A Better Film Quiz

Last night was this month’s film quiz in the Gwyn Hall. You may recall that I made a post last month generally saying that I felt that the last quiz could be criticised on a number of levels, not least the way that I felt last month’s quiz was all about the question masters showing off that they knew more than the players did and were by consequence that much smarter than we were. Well. . . I don’t know if any of the QMs happened to read said post, but blow me down, last night’s quiz seemed just better in every way. Apart from the outcome that is. I’ll come to that.

I moaned about the fact that almost all of last month’s questions were about Disney movies from the 21^st century. Well, there was not a ridiculous amount of questions about 20^th century Sci Fi movies, but there was at least a decent proportion. Although they still persist in using ‘in which year’ questions at least they avoided going down the smug ‘trap’ question route. They also put in a fair picture quiz this time, rather than one where if you get the first one wrong you’re likely to get all of them wrong. As a result the quiz they served up was far more satisfying than the last one.

Although the result was the same.

Yeah, we lost on a tie break. But at least, well, at least this one allowed for some kind of rationale. So the question was – when Star Trek – The Motion Picture was first released on VHS in the USA, how much in dollars did it cost to buy? If you weren’t around in the late 70s and early 80s then maybe you don’t know how ridiculously expensive VHS movies were at the time. But I have a distinct memory of spending £40 of my first university grant cheque on the VHS of Doctor Who’s “Revenge of the Cyberman”. Factoring in the exchange rate, the fact it was a few years earlier and the relative popularity of Star Trek, I courted my team’s disbelief by suggesting 80 – 100 bucks. We came down a bit to 70. The answer? 80 dollars – well 79 and about fifty cents. Did we win? Win be damned. Another team went for 80 dollars. What can you do? Win a tie break doesn’t seem to be one of them. If you wanted to buy the VHS of Star Trek the Motion Picture in the USA now according to the QM it would cost over 300 dollars. I have my doubts. You could buy one for about 10 dollars from the USA on ebay, plus postage and packaging.