Horror film "Alien: Romulus" also released on VHS
To mark the 45th anniversary of the Alien franchise, 20th Century Studios is releasing a "collector's dream": "Alien: Romulus" is coming to VHS cassette.
This is what the cassette should look like.
(Image: 20th Century Studios)
With "Alien: Romulus", a film from a major US studio is to be released on VHS cassette again after a break of almost 20 years. This was announced by director and screenwriter Fede Álvarez, and 20th Century Studios has already posted a picture of the packaging on Facebook. According to this, it is a limited edition that will be released in the USA on December 3. The film studio has not yet provided any further details, such as the number of cassettes, their price or the technology. VHS tapes from North America were encoded according to the NTSC standard, whereas in Europe it was the PAL standard. Many German players of the last and penultimate generation can cope with both, but this could be a problem for older ones. It is unclear whether a PAL version is planned.
A dead medium briefly revived
According to the US portal Comicbook.com, the release on VHS is being advertised as the "ultimate movie collector's dream", which is being fulfilled to mark the 45th anniversary of the Alien franchise. However, the film will also be released on 4K Blu-ray, Blu-ray and DVD, as is currently the case. It is already available on streaming services. The last film from a major US studio to be sold on VHS was "A History of Violence" by David Cronenberg. It was released in cinemas in 2005 and appeared on VHS in 2006. The analog recording and playback system established itself as the standard in the 1980s and 1990s and was only replaced by DVD at the turn of the millennium.
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However, anyone who manages to get hold of one of the new video cassettes should not be in a hurry. If a VHS recorder has not been used for a long time, it should be unscrewed and cleaned of dust. You should also keep an eye out for leaking capacitors. This is especially true for very old devices. At the very least, however, you should first connect a device to an unimportant socket and test its functionality with an equally unimportant cassette. Only if everything works properly and there are no signs of damage should you entrust the new collector's item to him.
"Alien: Romulus" is the seventh part of the Alien series and was released in cinemas this summer. The film marks a return to the roots of the franchise, according to a review by heise online. The director relies heavily on the fans "plundering his way through the Alien canon, picking up on musical motifs from the legendary soundtracks by Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner and quoting a few iconic scenes". Finally, there is the horror that justifies the 16+ rating. With the release on VHS, the work now also goes down in film history.
(mho)
