Wednesday, January 17, 2007

I'm Dreaming of "Electric Dreams"

Did you ever start a discussion about books or movies and end up going home wanting to drag out one of those things you gobbled up in your youth, just to see if it withstood the test of time?

Well, recently I was brought up short by the discovery that one of my favorite little pictures of the 1980s is virtually unavailable for home viewing. I really enjoyed the silly little "fairy tale for the electronic age". The soundtrack was decidedly 80s techno-pop, with Culture Club, Heaven 17, and Giorgio Moroder at his, bouncy, bubbly best (and not so much in a Lawrence Welk bubbly fashion).

But mostly, I liked the little bits of wry humor, where a self-aware computer competes with a supremely self-conscious goof, for the love of a pretty girl-next-door (well, upstairs, really). Lenny Von Dohlen fair won my heart in this film (maybe I was predisposed to develop crushes on nerdy types).

It's available in VHS format, at an outrageous price (even the pre-viewed rental copies on e-bay are going for 25+ bucks), and at amazon for 30-ish bucks, and then my VCR is likely to chomp huge chunks out of the tape. It does that with the expensive stuff. It's an ornery machine.

And so I wait for the DVD release... whenever that may be.

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