Today we’re dipping back into the Dead Media Library to scope some of the various VHS and Laserdisc releases of Freejack back in 1992-93. It’s always a blast trying to track down imagery of these old VHS, Beta and Laserdisc releases, both domestic and international to see all the variations in titling and design. So let’s jump right in and take a look at the US Morgan Creek/Warner Bros. VHS and Laserdisc releases from the fall of 1992…
As we mentioned in the Freejack Posters piece, the VHS (and the Laserdisc below) utilize the B style poster design for their covers. The laserdisc was in widescreen “letterbox” format as fairly common in LD releases.
Next up, let’s jump to the other side of the globe and check out the Towa Video Japanese releases of the flick on both VHS and Laserdisc. I thought these were novel in that they featured completely different designs than either of the Japanese posters for the film.
Now, let’s hop on over to Europe and scope the cover of the German Concorde Video VHS release. Probably our favorite release, design-wise, as it uses the very cool German poster as the home video cover. The highlighting of the hot pink in both the logo and the embellishments on the back, harkening back to Alex’s race car colors is also very nice.
The Dutch release from the Netherlands on CNR Video repossesses the original US poster, but weirdly augmented the font of the title to a dark blue against a black background which makes the text very hard to read. What a weird choice.
The Finish release on the other hand goes with a whole new design that is VERY 90s action film. This looks less like a science fiction flick than something that should have starred Jean Claude Van Damme or something. It almost makes the film look more like Judgement Night and Freejack…
The United Kingdom Warner Home Video VHS Pal release is very close to the original US VHS, though it uses a variation of the poster with a close up of Mick Jagger instead of the medium shot from the poster.
Almost mimicking the UK release is this Polish ITI Home Video release.
In Portugal the film was re-named to “The Immortals”, which is a very striking title. I also love the overall deep blue of the cover and think it works way better than the all black covers of other releases…
In Italy the film was retitled to Fleeing into the Future, which is a deceptive title since Alex was hardly fleeing.
The final version we were able to find comes from Argentina. This Warner Home Video release is very similar in design to the UK and Polish releases, design-wise.
