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- Videotape, VHS,

it's the blood line of movies, the home video market.

- I think the same way that vinyls have

had a resurgence recently, that I think

the kind of physical product is

something that people kind of miss now.

- You put it into a VCR, and it starts winding its tape out,

and the gears start going and it's

makes that sound and you start to watch a movie

come alive on your TV screen.

- I love VHS.

- VHS had this grainy, smudgy image

that kind of added this whole other layer to the movie.

The old video transfers coupled with that

second generation dub quality and the low resolution.

It really gave it a unique feel.

It's almost like an old analog color grade.

You can watch it on an HD TV and an SD TV

and it looks the same.

Plus there were more titles released on VHS

than any other format and a lot of those titles

are still only available on VHS.

- I think human beings by nature respect ritual

and in the VHS era there was a ritual

to watching a movie on VHS.

You often times had to go to the store,

select the movie out of many, pay for it,

bring it home, you know physically take it out of a box,

and physically put it into the VCR, and physically hit it.

There was a multi step process so that

by the time you were watching, I Spit On Your Grave,

or Deep Rider, or Earnest Saves Christmas,

you felt like you'd earned the privilege

and the right to do it.

- I remember just the classic sort of feel of

watching the tapes, seeing all the fuzziness on it,

knowing that every time you put it on,

you don't know when it's gonna skip or

go a little bit dodgy.

I do kind of miss that.

- Sometimes easiness isn't better,

it cheapens the experience.

You're watching something on VHS

and this tape itself that you have cost $70,

because before they were really

available on the market to buy,

to rent something meant that you were

being trusted with something that

had X amount of value to it that you

probably couldn't even pay if you lost it.

So you had to be careful.

Then afterwards you have to eject it

and take it back to the store.

Sometimes before your parents realized

you'd actually rented the thing in the first place.

I think that just, it lent a specialness,

a sacredness to the experience

that's quite easily lost now.

- It's like hooking yourself up to an IV monitor.

It's seeing something really move,

really have a feeling to it, a tangible feeling to it

come alive on the TV screen.

VHS lives, it never dies.

- I run Film Trauma.

Film Trauma is a small video distribution company,

we specialize in VHS, we also do DVD and other formats too,

but primarily VHS.

- We are sitting inside my video store, Old School Video.

We've been open about two weeks now.

Business has been pretty steady the entire time.

We've been setting up new memberships every day

which is always awesome.

A lot of horror fans have been coming

and checking out our horror wall that we have here.

I'd say that our top renters are probably the horror movies

and the new releases and kids and family films.

We kind of cater to two different crowds.

A lot of horror fans come here for the rare stuff

that we have and then there's a lot of the

local families in the neighborhood that come

to get the new releases and the kids movies.

It's been a lot of fun really.

I didn't really know what to expect

at the beginning of doing this but

it's a lot better than I anticipated.

The first few days that we were open we were really busy.

We had an article that got published in the local newspaper

and there was a lot of hype I think because of that.

After the first three or four days

it kind of died down a little bit,

and we kind of sat back and looked at

what we had to do to increase business

and we changed our hours and our days

and things picked right back up

and we've been pretty steady everyday.

I've got a two year lease here,

so we have at least two years of doing this.

Hopefully we stay successful the entire time

enough that we can continue after the two years

and keep expanding and keep adding to the inventory,

and keep introducing the world to rented movies.

- In 2012 I lost my day job and that wasn't

really that bad because I was sick of working retail anyway.

I felt like I could be making money for myself

instead of some big company.

I wanted to do artistic stuff for myself

and in my spare time I was actually doing

VHS releases monthly with a friend.

That was doing well so I figured I could do it myself,

and so I went off and I started King of the Witches.

The first couple releases were mix tapes that I made myself.

This is the first one, it's called Party Levitation.

Doing stuff like this led on to

people getting in touch with me to release their films.

The first one we did was Emancipation by Ron Decaro.

So we started catering to the more extreme horror films.

We eventually did Mysterious First Date by Nick Box,

we did a bunch of Ryan Nicholson films.

We went on to do Inner Depravity which is an extreme

really infamous Canadian gore film,

but I really wanted to do obscure documentaries

and stuff from the 80s, not necessarily horror.

We did both of the Desperate Teenage Love Dolls films

and those did really well for us.

That led us to doing The Godless Bunny

which is a crazy documentary.

We did Movie House Massacre.

Most recently we did Barney the Blob which is a

shlucky throwback to 70s films.

It was kind of like a wash film from the 90s

that never got a release.

So we did it and

it's become a full time job fighting with

the rights holders and filmmakers for these films.

I don't even think about getting a day job anymore.

- Back in those days adult titles were

kept on the top two shelves of the rental racks

and so if you went up to the rack

and you looked at the movies,

but if you looked through the rack and up

you could see the backs of the boxes

of the adult boxes on the other side,

and so that was great until the video store

owners got wise to it and started using the bookcases

or altogether just put them in different rooms

like whole separate rooms.

