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by Simon Brew | May 14, 2025
John Carpenter's Escape From New York is getting a deluxe VHS release in the UK, and it's available to order here. It is 2025.
The people at Vice-Press comfortably win this week's they-must-be-mad-but-love-'em award. It's announced a brand new physical media release of John Carpenter's seminal Escape From New York, and by absolutely unpopular demand, it's bringing the film back to VHS.
Two different editions are being offered. There's a limited slipcase edition, where the cover art has been done by Phantom City Creative, and comes with a screenprinted tape design.
Then there's a collector's edition with a double-sided cover, and Matt Ferguson has done the design work there.
As for the film itself, it's presented in the PAL format, and in widescreen. None of this pan and scan nonsense here.
The release, inevitably, is a limited edition one, priced at £29.99 for each edition. Escape From New York's return to VHS comes on Thursday 15th June, and is shipping from the UK. You can find more details on the releases, and order yourselves copies on Vice Press's website.
We've covered Vice-Press and its VHS releases in our print magazine before, and over at its website, you can find its previous release of They Live, as well as its much in demand collection of posters as well. Note too that it has an open house coming up at its Sheffield premises in October, and you can find more details on the website.
If you're not familiar with the film, what a treat you're in for (there is a planned remake, but it's stalled.) It's absolutely worth the trouble of locating a VHS player, and the finding a modern day television that still accepts a SCART connection. A good double bill with The Purge: Anarchy too, arguably the highlight of that particular franchise.
Here's looking forward to more collectable VHS releases, and hopefully Vice-Press can get around to some HD DVD release soon, so I've got an excuse to get my player out of the garage.It's 2025, and Escape From New York has just got a new VHS release
Was this connector exclusive to France or Europe or something? Modern TVs still have RCA and even Coaxial ports, which every VCR I’ve ever seen in my life uses.
SCART was standard here in the UK. But most VHS players also had RCA composite cables. I don't recall any of my VCRs/DVD players ever having coax, though; that presumably wasn't that common a standard here.
When VCR's first appeared, they were connected via the UHF connection. So you had to tune your TV to the VCR channel to watch anything.
I don't remember any other connections until SCART came along. I was reading the Wiki and didn't realise it was invented in France back in 1976. Essentially, SCART was the best connection you could have as it used RGB if available.