A red plastic VHS cassette titled The Sleeper slides from an oversized slipcase dotted with creases, scuffs and hastily taped corners. A rainbowstriped banner rings the outside of the slipcase's top edge, while a ‘Hi-Fi Stereo’ logo sits in one corner and a circular sticker with the generic label ‘Horror’ adorns the other (Figure 3.1). Several still images from the film (a bloodied victim, a brandished knife, a worried young woman on a telephone) appear on the back of the box, just above the prominent warning ‘This film contains violence and gore which may be considered shocking. Must be 17 or older to rent’. The cassette itself bears a smileyfaced sticker warning of a ‘50¢ charge if tape isn't rewound’. Yet, despite its emulation of an early-1980s ex-rental tape, my copy of The Sleeper arrived brand new when it premiered on video in January 2012, available as a DVD/VHS combo pack – a strange anomaly more than three years after final shipments of pre-recorded VHS tapes had left American warehouses.3 A contemporary-styled DVD case featuring completely different cover art, a listing of special features, and other standard information lurks within the same oversized VHS-styled slipcase – a notable subordination of the newer format to the overall shape of the residual one.

Set on a college campus circa 1981, Justin Russell's independent film faithfully captures the look and feel of slasher films such as Final Exam (1981), The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982), and The House on Sorority Row (1983), not only in its packaging but also in its overall filmic design.