- Very very late 1970s and early 1980s

it was pioneered by the porn industry.

The adult film industry, the XXX industry,

they were the filmmakers if you will

that actually first established that there was a huge

viable money making market for their products

on home video.

People wanted to see uncut XXX rated films

on videotape in the privacy of their own homes.

It was after the porn industry actually established

that fact that again, the other non adult film

distributors actually jumped on the bandwagon

and started releasing a lot of drive in hits initially

and then yeah, the bigger studios like Paramount Home Video

and Warner Home Video, they jumped on that bandwagon too

releasing their films but

it was actually that adult film industry

that launched the home video market as we know it.

- So I remember we rented Return of the Living Dead,

that was the first time I had ever seen that movie

and I remember we were watching at night

and right when Linnea Quigley starts to take off her top

the dad comes in and goes oh, oh this isn't appropriate.

And then he shuts it off and then

I never got to finish it that night,

but luckily enough I talked my dad

into letting me watch that the next night

because he had a copy of it and he was like okay,

I'll let you watch it.

- So the first porno tape I ever saw

was this movie called Beverly Hills Copulator

with Tracy Lords.

We went to my friends house after school

and his parents were gone and they left the tape in the VCR.

So of course we watched it and we watched the whole tape

and he was convinced he knew exactly where we came in

so he rewound it but I mean he went way passed it.

His parents came home and they figured out

we watched the tape and they didn't really care

so we didn't get busted,

and Tracy Lords hadn't come out yet as being underage.

It was still pretty cool.

- Don't.

- Don't look in the basement.

The makers of Last House on the Left warn you again

to avoid fainting, keep repeating,

it's only a movie,

only a movie,

only a movie.

The line between sanity and madness can be crossed

in a single step and with this step

you enter the nightmare world of terror.

Judge Caveman, who's earned self control hides the urge

to kill.

Harriet, a mother's love,

twisted into the malignant shape of evil.

The sergeant, living in the hell of an aimless war,

fighting a battle within himself that he lost long ago.

Alison, in a desperate need for love,

an obsession that could drive her to murder.

Dan, who's sense of humor triggers a violent act of

revenge.

Doctor Masters, who has her own idea of the gentle art of

healing.

Aunt Charlotte, who left the world of sanity and security

only to be trapped in the nightmare world of madness.

A nightmare she cannot escape.

They all met on the day the insane took over the asylum.

Don't look in the basement.

From Hallmark Releasing Corporation.

Rated R.

- The first VHS tape I bought was

actually not a VHS tape at all, it was a Beta tape.

I had a Sony Beta Max that I saved my money and bought

back in 1978 and

quite literally, that first movie that I bought on tape

was Don't Look in the Basement, a film that was shot

actually in the early 70s,

near where I lived at that time.

Anyway, it played drive ins and I had seen it at the

drive in actually a few years earlier, as a small kid,

really small.

When I bought the movie on video tape, beta tape at the time

I was upset because when I watched it I found that

they had cut all of the more graphic sequences out like

the scene where the young lady inmate

is grabbed by the back of the head

and she's pushed down or shoved down

onto this like pointed letter holder thing

and it poked in her eye socket.

I remembered at the drive in the scene with her

falling back and this letter holder or whatever

you want to call it had like a nail protruding upwards

that you place these papers down on.

It was gouged into the eye and there was a scene

of her lying there with it protruding from the eye.

So I bought this movie and yet all these scenes

like that were cut and man I thought

well this, this really sucks right?

And that was kind of the beginning of

the video craze for horror.

Initially it was felt that I guess by the distributors

back then that home audiences didn't necessarily

really want to see the gore.

They were still editing some of the films that,

or the horror films at the very least

that were being initially released to video tape.

It wasn't long before there was an outcry

from people left to right horror fans like myself

letting the distributors know that

hey, we want our gore intact at home.

- We're sort of in the beginning stages of the business.

I think that after our first year,

things will be a lot different here than it is now

but right now, I'm just really having a lot of fun

just getting to know people and seeing what

it's like running a business and opening a video store

in 2017, I mean that's pretty much unheard of.

I just read an article that there was a video store

I think in Arizona that actually closed

at the same time that we opened.

So how's that for irony?

- I think you had to be good to be a director back then.

Although there was of course the studio system

I feel like a lot of directors started out

with small budgets and they got somewhere

by doing these movies that were released on VHS

and they got out there where now it's very hard

because we're in this digital age

where you just got a guy with a computer

and like a $3,000 camera and they're doing ridiculous,

they're creating a lot of flash,

and that's something that I think

is taking away from filmmaking.

With computers there's too much flash.

You go back to the 80s style,

and like I said you had to be good,

you had to have a feel without the computers.

That's impossible for I think even a lot

of Hollywood directors now to really do.

