 | In 1990 they released the eagerly awaited movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Or as it was called in the UK, Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. Apparently in among those random words being thrown together, "ninja" was way too much for the British censors. Anyway, as a too old to know better 20 year old, I was a massive turtles fan. I had T-shirts, comic books, figures and all sorts of Turtles related merchandise. I couldn't wait for the movie to hit the cinemas in the UK, so sort out a dodgy bootleg VHS video copy of the movie. And it wasn't before long that some shady geezer offered me a blank tape that he claimed to be a copy of the movie. Of course I snapped his hand off, and ran home to bask in the glory that was the much anticipated Turtles movie experience. Erm... Well I didn't get what I expected. |
Now watching bootleg videos through a snow-storm wasn't that unusual in the 80s and 90s. But this, this was a total blizzard. I literally sat through the whole thing, with random turtle like shapes ghosting across the screen, while following the action purely via the soundtrack. Which was surprisingly good. What did I do after it ended? Probably shouted "awesome" and ran around bragging about how I had a bootleg copy of the movie. That people then begged to borrow, and I lent out begrudgingly. How did they react? They reacted by shouting "awesome", and trying to either buy it off me or tape-to-tape copy it with two VHS video recorders wired together... True story... And you try to tell kids today about how a "cam" version of a torrented movie they downloaded off the Weird Wide Web isn't that bad a quality! No chance!
