawn of the '80s. I've been able to find seven of their titles, all from 1981 and 82.

Massacre at Central High (1976, Rene Daalder) -- 1981, no catalog number
Whose Child Am I? (1974, Gerry O'Hara) -- 1981, no catalog number
The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969, Jesus Franco) -- 1981, no catalog number
Legend of the Werewolf (1975, Freddie Francis) -- 1981, #T410
Persecution (1974, The Terror of Sheba, Don Chaffey) --1981, #T411
The 7 Brothers Meet Dracula (1974, The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, Roy Ward Baker) -- 1981, #CH-414
Werewolves on Wheels (1971, Michel Levesque) -- 1982, #S-412

Here's a scan of The Castle of Fu Manchu:


This general design with the white paper stock, bold text spine, and yellow synopsis/credits square is the same on all of them. All denote "Made in USA". The covers seem factory cut slightly smaller than the white hard plastic cases (like Thorn EMI's titles) they came in. They also all strangely have no face labels (no sticker residue at all) on the cassettes with only simple title spine stickers with no company logo. Though they're recorded on ancient tape types like Alga T-180s. With 1982's release of Werewolves on Wheels, the company's address changed from Bethpage, N.Y. to Ridgefield, N.J.

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