- I think VHS is so important because

it was a time when

once we had VHS and

you started renting movies and bringing them home and going

like the shot on video stuff,

I could make that, and so it opened the door

for a whole bunch of people

who would've never made films otherwise.

Some of them probably shouldn't have ever made films

but it opened the door and the flood gates

for tons of people who had wanted to make a movie,

thought maybe they could never do it.

It gave us a whole slew of new filmmakers.

- John Carmander comes to mind.

That's a guy that creates, or created,

just a feel.

Even the music was just so iconic.

Camerawork, everything.

That, again, that encompasses those VHS,

that 80s feel.

It has its own style where as we talked about like

newer directors just,

it's not like their work.

It's the studio systems work, you know.

- The first VHS tapes that I purchased were probably

when the sell through market started to come into play

where Star Trek Two, the Wrath of Khan,

I think that was like $39.95,

then later Flash Dance, and then Staying Alive,

yes, I have really pathetic weird taste,

and then of course when all the titles started

coming down to reasonable prices, anywhere from the

$12 to $20 range, boy I went crazy,

but I do remember the first titles I bought were

Halloween on the media label

and then Texas Chainsaw Massacre,

and then as stuff started to release

I just would buy everything.

I had a huge VHS collection.

But before VHS I had even collected beta.

As early as 1983, 84, I was buying stuff like

Basket Case, and Pieces on the beta,

on the original beta releases

and those were like $80 a piece so yeah.

Limited, I was a dishwasher, in high school.

But I was a purchaser of those and of course

Pieces just saw the Blu Ray, 4K transfer Blu Ray

release not too long ago and it was like $40 for that.

There I was buying it 30 years ago for

$80 and of course, I've got the Blu Ray as well so,

the producers of Pieces should be fairly rich

if there's more people out there like me

who bought it numerous times on all these

crazy formats starting with beta.

- Jim Towns, also I believe has contributed

to this documentary, he and I met in third grade

and have been friends ever since.

Our first experience with shooting movies on video,

I believe was October, if I remember correctly,

October 16th, 1987.

We rented with a guy we knew, Bob Houg,

rented a Sony beta movie

and Bob wanted to make a Evil Dead sequel

which we had never seen any of the Evil Deads

but after seeing Evil Dead realized that

Bob was just reenacting all of his favorite scenes

from the first two Evil Dead movies.

But we didn't care, it was our

first journey into filmmaking.

That Sony beta movie looked amazing,

I wish I'd had one of those

but that was our first thing and then I think

we both just were bit by the filmmaking bug at that point.

Couple months later, I scoured the classified

of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette

and found somebody selling an old VHS camera

and it was really old, it was one that had

two parts, you had to carry along the VHS deck

and you had the camera attached to it

with a cord, it weighed about 3,000 pounds,

the battery lasted about 15 minutes,

and then took about seven hours to charge

so it was not practical.

We usually ended up running an extension cord

out of the house and sitting the deck in the

middle of the yard and everything

had to take place around the deck.

Panasonic introduces

a new lightweight video system,

that's so automatic,

it works by itself.

The Panasonic video camera focuses by itself,

adjusts for changing light by itself,

even works in extreme low light, all by itself.

This Panasonic VHS recorder

connects almost by itself and plays back

a jitter free picture in slow motion and stop motion.

- Put the DSL hour away you know?

Because it's not needed to make a good movie.

- My early days of being a videographer,

I was a wedding videographer with the really big cameras

that sat ginormously on your arm,

you had to hold it all night long,

and you had to lift it up to get the shot

because you always have to get the shot.

By the end of the night, my arm would be dead,

I could not drive with this arm.

Granted driving's a lot with your foot but

when your car has the gear shifter on this side,

it's kind of hard to drive,

and you hope you're not stopped by a cop.

- Big movies but they're shot now,

with the equipment and effects we have,

yeah, if you put some grain in them

they almost look like something from the 80s.

Just put the effects.

People say that all the time to me as a director,

they're like how do your movies look like the fucking 80s?

Why don't you just use some depth to field,

and I'm like fuck you.

- I think that we're gonna do really well,

I think enough time has passed since Blockbuster has closed

that it gives the mom and pop stores a chance

to breathe again, to try and give it a second opportunity.

A lot of people really miss it,

and people that were my age renting movies then

are adults now with kids and they want to

have that experience again, and introduce their children

to renting movies, and relive their childhood.

So it's not only good for them,

but I mean it's also really cool for college kids.

Sort of the new vinyl, VHS has kind of

come back in a way, a lot of movies are

put out on VHS now, there's a lot of collecting,

there's a lot of interest again.

I think we cater to a lot of different crowds

and it's a really smart time to do it.

I think we're riding the wave.

Hopefully we're not the first one to do it

in the new era, I'd like to think that

maybe we're paving the way that

if we prove to be successful that

other video stores will take note

and open up and give it a chance like I did.

- I went to the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, 1994,

class of 98, New York City,

and I would be editing with

VHS three quarter inch beta 16 milometer.

