The first film I saw on home video was Battle Beyond The Stars, which my parents rented for me on the way home from purchasing our first (top-loading) VHS player.
However, the first tape I actually owned (and still do) was Raiders Of The Lost Ark, which my parents gave me as a Christmas present when I was 15.
In the early days of VHS, when we were just renting the cassettes, I had a policy of watching every film five times before we had to return it.
You have to remember, back in the olden days, films came on TV (or at the cinema) and if you didn't watch them when they were shown, you had to wait until they were shown again (which could be years later... or never).
Until 1982 (when the creatively named Channel 4 began broadcasting), we only had three channels of television to chose from in the UK.
So, to a budding cinephile and storyteller, the invention of home video was a game-changer.
Imagine, one day not being able to watch a film you wanted to, and the next day you could watch it as many times as you liked, whenever you liked.
For months, I even kept a log of every film I'd watched on tape (until I missed one, and that threw my system completely out of whack and I gave up on that exercise... See, I had control issues even back then!).
One of my few remaining vivid memories of my childhood is - rather bizarrely - crawling under my parents' bed to see what they'd got me for Christmas and finding the Raiders tape.
I was so excited! Even though it wasn't going to be a surprise now, I knew I would soon be able to watch this amazing movie as often as I wanted.
And I suspect, although I lost count, I watched that tape of Raiders Of The Lost Ark (which remains the film I've seen most often in the cinema) way more than my mandatory 'five times minimum'.
