2-tape vhs set pre-viewed for quality and both features played great, except Lifeboat had some interferance and goes black screen for a few seconds at 36 minutes, otherwise it played fine as well. Both cassettes are duplicated in the superior SP mode, are nice and clean and both box covers still have nice color. Both boxes are a little shelf worn around the corners & edges plus Lifepod has a faint sticker shadow on the upper left corner. Both of these features are Out Of Print and no longer being manufactured in any format.

LIFEPOD: This "stranded in space adventure", with a script by M. Jay Roach and Pen Densham that was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's 'Lifeboat', is an exciting, fast-moving, TV-movie directed by the late Ron Silver, who is also in the cast as a blind man. On Christmas Eve, 2169, a civilian space cruiser (the Lutrania) is returning from Venus ("across an ocean of 10 billion light years") when it's sabotaged by an explosion. A handful of survivors escape aboard a "lifepod."

But from the start, things go wrong, they argue, starve, suffocate, develop radiation scars, freeze, and die. Jessica Tuck is a reporter who videotapes what happens and narrates. It becomes obvious that one of them is a traitor and a terrorist (it was a Nazi in the original). This is a pure genre film done with style by Silver, who uses claustrophobic tricks to good advantage.

The outer-space effects and hardware are excellent and the twists come frequently. Also in the cast are Robert Loggia as a politician, Stan Shaw, CCH Pounder, Adam Storke, and Ed Gale as the best character, a dwarf mechanic with a cyborg arm called Q-3. All of the characters are interesting enough to warrant caring about the "whodunit" aspect.

LIFEBOAT: B&W, 1944 Alfred Hitchcock film from a story by John Steinbeck. When a German U-Boat sinks an Allied freighter in WWII, the eight survivors are left to fend for themselves in a tiny cramped lifeboat. Tension peaks after the drifting passengers take in a stranded Nazi they rescue from drowning. The lives and personalities of these nine strangers provide a cross-section of society and an arena of pathos, humour, tyranny and compassion.

Tallulah Bankhead especially shines in her role for which the New York Film Critics awarded Best Actress. Hitchcock saw a great challenge in having the entire story take place in a lifeboat, pulling it off with his usual flourish it is considered a technical achievement. In 1989, the film 'Dead Calm' replicated the technique.