We also shot on high eight

which was all the rage when I started working.

- For video reliability and performance

trust VCRs built by Hitachi.

Look at Hitachi's warranty,

a full 24 months on parts at no extra cost

and double the competition.

Hitachi precision engineers the luminar video

with the latest in extra durable space age materials.

Better engineered, best warranty.

Hitachi, science for the senses.

- Some of my all time favorite tapes are

the Film Trauma tapes, the ones I put out which are

The Legend of Boggy Creek.

This is, you know,

the 1972 classic.

Comes with a poster and a lobby card set

and a cool red label because

everything should have a red label.

What else?

Dawn of the Dead on VHS, on special

red tape, comes with a bunch of extras.

Hm, smells like plastic.

And of course you can't go wrong with

another zombie classic Necro Files.

This one comes on a green tape because why not?

- So showing off some of my nice picks of my collection.

I'll start with actually one of my own films,

this was more of a recent, it was 2010 this one.

This is the original videotape release I did

of Easter Bunny Bloodbath.

This one actually is quite rare because

it has an early cut of the film.

I personally worked to get this one put out

on our videotape, we did sales,

we did 100 copies of this one, it did sell very well,

but again this one is very rare because

it's an earlier cut of the film.

Not my favorite cut, I think we got a definitive one later

but this one is a quite rare tape.

- Scarlet Fry's Horrorama,

which is the first movie I ever made.

Which was actually, I put out about 60 of these in the 80s

and there's only one that I know of that survived

and it was in Scarecrow video which

now belongs to a fellow collector.

But to finally get like legit distribution

and they actually did a really cool package.

They put a little lobby card, had me autograph it,

it came with a poster so.

How many people could say they have a poster of themselves

so that was awesome.

- It's nice to see the physical copies of things,

to have it in your hand and tangible,

you could look at the art.

- VHS for me kicked off my first ever experience

was actually in a hotel in a jungle in Indonesia,

and my parents dragged me there on holiday.

Really weird place, like a five star hotel

in the middle of a jungle.

We got to the bar and there was a Hammer film,

the Seven Golden Vampires playing there,

I think it was VHS, it might've been a beta max.

This was like 1980.

- Kind of similar.

You can stick tapes in there. - Yeah, yeah.

But that was it really, that's the first time

I'd seen anything that bloody and extreme

because being a home video release in 1980

there was no censorship on it at all.

So it was all the blood and boobs

and that kind of freaked me out completely.

My family were attacked by leeches the next morning

so that kind of cemented my horror love

at the tender ago of eight.

- I think one of the hardest parts of collecting these tapes

isn't necessarily that some of them

are so hard to get ahold of,

it's just trying to explain to other people

who aren't interested in it, quite why you do it.

Sometimes I have some of these tapes turn up at work

and my other work colleagues will be like

well, why are you buying VHS tapes still.

It's like well, many after so, certain types of wine

these ones which are like pre certificates

and they formed a list, what list,

and it's like there's a list by the Department

of Public Prosecutions that came up

towards the end of 1983, 1984,

certain films can be prosecuted.

Now some of them are really rare

and really hard to get ahold of,

I'm trying to collect all 39 that are on the list.

And it's like why would you want to do that?

But to me, it's kind of like,

it's the same as antique collecting really, isn't it?

It's like you're trying to keep hold of something

which isn't really available anymore

and it's kind of part of film history really.

- In about 83, I think 83, beginning of 84

we got our first VHS player.

I don't think it was a recorder, I think it was just

a player that we had, one of the big, top loading ones

and there was a couple of shops that

had opened up in my area and sort of

it was a family, started getting them out

on Fridays and Saturdays, and I was allowed

my one choice, and it started off with fantasy films,

a lot of the Italian exploitation fantasy films

like Death Stalker type films.

- My brother used to have to hide his from me,

which was Blockbuster, I think it was Ritz at the time,

or was it Hollywood Video,

yeah my brother used to go down and hide them out from me

because I was too young.

Love Barbarian films, absolutely loved them.

- Again it was like quite booby as well.

At that age I was already sort of taking

an interest in that sort of thing.

But I think the first kind of really extreme film I saw

was this film that was called Superstition.

Or The Witch, I think it ended up on the banned list,

but I saw an uncut copy.

- At Blockbuster we believe that everyone

should be able to take home the film they want.

That's why we promise to have more copies

of the latest films than ever before,

so you can take home any one of this week's new releases

or rent it free next time.

Blockbuster, bringing entertainment home.

- We kind of double as like a museum

as well as a video rental store

because of our collection that we have,

all the different rare horror movies

and things that you just won't find on Netflix and Hulu,

people come in here for

big box horror movies, stuff that you've never even heard of

or was only available in other countries,

you can come and get at our store for a dollar a day,

I mean nothing beats that.

