It was one of those nights that me and my brother, both of us bored teenagers at the time, scoured the internet every night, searching for whatever obscure oddities we could find. ‘Did you know,’ I can still hear my brother saying, ’that the highest quality original versions of Star Wars are on LaserDisc?’

LASERDISC?!

LaserDisc.

Archaic analogue movie discs from the 1980s, which usually had an hour of material on each side, meaning you had to flip them over halfway through a movie. They were never able to compete with VHS on price and ease of use, so LaserDiscs were ever only really popular in Japan.

But you have to admit, it’s the coolest name a media carrier could ever hope to have!

The name (accompanied by the image of hilariously oversized CDs), sowed the seed of potential obsession which I forever tried to suppress. For years I tried to ignore my conscience and guiltily searched Marktplaats for traces of LaserDiscs, knowing full well that if I ever made my first purchase, I would be forever lost. Anyone who knows me, knows that I sometimes have an interest in the banal that borders on fixation, so it was somewhat to my surprise (which I now see perhaps shouldn’t have been) that I discovered that some of my friends simply assumed that I already had a LaserDisc collection. Something I’d been actively been trying to avoid for so long.

However, having read so far, you’ve probably guessed that I’ve caved in and lost the battle to never own a LaserDisc.

On one of those sultry summer nights, mania apparently took hold as temperatures rose, and I awoke bleary-eyed to find an order confirmation in my inbox, while my bank account had shrunk by an amount that I refuse to disclose.

Thank god that Zienema has provided me the opportunity to share my enthusiasm for this obsolete medium with the world! Of course you can be sure that we have selected a true gem for our audience. Although we will have to keep this under wraps for various reasons, I can tell you now that the movie has everything – just like the LaserDisc – to make it a timeless classic: action, suspense, romance, intrigue, and of course …. Dolph Lundgren.

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