Well this one went on a bit of a journey to arrive at it’s upload day today if Im being honest. I never really went into the full details of how I ended up with “Armed Response” in my possession. So! dear reader. It’s not much of a tale to tell but here it is.

about 4 months ago my partner messaged me to say that she’d seen a few VHS tapes in a box going on Facebook marketplace for about £5 and that she’d messaged the seller for me to ask if they were still available and suggested I go and check out the listing to see if it was worth pursuing. I jumped on Facebook and there was indeed a box of tapes going for about a fiver and the top of the box had Terminator 1 and 2 in a special presentation tin…I thought to myself “Well…for a fiver it’s worth checking it out just for the terminator tapes” so I waited a day or two and didnt hear anything back from the seller on my partners end so I decided to send a message…the guy responded in 10 minutes. First asking if I was serious and then telling me I could come and get them as soon as possible.

Overlooking the blatant sexism that had occured (My partner was Pissed let me tell you!) I waited till the nearest weekend and then with my sister we hopped to the next town over and found a small bungalow devoid of anything apart from a few dust sheets, an arth and fireplace, and what I can only describe as a trunk full of VHS tapes, with another medium sized box on top of that. It was rediculous. I actually had to ask the geezer selling these if he was genuinely getting rid of them for £5…when he said yes I practically bit his arm off and both me, the seller and my sister hobbled the short distance out of the bungalow into the back of my car.

I had absolutely no idea what I was letting myself in for with this haul. as can be seen here in this live stream where I literally spent about 90 minutes just unboxing the “Trunk” sized box.

Armed response was one of the highlights of that stream, purely because the cover itself is just so weirdly surreal. I literally had no idea what was on this tape but this cover and the fact it had Lee van cleef and David Carradine in it pretty much guarenteed that I needed to get round to this one as soon as possible.

How was it? Well I’ll let the review do the talking:

(I love everything about this cover…the colours, the weird disembodied floating blue and orange head, Carradine with half his face cut off…even subtle things like the vietnam choppers…this is a true masterpiece of VHS coverart.)

ALSO! Once again im coming to the rescue here! trying to find a clean and hi res version of this artwork online is bloody impossible! seriously theres maybe 1 or 2 examples of it and non of them break 500 pixels…SO! Much like the cover for “Let’s ruin Dad’s Day” Here is a super Hi-res scan of the Armed Response VHS cover (For the UK release) in all it’s heavenly glory.