Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2020 September 12

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September 12

the case of the carnivorous videotape

Name this short movie made in 197x: An aspiring moviemaker gets a letter inviting him to meet with a producer. He finds no one in the office. He is pursued by a living (stop-motion) heap of two-inch videotape, which eats him and then types another similar letter. —Tamfang (talk) 16:38, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

I wonder if you are confusing different things and/or misremembering. There is a 1975 (I think) short film officially called Recorded Live but often referred to as Flesh Eating Film Reels (or Man-Eating Film Reels) which involves [1] someone being pursued by, as you may guess from the unofficial title, film from reels. It seems it was frequently played in HBO in the 1970s and 1980s. There is a 2017 or 2018 spiritual sequel called The Return of Flesh Eating Film Reels which despite the name involves someone being pursued by tape from VHS cassettes [2] [3] [4]. The sequel putting aside the VHS cassettes is clearly set in modern times as it involves a somewhat modern looking laptop and what appears to be an e-mail. I can't find any evidence of a 1970s version that involved video tape. And I'd note that consumer video tape was still in its infancy in the early 1970s and while yes it had been used broadcast and professional recordings for a while, I'm not sure inclusion of video tape would make so much sense in a context like this for a film of that era. Nil Einne (talk) 19:20, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the title! It sure looks like tape from here. (He's not a filmmaker, and it's not a producer's office but ostensibly a TV station.) —Tamfang (talk) 00:50, 16 September 2020 (UTC)