Tape top

Tape front

Star Wars, VHS, MAYCO A/S, Norway 1983

The film is presented in cropped "fullscreen", with Norwegian subtitles. The scroll (including the mention of "Episode IV") and credits remain in English. Typical of the experimentation from the early days of home video, the subtitles on the film are in a different font and colour than what would be standard in the years to come (The trailers have the "standard" style subtitles). The main subtitles are in yellow (but the opening scroll is subtitled in white for legibility), and Greedo's subs are in upper case. They had a subtitle free master to work from, as you can see from the Greedo scene in the screenshots below. There is a trailer for Beneath the Planet of the Apes in front of the film, and trailers for Capricorn One and Patton after. The Patton trailer is in English, but the on-screen credits are in French. The Norwegian rental tapes came in big clamshell boxes, much like the UK. The 80's rental tapes from Norwegian distributor MAYCO are extremely rare. The company enforced a strict rule of having every tape returned after the rental store's lease ended. Every copy had an individual serial number that was tracked. Therefore, almost no tapes from the company were available on the open market. The last few years they have started appearing on enthusiast Facebook groups, but this particular tape is extremely rare and commands more than $1000 when a copy comes up for auction. My "dealer" who also got me the other Ewoks tapes and my prized Betamax of Return of the Jedi, unearthed this tape for me back in 2009, well before prices started to skyrocket for this particular title. This is a tape I thought I'd never get my hands on, and now remains one of the jewels in my collection. The distribution rights to the Star Wars films were acquired by local distributor SF Norge sometime in the 90's, and as far as I know the Star Wars movies weren't available to buy in Norway until SF released the THX remasters in 1995.

Assorted screenshots: