A lot of members of the generation that begat the baby boomers were sold on movie cameras in order to capture those babies’ first steps or opening presents Christmas morning or the vacation to the beach. And if Mom and Dad bought the motion picture camera, they had to have the projector in order to view the movies. A few companies had the idea of offering Hollywood movies in a truncated version to those consumers that had the projector tucked away in a closet. It wasn’t as big as the home video revolution that was to come, but there were companies that made a buck selling 8mm versions of classic and sub-classic Hollywood fare. They may have run 15 minutes long and played out the story in a greatly condensed reel of highlights, but they were a lot of fun.
We had a few, and when Dad would fire up the projector in order to stroll down memory lane with the home movies, we would shuffle in a couple of the home versions of horror classics like this version of The Mummy which I still insist is the best version of this film even though it is greatly condensed. I love the original, but vigorous editing improves this movie making it a beautiful, dreamlike experience that piques the cinematic taste buds.
The advertisement at the top of the page for Sci-Fi Home Movies was found in Eerie No. 78 which was published in 1976 by Warren Publishing. Warren published Creepy, Vampirella, Famous Monsters of Filmland and a few other mostly black and white magazines that all ran the same ads for posters, tee-shirts, back issues and 8mm movies. That was half the fun of these magazines.
Ah yes, ‘D’ movies… LOL
“Trog” was awful, but the other movies were passable.