VHS Get Shorty

MGM's VHS release of "Get Shorty" from 1995. Elmore Leonard adaptation, Barry Sonnenfeld directing, John Travolta playing Chili Palmer with the kind of effortless cool that reminded everyone why they'd been waiting on him since "Pulp Fiction" the year prior. Gene Hackman, Rene Russo, Danny DeVito rounding out a cast that treated Leonard's dialogue like the gift it was. The cover art puts all four principal actors posed in spotlight against a black ground, Travolta center in the leather jacket, which is exactly how MGM knew to sell it.

1995 was a specific kind of moment for crime-adjacent Hollywood comedy. Tarantino's fingerprints were on everything, Leonard adaptations were getting serious treatment again, and Sonnenfeld was two years removed from "The Addams Family" and building a run that would lead straight into "Men in Black." "Get Shorty" fit neatly into that current: it was sharp, it knew what it was, and it moved. The film opened in October 1995 and performed above expectations, grossing over $72 million domestic against a $30 million budget. Critics at the time called it one of the cleaner crime comedies in years. Thirty-plus years on, the reputation holds. Travolta's Chili Palmer stands alongside his Vincent Vega in the lineage of mid-90s cool-guy performances that defined what that decade thought cool actually looked like.

Our copy comes in the standard MGM clamshell. The cassette shell and tape housing are intact. The cover art reads cleanly with no visible water damage or label lift. Rewound and ready. If you are buying this for display, the face card holds its color well and the front-panel art is strong. If you are buying it to play, check the tape window before you thread it: ribbon should sit flat with no slack and no debris visible through the shell.

OWNER VERIFY: Confirm the MGM catalog number on the spine matches a confirmed 1995 first-run pressing rather than a later reissue.