An Obituary for VHS Tapes

As some of you may have heard, the last VHS tape was recently produced, and an era has officially come to a close. Before VHS (and it's arch nemesis Beta) the only way to watch a movie from the comfort of your home was to catch it on TV, or maybe 16mm/8mm film if you had a projector. But lo, the Gods of Passive Entertainment saw that their children were unhappy, and so they bestowed upon us the VHS Cassette Tape so that we might watch “Zombie Nightmare” over and over again until our tiny brains were reduced to pasty gray mush.

Suddenly you could just head out to the neighborhood video store, pick up a pizza on the way home and viola – you could watch the movie on your TV without someone annoying kid kicking the back of your seat. (Unless you had kids, but you could just lock them up in the crawlspace for an hour and a half I suppose.)

There was a problem however; there were very few movies available at first. Where there's demand there's always some big fat guy in Bermuda shorts (don't ask me why he's a big fat guy, he just is) waiting to capitalize on the opportunity. Small, fly by night video distribution companies sprang up almost overnight, putting any movie onto VHS they could get their hands on, regardless of the films quality. Bizarre, poorly dubbed foreign films , bad action movies and no budget direct to video films that should have never been viewed by anyone filled row upon row of shelf space at hasty assembled movie rental stores.

Of course, if people knew how painfully bad some of those movie were they would never have rented them! Therefore it was in the distribution companies best interest to pay a guy to paint an awesome cover for it. That way people would think they were getting when they were really getting this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF-fcz4DlSg

There was all kinds of kick ass box art. Take this one for example -
When I first saw this I was six years old I convinced that it was the coolest movie ever made. Of course my Mom would never rent it, and my dream of watching Night of Horror went unfulfilled until about three months ago when I saw an old used copy for sale at Kensington Video. (Best video rental store in San Diego without a doubt.)

I bought it for about a buck and raced home, sure that I had rediscovered a lost classic of horror cinema. I gloated over my discovery to my wife, (who somehow manages to tolerate my bad movie obsession) put it into the VCR and prepared myself for the rapture that only a crappy monster movie can bring.

But there was no monster.

Instead I was subjugated to 76 minuets of dull torture. I went to my “happy place” for most of the movie but sometimes when I close my eyes I see flashes of some long haired teenagers sitting at a “bar” which is obviously in their parents basement. I see a poorly shot Civil War reenactment, and hear a droning narration and some sort of terrible country rock song that never ends. No awesome VHS cover zombie ever appears to save the film.

This is a good example of the power of VHS box art. 20 years later and I bought the film simply based on its cover. Imagine how important the box art was back in the 80's/early 90's when people had no clue as to what the hell they were renting. For more art, I recommend you check out this site - http://www.critcononline.com/video_compa...er_art.htm You might remember seeing some of those boxes up on the rental shelf and there's a lot of good info about the distribution companies there also. (If your a nerd and curious about that sort of thing.)

All good things had to come to an end of course. Once the major labels saw how much money the little guys were making they pushed harder to get their larger budget, mainstream films onto VHS. The bad movies were pushed of the shelf to make way for the good ones (well, arguably good) and the world moved on without “A Bell From Hell” and “ I dismember Mama.” And then came the DVD format; no more rewinding, tracking problems and what have you, and you know the rest of the story.

We owe a lot to VHS. It sparked our obsession with the home theater experience and gave new life to movies that otherwise would have otherwise vanished into obscurity. Rest in peace. Especially Night of Horror. Screw that movie.