Charity shop videos

Posted by Vicki on 27.06.05

Human nature is naturally inquisitive to the extent that even the most mediocre of soap operas can inspire slavish devotion with seemingly minimal effort, or plot, simply by having the main protagonist's boyfriend's lost twin sister's backing dancer's pool boy mysteriously vanish on the eve of the swimming gala.

Upon purchasing the combined VHS of 'Ghostbusters' and 'Ghostbusters 2' from a charity shop on a slow weekend I was intrigued to find the films were divided by a vintage episode of the Batman TV show. Far from the familiar scenario of Bruce Wayne living in a mansion and looking vaguely physically impressive he dwelt in the midst of suburbia and looked like a prime contender for a mid life crisis - potentially personified by the fact he still retained a butler in such modest surroundings.

The plot involved some machine that had been stolen and was exceedingly dull to the extent that I picked up a book on anti-capitalism at random and started to read; my education on the evils of consumer purchases was abruptly interrupted by what was no-doubt meant to pass for a cliff hanger and a stupidly deep voiced man announcing that "you now no longer have to wait a week to discover the ending! Buy the box set now!"

This tactic might have worked if the show that had been interrupted had been at all engaging; similarly the new adventures of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles gave away two episodes of the show on DVD inside selected Easter Eggs. The first episode was the standard dull introduction to the series and back-story which was duly watchable if predictable, whilst the second was merely dull and sure enough ended on something approaching a cliff hanger. In this case the heroic mutants faced off giant metal rats which were part of some half-baked conspiracy involving women with somewhat revealing clothing for a cartoon.

Unfortunately for anyone with a vested interesting in boosting the new and improved Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles media empire even scantily clad women couldn't livened up a plot that made episodes of Captain Planet look scintillating by comparison, or hold a match to Jessica Rabbit.

On the plus side the Turtles franchise foray into live action cinema appears to have utterly died following 'the inventive if doomed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Turtles in Time' and after Technicolor nightmare that was 'Batman and Robin' her are no further uncharted depths that 'Batman begins' can possibly sink to. The future is bleak yet it can't get any worse.