It's been tough for a lot of the horror collectors

that come in and they want to buy all my horror tapes

but if I did that, I wouldn't have the stuff to offer,

that's kind of what draws people in for us.

The new releases do really well,

but definitely our bread and butter is the horror movies.

I mean people have been coming in from all over

to rent our movies, and it's been pretty great

meeting a lot of different horror fans

and hearing that they like and what they don't like

and just getting to know a lot of cool new people.

- My dad used to run a video horror shop

so there's old mom and pop shops and I lived in one.

It was a side arm business for him

and he had ordered classics, he had Howie,

he had Ghoulies, he had Madman,

which are still three films to this day that freak me out

because he always said you watch what you want,

but if you have nightmares don't blame me

and Ghoulies, oh god, I've got it on DVD now,

and if I watch it, or look at the cover

going to the toilet I still have issues with.

It just freaked me out, absolutely freaked me out.

- Some of my memories though, I remember that when I was

preteen, between 10 and 13 my mother and I

had this ongoing project where whatever movie we rent,

we'd record it onto a blank VHS tape

and I specifically remember doing it with

The Dead Zone with Christopher Walken.

I don't remember why I remember doing it with that movie,

maybe I think I was sick and I rented it

and watched it several times.

Whatever the reason may be, that's what I remember

is recording The Dead Zone onto a blank VHS tape.

- Look at me.

Do you like what you see?

Good, because it's not me, it's a recording of me.

On new Memorex video tape.

This remarkable tape has been recorded and rerecorded

100 times, but I'll bet you still couldn't tell

if it was Memorex or me,

which really isn't me, it's Memorex.

New Memorex videotape.

Even after 100 recordings you'll wonder

is is live, or is it Memorex?

- Stand out memories in a video store, oh yeah,

I have many memories in the video,

I lived in a video store in my youth

that was just the thing.

Video was the rage whether it was beta,

I was in one of the first beta only video stores

that rented primarily horror titles

and pornography of course, way back

even when I was in high school.

Those were like the staples when

beta was first coming into play.

Man, I have so many good memories of renting movies,

discovering new ones, discovering the ones

that I had been reading about in magazines

for the last five or 10 years before they would hit video

like Last House on the Left, Maniac,

Dawn of the Dead, all those great titles.

I would find out the release dates the day a date releases

and I would call the owners and they would

reserve the title for me so I would have

them behind the counter waiting

the minute they were released,

whether I got out of school or work or whatever it was

I'd be racing to video stores all over the place

trying to catch up with things that were released

like The Toxic Avenger or any numerous Troma releases

or again anything that was really classic coming out

that had not seen release and I was there

when all of it was actually released for the first time

on beta and VHS, so it was just an incredible experience

after becoming a horror fan probably and like

a diehard horror slasher type maniac fan.

Psh.

Probably when I saw Halloween in 1978,

and the poster and then on the TV broadcast

and then being able to finally rent all these movies,

and see them uncut for the first time on beta and VHS

was just incredible, Dirty Harry compared to the TV version,

Halloween even compared to the TV version.

Seeing it on beta for the first time

and then being able to buy the VHS later

was just incredible going into these stores

and the owner always had a popcorn machine going,

a big pipe in his mouth and you could

talk to him about movies and all the stuff

that was going on, so just really really wonderful

experience socializing with other renters

while you're in the stores and perusing aisles,

discovering new things, and timidly going up

with a box art of something like I Spit on Your Grave,

putting it on the counter there

and the owner just rents it to you with no problem.

- Some of my memories from watching

videotapes and going to the video stores back in the day,

we would get together, when I say we,

myself and many other people my age at that time,

teenagers, okay,

and we would have three and four

and five new horror films to watch.

Man it was great, it was great.

We would usually go up and party a bit

drinking and smoking, not regular cigarettes at that time,

and towards the end of the evening we would all

end up somewhere watching those horror films on videotape.

- Back in the 80s, bear in mind I was born in 82,

so I was quite young when I was

watching a lot of these films.

I had a little scrapbook and I used to go

to the local video store, got a little catalog

that had the different VHS tape covers on,

and one thing I vividly remember was seeing the

artwork for Nightmare on Elm Street four,

and remember absolutely loving it.

I cut that out.

- It's sort of because I had nothing to do.

- You found that often the covers had

another version of the cover on the other side.

Opened up the sleeve you could see.

There'd be one with an artist's impression

and the other one with actual clips from the film.

So you could quite often go,

that looks fantastic, just check what the other version is.

Alright, nevermind.

- Video store memories.

Yeah, I have a lot actually.

I pretty much grew up in a video store but

we had at least a half a dozen stores near us

and everyone of them had different movies.

This was before Crotch buster and Hollywang video.

So some of the stores were tiny,

I mean like living room sized.

Some collectors I know have more tapes

than some of those old stores did.

A lot of the times the owner was working behind the counter

and he knew the movies, you could tell the guy,

hey what's that movie with,

and then he'd be like oh yeah, that's this over here

and take you to it.

