12. November 2014 05:37
by m
0 Comments
In 1989 this VHS video cassette may have quietly appeared on shelves in your local video store tempting you to rent it as a documentary about the James Bond film series. I think the lone reviewer on IMDB sums it up very nicely:
"0.000000007 out of ten. One of cheapest and cheesiest cash-ins on the 'Bond' phenomenon I've ever seen. Purporting to be a documentary about the series, it is merely a compilation of the trailers for each film (from "Dr. No
" to "A View To A Kill
") bookended by a still photographs of the stars, and other tenuously related scenes. Everything about this production stinks, from the inane narration, to the very poor quality footage. Even with the two minutes of 'rare footage' featuring Sean Connery on the set of "Goldfinger
", this is heavy going for the most ardent of Bond fans."
On top of that I think the box art is awful:


However, to be fair, it is important to remember the context in which this video was released. In 1989, very few (I can't think of any) VHS tapes came packed with any kind of Special Features - not even theatrical trailers. Tapes often included trailers for other films you could buy or rent, but not the one you were watching. Even Laserdiscs didn't typically include them. This tape also predates the internet, which in all likelihood means that many people had either never seen some of these trailers before, or had not seen them since they were shown in theaters, so watching it in 1989 may have been more somewhat interesting than watching it today. Even for VHS though, the picture quality for much of the footage is very poor. But don't take our word for it, by all means watch the first 10 minutes:
or download all 77 minutes (1 GB) and let us know what you think in the comments area below...