There is a streamlined and spare beauty to the Action-Adventure VHS box art of the late 1980s and early 1990s that just gets me right...here.
Is it the cheesy explosions in the background? The cheap backgrounds? The big hair? Lorenzo Lamas? I don't know. But this box art had an aesthetic that was all its own. Like the mainstream comic book cover operates to this very day, these images had to immediately grab the viewer in a very crowded playing field and promise adventure, thrills, and sometimes a bit of titillation as well. My only advice, should you actually choose to look some of these films up (and I would imagine a number of them aren't yet available on DVD), is to definitely check out "Tiger Claws" starring Bolo Yeung and 1990s female martial arts sensation Cynthia Rothrock. The Roddy Piper/Billy Blanks team-ups are also quite choice.
/worked at a video rental shop for a couple of years, so some of my affinity for this stuff is probably the result of Stockholm Syndrome.
//would love to write a comic book that featured this aesthetic. I mean, play it totally straight, not being ironically hip, or anything. Just the four-color equivalent of a Wings Hauser movie.
///the "Provoked" box is my personal favorite of this set, as it's the most low-budget & flat. Also, those guns are huge.
box art found here and here
