OK, sorry if I am cheating a bit here for the film I'm looking for probably traumatised my parents more than it did me. I distinctly remember when I was a child, my mom and dad took me to a local video store here in Holland. I come from a tiny village with its nearest city being a 20 min. car-drive away. As it was only worthwhile for us to rent films from the video store in that place for a week, my parents never exposed me to the shelves displaying the latest titles. Of course I didn't know that, so one day I rented a tape really hoping it was THREE MEN AND A BABY, only it turned out to be the original French film. I couldn't have been a day older than 10 years old, so imagine my confusion. It distinctly wasn't in the language my prepubescent ears were more or less familiar with, meaning it sounded a whole lot different than the language being spoken on my favourite show back then (PUNKY BREWSTER (The "The Perils of Punky" – episode must have popped up on this site SOME TIME), it definitely scared the bejesus out of me back then!) not to mention it lacked one very famous black mustache I was pretty acquainted with already. I never knew what was going on, because it clearly had three men and a baby on its cover, so how could have it been anything else than that Guttenberg/Danson/Selleck-masterpiece? Back then I always stuck to comedy-films, as my parents didn't let me rent anything else, and I just loved ‘funny things'. I ended up taking home loads of tapes, the titles of which I can't remember now, but more often than not turned out to be lousy European films I didn't enjoy a second of.
Now about the tape I've always wondered about and can't seem to find any information about. It was a compilation tape of sorts and featured a T. Rex in a director's chair on its sleeve. I thought it would be fun , because after tons of unfunny euro-sleaze, I probably ached for a comedy featuring an American (how could it possibly be from somewhere else with a T.rex in a director's chair??) Alas. I remember when I popped it in one day with my parents being present. It started with a reel of clips mostly featuring sex-scenes, some insipid humour, and then supposedly ‘funny' sex-scenes. And yet more sex-scenes. After watching 10 minutes of it my parents thought it best to yank it from the VHS player and to run off with it to the kitchen, where they probably hid it in the deep fryer. So that was that. I remember also that I was still of so ripe an age, that the sight of copious amounts of bare titties didn't make up for what I was really aching to see: a T.rex in a director's chair…
I'm really curious as to what the name of the tape is …and if I can now appreciate the tape's content for its ‘artistic worth' more than I could back then. Funny thing, a couple of years later a new video-rental store opened in a village much closer to ours. The first thing I grabbed back then was a copy of A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET PART IV (my interest in film-taste received a firm jolt after seeing a picture of Freddy Krueger in a teen-science magazine). Being used to the system of our former video stores, we unwisely kept it for a week, costing my parents approximately 35 dollars worth of overdue expenses in the end (!)So that's two film-induced traumas I gave my parents before I had probably turned 12. Not bad, I hope someone can unveil the title of this life-changing piece of VHS-magic.
Rudy – a regular reader from the Netherlands
