Monday 17 November 2014

Crossroads - The Movie - Direct to Video!

Back in the early eighties, ITC had a habit of joining episodes of its successful TV shows together and marketing them as movies to TV stations too stingy to fork out for the full series. 

Titles like 'Journey Through the Black Sun', 'The Incredible Voyage of Stingray' and 'The Amazing Adventures of Joe 90' soon found their way onto the fledgling VHS rental market via the label 'Precision Home Video'. 

I still have a copy of 'London Conspiracy' - two episodes of 'The Persuaders!' shamelessly bolted together and displaying a complete disregard for the title by not having any scenes set in the British capital! Uniquely, these tapes came in robust music-cassette style plastic boxes and like their audio counterparts, easily broke and became very scuffed and filthy looking as the years went on. 

ITC attempted to create a movie from its popular soap opera 'Crossroads'. A selection of episodes chronicling the fire at the motel that resulted in the sad departure of Noele Gordon were edited together into an hour and half mini-epic. Additional scenes set at an inquiry into the fire at the Birmingham coroner's office were filmed with actors Geoffrey Keen, Shane Rimmer and Nina Baden-Semper were added to cover the joins and an additional scene which changed the storyline was filmed with Jane Rossington weeping at the graveside of her dead mum. (The latter had originally been passed off as a hoax by the press!) There we also some extra effects scenes spliced in from 'The Medusa Touch'. It was a bit of a mess really and very few broadcasters took up the option on it. 

I hear that it was broadcast once in Singapore.

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