September 2022 marks the 40th Anniversary of the very first-ever VHS tapes that my family rented from a roadside garage / gas station at the bottom of our road.
The titles? The 1982 World Of Video 2000 release of Wes Craven’s THE HILLS HAVE EYES and the 1982 Guild Home Video release of David Cronenberg’s SCANNERS:
Pretty cool, huh?
Those of you high on streaming content at the moment, take a good look at some of the imagery on show above, because this is how it was back in the early 1980s
I’ve had to include these, simply because a brand-new documentary has transported me back to a more simpler time when there were two choices of movie entertainment, the cinema and the corner VHS rental store, as well as tapping into what VHS truly meant to a generation of film fans for whom, like me, it became a catharsis of emotional release if you weren’t a cool teenager who got invited to every party in the neighbourhood with the other cool kids.
Rob Preciado’s CULT OF VHSÂ takes us right to the heart of what it meant to be a VHS lover back in the day and something which has, due to the advent of social media and avid collectors of the format, evolved into something beyond the cult it created.
Now, some of you may have already seen the Jake West VIDEO NASTIES documentary from 2010 which focused on the group of films that sent politicians into apoplexy in the UK at the time of their original rental releases, but for the teenagers it was a key to a kingdom of filmic education that spawned a whole host of film-makers who were influenced by what they saw on many a Friday and Saturday night.
CULT OF VHS is a great companion piece to that and focuses more on the general effect and excitement that, if you were well and truly alive at the time, you got from going to your local Blockbuster or corner store shop like I mentioned earlier.
Featuring interviews with many of today’s modern collectors who have started small but have evolved like the collections they now curate, we begin to get a greater sense of the importance that the format has for collectors, consumers and even some of today’s contemporary film-makers who have made films in the specific tape format, notably the team behind V/H/S (2012), V/H/S/2 (2013) and V/H/S/94 (2021).
Notable among the interview subjects is Kevin Martin, owner of The Lobby Videostore, which contains all manner of formats alongside VHS and has also evolved into a film festival called DedFest where they also get film-makers to make movies based around the store itself. David Gregory focuses on the fascination with this updated restorations of classic films and the artwork from the original pre-regulation releases in the UK
For others, the collectible format mirrors and represents the revival of vinyl which for years was a dead format with the advent of DVDs and music uploads via iTunes and Spotify, but has found its’ feet again because the demographics of yesterday have remained true to their passion for when they watched these films the first time around.
It’s also great to see poster artist Graham Humphreys getting a chance to reflect on his contribution to the golden era (his poster art for THE EVIL DEAD‘s original UK VHS release in 1983, which became the biggest rental in video stores in the UK, has passed into horror folklore) with his iconic UK theatrical quad posters for films like Wes Craven’s A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and SANTA SANGRE amongst others.
If you are parents, CULT OF VHS is the perfect tonic to show your children (if they are old enough that is – as the imagery takes us back to some of the bloodshed and violence we revelled in) what it meant to be like them in your own generation.
I wish to end this review as I did before with another personal memory. Often I would be left at home with a VHS rental tape when the rest of my family would socialise and it is nights like that which I still value today as somebody who continue to evolve as a truly passionate believer in the power of film and video. For me, watching the likes of MAD MAX, FRIDAY THE 13TH, THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS, ZOMBIES – DAWN OF THE DEAD, THE BOGEY MAN, NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1980) (which is glimpsed in the interviews with David Gregory) , FIRST BLOOD and AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN was an open door into a greater world.
It was nice to spend ninety minutes with these guys.
