It Came from Nevada (or, Paragon: A Love Story)

Many years ago, at one of my favourite city haunts, I had found four Paragon VHS titles for $1.99 each, in the sidewalk cart outside, amidst multiple copies of such common titles as Jurassic Park or Speed. Upon going inside to pay for them, and plunking down the tapes on the counter, the cashier asked incredulously: “You want these?!?”

His reaction was appropriate, because the slipcovers were rippled with water damage. Like the films Paragon often distributed, these tapes looked like they were rescued from the depths. Their VHS box art would consist of a scanned movie poster on the front, and the back cover would be adorned with a silk-screen illustration or “artist’s interpretation” (instead of a proper still or video capture) above a plot synopsis that wouldn’t fill the space allotted for the 2AM movie in TV Guide. (Unwritten law- a video box with painted illustrations is usually better than the movie inside.)

Of all the many fledgling video labels in the 1980s, the Nevada-based company Paragon was surely the most unique during its reign from circa 1982 to 1985. Paragon’s catalogue consisted of the oddest films from around the globe. If ever VHS was ever considered state of the art for home entertainment, the Paragon label would be the 8-track tape of the bunch. Their murky, often-greenish transfers made the films even more odd and displaced.

And these reasons are precisely why I collected Paragons back in the day. The medium was also the message. It seemed that there was an “authorship” behind the Paragon Pantheon. The selection appeared more curated than random; many of their films shared that odd and alienating tone, further enhanced by their no-frills presentation.

Many of the titles previously on the Paragon label have yet to make it to DVD, and if the rest of the free world thought anything like the cashier, no one would want them to be. What fascinates me most about Paragon product was how out of place, out of time it appears, now as then. The crude technology and minimalist packaging seemed primitive even then, yet befit the films inside. Like most independent video labels of the 1980s, Paragon too began their films with a cheesy lo-fi computer animated title. The Paragon name leapt to the foreground from a starry background, like the opening credits to Superman (with soundalike music to match). But amusingly, this seems fitting, as much of Paragon’s product did feel as though it came from another planet.

To be sure, a lot of independent labels have had eclectic content, but as whole, Paragon’s mixed bag of titles was the most distancing. The bulk of their product line featured the most arcane titles from the most remote corners of the globe. For example, if one wanted films made for Australian TV (Bellamy, The Newman Shame) or bizarre European imports (Image of Death) one needn’t have looked any further. Their kung fu films looked conservative by comparison. Paragon also carried an impressive line of Cannon titles (but from before the slicker, though still inexpensive 1980s Norris and Bronson pictures). This is why one would also find such Israeli co-productions as the spaghetti westerns Kid Vengeance, or God’s Gun, which featured not one but two Lee Van Cleefs. Also, Paragon carried Going Steady and Hot Bubblegum, part of Golan and Globus’ hugely successful Lemon Popsicle films, which were Israeli-produced American Graffiti rip-offs. While many of these pictures listed above were perhaps American in spirit (as they imitated Hollywood conventions), they still felt otherworldly thanks to their dubbing and distinctly foreign approach to American product. 

Yes, Paragon had more, um, mainstream American-produced Cannon fodder like New Years Evil, but they also carried such little films from its salad days as Fury on Wheels (featuring Different Strokes dad Conrad Bain, looking like he just stepped off of skid row). Indeed, the North American titles that made the Paragon catalog usually consisted of bottom-rung swill that would play way at the bottom of a drive-in all-nighter. Cheerleaders Beach Party, Polk County Pot Plane, Hot Summer in Barefoot County, and (God bless them) The Day it Came to Earth are just some of the wonderful obscurities that they adorned video stores with.

Paragon is well remembered for either preceding or following the main feature with about 15 minutes of previews of other Paragon films. This was not a collection of vintage movie trailers, but a crudely edited compilation (presumably made by the company), of scenes made to look like trailers, each introduced with the same heavy handed voice and cheap Chyron title.  But for tapeheads they remained very entertaining highlight reels for such horror favourites as Doctor Butcher M.D. or Funeral Home.

Today, many Paragon titles are highly collectible, thanks to their glaring unavailability on DVD. For example, the Filipino horror film Killing of Satan recently auctioned on eBay for over $30 US, and The Pilot (featuring Cliff Robertson as “the best damn pilot in the sky, drunk or sober”) also nets high prices. Ironically, after Shriek Show’s much-celebrated DVD release of Jeff Lieberman’s Just Before Dawn, some collectors began to covet Paragon’s original VHS, which still had all of the gore intact. 

Strangely enough, Paragon still exists, perhaps unwittingly, in the digital age. The fly-by-night labels that comprise the dollar DVD market adapt the same old strategy of similar companies in the VHS age: put out a title that may not necessarily be public domain, but by the time the license holders get wise, the company will be closed, anyway. And many of these dollar DVD labels blatantly use VHS tapes as sources for their releases. On several occasions, I have noticed that the snake oil salesmen used old Paragon copies for their discs, as one can tell their distinctive crusty, greenish transfers anywhere. But if one couldn’t, sometimes these companies are so crass as to leave Paragon’s opening banner intact on their DVDs!

Whether in its original VHS form, or blatantly borrowed for digital versatile disc, it is strangely poetic to see Paragon still live on, making a life of its own in the corners of the video universe. It is a poetic metaphor for the glory days in which these sensational titles would make a place for themselves in mom and pop operations across the continent, waiting for the viewers who were tired of antiseptic Hollywood popcorn, and yearned for something just a bit unclean.

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Originally published in Vol. #1, Issue #19 (the ever-popular VHS RIP issue). Some of the content is now dated, but gives an idea of how the home video scene was transitioning at the time of publication.