Movies

In response to the growing use of home video recorders in the late 1970s EMI produced a catalogue of a dozen films available for purchase. The choice was limited but included some British ‘classics’. Although most would have been shown on television it was a novelty to own a film to watch whenever you felt the need.

The operation was managed by Cliff Michelmore after his career as a television presenter. Although the reply envelope was addressed to him he probably did not pack all the videograms himself; indeed the newsletter tells us he had up to twenty men and women trying to sell these newfangled things. The films would cost around £200 today. The first blank 180 minute tape I purchased cost the best part of £20. The EMI ones would have been just over £15 (including VAT) – around £70 today. Within a few years you could pick up a pack of three tapes at the supermarket for £5.

Mr. Michelmore assures us that the catalogue will become a collectors’ item. Perhaps he could foresee that the project was doomed. By the end of 1979 the company had merged to become Thorn EMI who published subsequent catalogues but by the mid 1980s the operation was sold to the fraudster Alan Bond by which time the videograms were simply known as videos.

The catalogue and associated bumf can be viewed in the gallery.