Cult Of VHS

“VHS – it’s like vinyl, and vinyl kind of sucked,” says actor/director Michael Keene at the beginning of this documentary. And of course, people fall in love with both.

Rob Preciado’s film is beautifully crafted, a real labour of love. ‘This film has been modified from its original version. It has been formatted to fit your TV,’ says a notice before the opening titles begin, and slender, flickering white lines transect the screen at intervals, but not intrusively or in the tight loops of most pre-made digital add-ons. Every detail of the titles is period appropriate, from the overdramatic Eighties rock theme tune to the use of neon colours, ‘futuristic’ fonts and lighting effects. We move straight into an advert for a Panasonic video recorder which features a robot. The future may be yesterday, but it is not forgotten.

Why do some people still obsess over VHS? What made it important? These are the questions which Preciado sets out to answer in a film which has a lot of nostalgic appeal but knows better than to rely on that alone. Beyond the whimsical reminiscences about choosing films in Blockbuster, and the battery of clips from the likes of Critters, Child’s Play, The Evil Dead, Highlander, Demons, The Exorcist, Sleepaway Camp, Vampires in Venice and Ninja III: The Domination, it’s about something far more important: the first moment when ordinary people of limited means had real choice about what they watched. Entertainment, education, art – everything changed over the course of just a couple of years. In some ways it was a precursor to the internet age, and it revealed things about public tastes which nobody had expected.

Cult Of VHS screened as part of Frightfest 2022, and it’s a fitting choice, dealing as it does with the blossoming of the horror genre (and science fiction and fantasy likewise) in a new context where big budgets were no longer necessary and producers were much more quickly able to adapt to consumer demand. Despite the emergence of new magazines, the press couldn’t keep up, so most people had no idea what they were renting, relying primarily on titles and cover art. VHS artist and illustrator Graham Humphries is among the contributors here, discussing what sold and how the process developed.

It would be impossible to talk about the horror genre in this era without addressing the video nasty phenomenon. A clip from The Young Ones sets the tone nicely for this, and there’s a brief discussion of some of the films, most of it rather unflattering, but given the amount of time which has been dedicated to this subject elsewhere, Preciado wisely keeps it short. More time is spent an discussing the way that VHS created openings for new stars, from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Cynthia Rothrock, and gave viewers access to cinema from other countries which would have been almost completely inaccessible otherwise.

The most interesting part of the film is the section on collectors, including one guy who still runs a video shop, long after 99% of them have closed. It’s a labour of love and not something from which he can make a living, but he claims to have an increasing number of curious young customers, which tangentially highlights the point that many films released on VHS don’t exist in any other format. Various contributors reveal their rooms full of tapes, one of them opening up a treasured item to smell it for the first time, on camera. Another reveals a tattoo of a VHS tape on his arm. There is a dedication here which is borderline obsessive, but all of them are articulate about the reasons why it matters, from the purely personal to an appreciation of the durability of the format in contrast with digital recordings which can be destroyed by a virus or discs which will no longer work if scratched.

With additional contributions from several directors who grew up with the format, including one who recalls almost dying after he fell down a water-filled open manhole whilst returning a copy of the miniseries It, this is an entertaining film from start to finish, and an informative take on a phenomenon which reshaped cinema forever.