Remembering Mailmaster Films (UK Mail Order)

[Mark Silvester]

Hi Gary

what a wonderful post...evocative of those wonderful time when I, like many others, BECAME MAGICALLY ENTRANCED WITH 8MM FILM COLLECTING VIA THOSE "BUMPER" catalogue and listing packs..wonderful box art pictured as well. it always made me chuckle when the order form said..please "RUSH" me ..lol

I too was transfixed by the 8mm adverts in Famous Monsters of Film-land - I managed to collect quite a few back in the early 70's in the U.K.

Scientific and Technical were big then also.

My first sound projector - and I had a few laughs with Derek Simmonds about this was the "sewing machine to super 8mm" - The Gioca Baby sound. It worked ok but was very rough on flms - my family bought it for me and I thing it was £69 in about 1977.

My next experience was a lovely Eumig.

I can also remember as a kid drooling over those film boxes of 50ft and 200" Castle film cutdowns that my local camera shop used to have on a stand as well as Walton releases in Dixons. First sound movie I ever bought was the "200 sound from Walton, "The Night Caller".

It cost a fortune -great memories though!

Mark

[Mark Mander]

Many trips down memory with this post, thanks Gary, Mark

[Gary Sayers]

Couldn’t agree more about the box art Mark. I honestly think it’s those little masterpieces that I often enjoyed seeing more than the actual films themselves. They certainly usually offered more than the contents inside delivered!

With most of the films being out of my reach financially, I personally found the expectation and longing of what it would be like to own the films, based on the box art, greatly surpassed the actual reality of what the contents revealed. Or maybe it’s just that the wanting is always better than the actual getting?

I still get that slight frisson of excitement when looking through the old catalogues and putting my mind back to that time and just looking at them as if they were all available now and all I had to do was fill in the order form and nip to the post office for a postal order!

[Douglas Meltzer]

This fun thread has made me wonder about the good box art/disappointing cutdown experiences we've had. I've started a new topic about that subject.

Doug