Those were pretty great days.

- You knew the people who owned the stores.

You basically frequented a store in specific,

usually you found the one you liked

and they grew to know you.

And they knew your taste,

and in my case, they knew that I loved horror films.

- I know back in the 80s I used to quite often go to

a local video store and buy X rental VHS tapes

and I had a whole collection of them, mostly horror,

had a whole host of Arnold Schwarzenegger films as well,

as well as the entire back catalog of Bruce Lee movies.

I did speak with my mother though recently,

because when I had been quite young when I first

started watching VHS tapes

and she said that the first film that I would've

been there to watch on VHS was

actually Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

- If we were driving around and we saw a new video store,

we'd go check it out the following weekend, didn't matter.

- We used to go everyday.

A pound to rent.

- Yeah.

- They had a E four sheet of paper

on the wall, written on, what had just come out,

and everyday I would look at that,

it would never been, we used to wait weeks for it,

because they only had one copy in,

because it wasn't like Blockbuster's or Ritz Video

or Global Video or whatever.

I just used to rent like Calhoun's and stuff like that.

But, fortunately, my parents did used to rent for us

Predator, Robocop, and things like that,

as long as I didn't repeat the swearing

and I never did in front of them.

- One of the stores by my house had this

bright red carpet in it and it always

smelled like mold in there.

And it's weird because I always got nosebleeds in that store

and that's really weird because that's the

only time I've ever had nosebleeds.

That was also the only video store in the area

that had the original Truth or Dare tape

so that was a reason to go there

regardless of nosebleeds or not.

- I think my standard memory for VHS

would have to be the first time my brother

brought home Dario Argento's Suspiria

because we'd never experienced anything like that.

We were just kids, we were like 12 or 13

and suddenly we were putting on this

amazing Italian operatic vision from this director

whom I came to loved called Dario Argento.

In Ireland especially at that time,

you would've experienced nothing like that.

There was also a great deal of censorship

in Ireland at the time, so you were looking

at a cinema that was either strictly 18

and there was no chance of getting into it

as a young teenager, but also the VHS's that you got

were strictly limited in Ireland too.

So when suddenly we saw this incredible film

by Dario Argento, and it was the dubbed version,

which kind of added an extra eerie quality to it.

It was just, I don't know, I never forgot it

and from that moment forward, I had this

huge love of Italian cinema which has never

weaned in any way shape or form.

So thank you, Dario Argento.

- The Toxic Avenger is a movie that as a kid

I remember the cardboard cutout in the rental store

how awesome it looked,

and I remember I had seen that with my uncles

when I was really young, and I remember

having my mind twisted by the fact that like

the monster was like the good guy in the movie,

I thought that was really weird,

and I vividly remembered being a kid,

the scene where he takes the girl

and he sits her on like the steam room coals,

and that whole leading up to it

coming down the hall, that weird segment.

Yet I didn't know the name of it,

and then later in life, I seen it on

USA's up all night, and that kind of put it together for me.

Then I had to go get it, to fully watch it.

- So wild stories of VHS.

I grew up with videotape, I grew up in video stores,

I used to think that when I got married,

I would probably have to do it in a video store.

We would walk down the aisle, down the drama,

we would maybe curve over in the comedy,

and end up in the horror section

and that's where we'd say our vows.

Well, it didn't happen, I did get married,

but no way in hell my wife was gonna do it in a video store.

Anyway.

Growing up in video stores, living in video stores

essentially going everyday to get new movies and old ones,

you really got a feel for the selection,

and pretty soon, within just even a month or two,

you would totally rent out a store.

You would have all the titles that they had in the stocks

that you would just have rented.

So you'd have to go from one video store to the other

and I had memberships all across the place.

Different towns, I would take 40 minute subway transit

to get one place to get to another video store.

- The Shining was the first horror VHS that I ever owned.

That I actually personally went out and bought.

I guess my uncles got me into horror movies and VHS.

When I was younger, me and my mother lived with

her brothers and sisters and her mother.

My uncles, her brothers, were pretty wild teenagers.

So they showed me a lot of crazy movies when I was younger

like I Spit on your Grave, I seen very young.

The Wall, Pink Floyd's The Wall

I remember seeing really young.

House, Motel Hell.

I have vivid memories of all these movies.

- One of my fondest VHS memories is a bunch,

but one of the ones that stick out is like

the time I got this right here,

when I found Deadly Prey, it was about over a year ago

at some little mom and pop shop up in the LA area.

I was looking around, asked the gentlemen

that owned the shop, hey you guys got any tapes in the back

and he pulled out a bunch of boxes of VHS,

like about seven or eight of them.

I was looking through them and I found some

pretty cool things but in the last box,

he's like you know what I got one more box in the back

and he went in the back

and he came up with this little small crumbled up box,

and he pulled out the box and I didn't think

that nothing much would be in it

because the box was all tore up,

but inside the box, I opened it up,

and I saw this on the top.

