Review and news hub for movies, music and video games

Before we begin, there's something you should know.

You see, we here at JPP don't actually buy all the DVDs and Blu-rays we review, because we're not rich. We're not even moderately wealthy. We're struggling youngsters just trying to keep a media site going strong as we make our way in the world. Thus, we get a lot of [read: most] our reviewable materials from studios, but don't worry we still praise and thrash a given movie or television season according to our personal dispositions. Anyways, the point is, DVDs and Blu-rays arrive on our doorstep daily. But today was different. Today we received something unexpected.

See that? No, it's not a newfangled plastic insulation brick, it's a video cassette. Classy. It turns out the good folks over at MPI pulled a fast one on us and sent us a hefty VHS copy of their upcoming release of Ti West's The House of the Devil. The fuzzy picture. The muffled audio. Maybe it's the VHS cassette. Or maybe your VCR heads need a cleaning. Or maybe it's the scariest format man has e'er conceived? Yeah, the last one. We noticed the package had an unusual size to it, but we thought it was two DVDs sandwiched together, so imagine our shock when it turned out to be a magnetic-strip brick in a big, protective white VHS case.

Confused? Yes we were. Laughing hysterically? That too. If you're like us you haven't owned a VCR in a couple of years (we realize not everyone is like us in that respect). But even two years ago, the VHS player we had was kept around to play the four VHS tapes we had here: X-Men, Dumb and Dumber, EdTV and Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings. Yes, we have good taste. So now we're searching for a VCR player. We might even have to go out and drop $10 on one. There's nothing like lo-fi video on a hi-def screen. Yum.