VHS The Trouble With Angels

Columbia Pictures put "The Trouble With Angels" on VHS in the mid-to-late 1980s, bringing Ida Lupino's 1966 comedy-drama to the home video market at a time when studios were combing their back catalogs for anything with a name cast and a clean rating. This is a genuine vintage clamshell pressing, and the warm brown and gold cover art with the cast credits in yellow type is the version most collectors recognize from the rental-store years.

The film itself holds a specific place in 1960s Hollywood. Rosalind Russell as Mother Superior and Hayley Mills as the incorrigible Mary Clancy made an unlikely pair that worked completely. Lupino, one of the few women directing studio features during that stretch, pulled performances that aged better than most of the decade's youth comedies. Columbia released it in 1966 when Hayley Mills was still riding the wave from her Disney run, "Pollyanna" through "The Parent Trap" and beyond, and the studio positioned it as something both families and older audiences could share. The sequel, "Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows" (1968), came two years later with Mills returning. This original is the one that started the conversation. We keep seeing the sequel come through the door; finding a clean copy of the first film is the harder pull.

The clamshell on this one shows the expected shelf wear for a tape with this kind of age on it. Cover art is intact with the playful script lettering still reading clearly. The cassette shell itself should be examined for any warping or label curl before you commit to a playback test. If you are buying this for display, the brown and gold cover reads well on a shelf alongside other Columbia catalog titles from the same pressing period. If you are buying it for play, put it in a rewinder first. Check the tape window: ribbon should sit flat with no slack before you thread it.

OWNER VERIFY: Original VHS pressing date and Columbia catalog number, to confirm mid-to-late 1980s vs. early 1990s release run.