Deadly Prey and I was like holy crap, no way.

Deadly Prey, this was only a dollar, right here.

Only one dollar.

And this tape goes for like 80 bucks to 100 bucks.

- I'll tell you I remember being gutted about

when you rented a movie out if

could you imagine getting it home

and somebody hasn't rewound the tape,

and you had to put in the video

and you had to rewind it and you

couldn't watch it straight away,

and then there was the other time

where it got played and played and played

because it was a rental and when you got it back

the screen was like lines.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Yeah and you had to track it,

or it won't always work and then you had to take it back

and get, you know...

- Or people just didn't look after them.

- Yeah, didn't clean the video,

cause you have the videotape head cleaners,

like you could put the liquid in

and play it for so long, like five minutes

and then yeah...

Oh, that was annoying.

- Well there's actually two things that really stand out

when I think back on the VHS era,

the first is walking into a video store as a kid

and the bombardment of imagery.

I mean, the distributor could only sell the damn movie

with their artwork so usually when it's all out,

when it came to nudity or explosions and

maniacs with chains and all that stuff,

and the second thing that really stands out

is this whole air of forborne video had,

it was so many people that really hated this format

and took every opportunity they had and believe me

they had a lot of them, there was a lot of lot of space

in this country to spew their vitreal about the format

and the low culture it offered.

So imagine an impressionable kid seeing the imagery,

the tantalizing imagery and then hearing

the people in the know telling you that

well this is really bad for you.

I mean, come on.

As a kid, you're there.

It's like this is the best thing ever.

I mean it looks cool and if it pisses off your parents,

what else do you want?

- My favorite ever film of all time,

Killer Klowns From Outer Space.

Put behind me, toys behind me, absolutely love it.

There was a scene in that where the things

came out of the popcorn, that thing came out of the toilet.

And plainly fucking spat me out

because it was, reminded of Ghoulies,

because Ghoulies really threw me sideways as a kid,

and then I just couldn't hack it.

And because of that it stuck in my mind

and then when VHS stops, they used to have

these big mom and pop shops site shutting down,

Blockbuster kicked in, had massive sales,

and it was this massive shop,

and it was there for like five or something

which even back then was ridiculously cheap for VHS.

So I bought Killer Klowns from Outer Space

and that sort of just started my oh.

I think I was only about 14, 13 at the time,

but then I started thinking,

oh, I can start collecting, that's when the

collector genes started kicking in

because before when your parents buy you toys,

you don't need to collect stuff,

but when you're that age you kind of,

you can pick what you want to buy,

you don't have to buy it with your parents.

Then I started going to places like Camden,

and Camden was this magical world of

back streets and dodgy copies of Texas Chainsaw Massacre

which at the time was then completely legal

and yeah that's what really kicked off the collection.

It was Killer Klowns from Outer Space.

My fear of Ghoulies transferred

to Killer Klowns from Outer Space

and the closed down mom and pop shop

is why I have such a massive VHS collection.

- I remember going around and my cousin had got a hold of,

he'd rented this tape and everybody

was copying it in those days.

I had seen some before but he had a copy of ET

and this was a few months before it came out at the cinema.

I went back to school saying oh I've seen this film

ET, it's great.

And they were going oh yeah, yeah.

I've heard of it.

Couple of weeks later everybody else had seen it as well.

Oh, I was nearly crying.

For a 10 year old boy to say that was crazy.

- Well I can't say it was a favorite as a kid,

because it scared the bejesus out of me,

Mausoleum.

Most definitely one of the among three titles,

the first horror movie I ever saw.

This one pretty much traumatized me,

the transformation scene in the bathroom.

Jesus.

That one really scared me.

Found it in a thrift store years later

and well, it doesn't quite hold up.

Totally worth watching for a,

if you appreciate cheese, Wisconsin sized cheese.

You have a good time with this movie, good time.

- I asked my dad, I saw a preview for Superman

and I said dad, dad can you get me Superman on video

to watch because I really want to see it.

So my dad, being my dad, I wasn't with him at the time

when to go around and get Superman.

Come back, I thought oh great, right.

Popped the videotape in,

what came up, a film called Superman

about some karate people.

Not Superman the super hero and I'm like

what do you call this, you know?

I was absolutely gutted because I wanted to

watch it with Christopher Reeve and see the movie.

- My stand out VHS memory.

I remember years ago going to my local library

and renting the Evil Dead, the original.

I wanted it on DVD, but they only had it on VHS

so I brought it home to put into my player

and onto my TV and made some popcorn

and to my surprise, I enjoyed seeing it on VHS format

because the quality was so intense,

so real, I saw it later on DVD and realized

the VHS aspect captured the realism of the movie.

It's also one of my favorite horror films of all time.

- Yeah, I think the first VHS I bought

probably always popped up on me when I was a kid,

and I was trying to think of what it would be because

if I've got a VHS, I was looking for them for Christmas.

