Which VHS cov­ers ter­ri­fied you most as a kid?

We’ve reached the point now where any­thing and every­thing from the 1980s seems to be get­ting a lov­ing re-release. Take for exam­ple the vig­i­lante shock­er from 1984, Exter­mi­na­tor 2, which is being issued next month by 101 Films (the Blu-ray of The Exter­mi­na­tor arrived in 2011 cour­tesy of Arrow Films). Those Exter­mi­na­tor films have a spe­cial place in my heart, even though I didn’t get around to watch­ing them until fair­ly recently.

Like any movie buff of a cer­tain age, I have fond, hazy mem­o­ries of wan­der­ing around video stores as a kid, gaz­ing at all the seduc­tive cov­ers of films I wasn’t allowed to rent. There are entire books and doc­u­men­taries ded­i­cat­ed to the world of VHS cov­er art, but The Exter­mi­na­tor was the one that I’ll nev­er for­get. It ter­ri­fied me. The hor­ror film cov­ers didn’t both­er me. I knew that ghouls and vam­pires didn’t real­ly exist. But The Exter­mi­na­tor cov­er fea­tured a pho­to­graph of a real per­son – of a man dressed all in black, a motor­cy­cle hel­met obscur­ing his face, hold­ing a gigan­tic flamethrow­er. It seemed dan­ger­ous­ly real.

This real­ism was inten­tion­al, and would sure­ly have been a sell­ing point back in the day. The Exter­mi­na­tor films are vig­i­lante tales of a par­tic­u­lar style — vio­lent, reac­tionary and right wing, they aped the pop­u­lar Death Wish series but orig­i­nat­ed in the late ​’60s in the form of Don Pendelton’s trashy paper­backs. They speak of heroes who think the mod­ern world has gone to shit at the hands of bleed­ing heart lib­er­als, and the only cure for crim­i­nals is a cold bul­let. In this instance, The Exter­mi­na­tor (played by Troy McClure-a-like Robert Gin­ty) is John East­land, a ​’Nam vet who returns home to New York to find it over-run with rapists and stick-up kids and decides to start going around killing them. Because every man needs a hobby.

I had always assumed that The Exter­mi­na­tor was the bad guy, not the hero. Even so, I under­stood exact­ly the fear it was try­ing to sell. There’s a cer­tain type of ter­ror you expe­ri­ence as a kid that stems not from scary movies or TV shows, but from being exposed to snip­pets of the real-world evil you are too young to under­stand. I remem­ber catch­ing glimpses of news reports about the IRA and being frozen with fear. I was too young to appre­ci­ate the moti­va­tions of mur­der­ers or ter­ror­ists. I rea­soned that evil men sim­ply came and killed you in your sleep. I would go to bed think­ing that a guy wear­ing a black motor­cy­cle hel­met was going to burst into my room in the mid­dle of the night and start torch­ing the place.

So what is it like to final­ly watch these films as an adult? Well, it turns out the ter­ri­fy­ing images of my child­hood stack up pret­ty well with the first film. It’s one of those typ­i­cal exploita­tion-era New York movies: sleazy, shot entire­ly on loca­tion, cap­tur­ing the hell­ish cesspool that exist­ed before Major Giu­liani came in and cleaned up the streets. There’s no real plot to speak of, just the Exter­mi­na­tor tak­ing out the trash in an array of dis­turb­ing and mer­ci­less ways. Apart from a mem­o­rably vio­lent open­ing sequence in Viet­nam, it’s essen­tial­ly just anoth­er fear-mon­ger­ing urban vig­i­lante flick. And it’s pret­ty entertaining.

The sequel, though, is a hell of a lot more fun. It was pro­duced by Can­non Films, and much like the Death Wish series, plays out like one long, bloody car­toon. The Exter­mi­na­tor now has a girl­friend, and a Pun­ish­er-style tricked-out bat­tle van. He also uses his flamethrow­er this time. Instead of non­de­script hood­lums, the vil­lain is now Mario Van Pee­bles ham­ming it up as sort of street thug cult leader. There’s a catchy synth score, and because this is a Can­non Film from 1984, a good por­tion of the run­time is ded­i­cat­ed to break­danc­ing scenes. It’s a long way from the night­mar­ish vision I imag­ined as a kid, but if I’d seen it when I was nine, I’m pret­ty sure I would have loved it just the same.

What VHS cov­ers gave you chills as a kid? And did you ever final­ly face up to those fears? Let us know @LWLies

The Exter­mi­na­tor 2 Blu-ray will be avail­able from 5 Sep­tem­ber via 101​-films​-store​.myshopi​fy​.com