I was born in late USSR. Some things, somewhat ordinary to Western World, were either in scarcity or just not existing in my childhood. Though my uncle emigrated to Australia so occasionally we were getting something from there. At some point, we got a VHS. The player came with a bunch of cassettes with movies recorded from Australian TV. Sometimes they were re-recorded. And in this case, if the original film was longer than a new one, you got an additional ending of something unknown after the closing credits.

It was mostly action movies there. So imagine, you’ve just finished watching The Temple of Doom or Romancing the Stone and you get a bonus. Most often those last 10-15 mins were either a final fight or, if you’re not lucky, a happy ending when the main hero has already won the fight and escaped with his woman.

But you skipped everything before. And there is no way even to know the movie title. You don’t know who they are and where they are. How many secondary characters have died by that moment, or captured or trapped and about to be either smashed by some ticking mechanism or their cage is slowly going into open space or lava. Why does the main hero have only an ancient melee weapon in his hands and why is he all in some sort of grease. You could just imagine.

But that was the climax, sometimes the most expensive part, so you skim it off the top. And then came the closure with all the freeing of hostages, escaping from the bunker by grabbing a helicopter rope ladder.

Later I discovered some of those movies. Many stayed in my memory like that, I guess, for ever. But that was a fun experience.

Beat that, Netflix.