But one I seen it for was

the return of Optimus Prime, from Transformers.

- Yeah.

- I think that may have been the first VHS I ever bought.

- Although I now have it on DVD as well,

but a movie that I owned and watched endlessly as a kid,

animated was Transformers the movie.

The tagline was beyond good, beyond evil and it was.

That movie was like mind blowing.

It was so dark, it's like you just never see that

in a cartoon, like it actually freaked me out

when I was a kid because I'm like is there

robots in space that could come and eat the earth.

That's like a type of fear that a kid shouldn't have

but that movie instilled that in me.

Here it is.

Imagine that.

- When you've got the banned ones, it's like why's it banned

I must see it, so then,

you didn't mess up Necromantic one and two

because they're illegal, oh my god,

they're fucking dead people in hell.

So then your collector thing started going crazy,

you've got to have the next little thing,

the next tweak or the next...

- Yeah, I mean I remember at the beginning

there was no real sell through,

you just had what was available in the shops to rent

and then as they got sort of worn out or less popular

the shop owners would sort of just sell them off

and there was a market across the road from me,

Saturday market, and they had a bunch of tapes there

that would sort of revolve

and new ones would get added to the pile every week

but there was a couple of guys that were basically

doing rental from a store, so you paid in

one pound 50 or what it was and every time

you took a tape away it was 50 p

so it was actually super cheap and affordable for me

and then any tapes that I really liked

I just kept them and then I went back and restarted

with another pound 50.

I think it was like one pound 50 or two pound 50

if it was something quite new and sought after,

but up to that point I'd been doing a lot of trading

with my mates at school and it was all

pirate stuff basically and a lot of it was

trying to hunt down the films that everyone talked about

at school like Driller Killer or Zombie Flesh Eaters

and you know you just couldn't get them in the shops

because by then they'd been pulled out of the shops.

I remember getting Zombie Flesh Eaters and I was so happy,

my mate's uncle did me a copy.

I just watched it and watched it and watched it.

- Okay, my favorite VHS

titles I have any number of,

I have The Gates of Hell,

I have naturally Friday the 13th.

Hell Night, Media Home Entertainment.

See here's the great thing about that era of the early 80s,

you had so many companies that popped up naturally,

Paramount had their own line.

I mean, anything they released to theaters

they were gonna release under their

Paramount Home Video line but,

you had other companies like Media Home Entertainment,

and obviously there was Paragon Home Video,

there was Vestron as well.

God knows they released one of my other favorites, Pieces.

Let's face it, you don't have to go to Texas

for a chainsaw massacre but by God I always say it helps.

- Now you've got Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Superb.

This one is a Princer x rental.

Small box one.

Original cover, look at the cover on that.

Superb.

I love the old Graham Humphreys artwork covers

that he used to do here, so we've got

Nightmare on Elm Street, I think this one

is an actual original preset one.

You got that?

And one of my favorite pieces of cover art, Spookies.

Fantastic that one.

- Analog video and it just looks beautiful.

Oh, Nick Malard, what do we got here?

.357 Magnum baby.

Yeah, that's before he kicked into his shot on video stuff.

That's a great flick right there.

Oh, Shrek, what do we got here?

No big ogres.

Nope, we got Shreck, the killer Nazi shot on video movie.

That's a great one.

Ha, can't go very far on this shelf.

Born Killer, that's a Ted Prior.

Yeah there we go, that's a great one right there too.

Gosh, I love those guys.

Anyway, let's move it on.

Kindred, we got the Fright Show.

Oh this was great, this actually,

I used to rent this copy when I was about 12,

this very copy and when the store was selling out

I came to the person working, I said I gotta buy this,

sell it to me, and they did, so they sold that to me.

Oh yeah and here's another beauty.

I mean look it's a Paragon, it's cut,

but hell look at that mongrel man.

That's great.

So I've got quite a bit.

Junior, that's another one.

No Arnold Schwarzenegger, nope.

That's a much better movie, Junior.

Dabbling in the rape revenge a bit with that one there.

Oh a beauty, Victims, that's a great flick.

Yeah, yeah, girls in the desert.

These movies I grew up on so I don't watch them a lot now,

I've got kids, you know, but just to have them.

I used to rent those like 15 years ago

and I still got them here.

Oh some newer ones, Palone Brothers Lethal Nightmare,

it's the remake of Hallucinations.

The original cut of Feeders.

This is a nice one and this stuff is limited.

They've got right there 47 of 50 signed by Mark Palone.

That stuff's great.

Moving on, this was a nice box cover for it,

East End Hustle.

Cindy used to be a hooker.

Yeah, that's just a great movie.

They just don't make box covers like that anymore nowadays.

We've got Blood Shack here.

Check that out.

I know it's all cut, there's the old Rodgers Video logo.

I know it's a cut box but it's still beauties

like these ones I used to rent,

and they're now just sitting here on my shelf.

You got the classics.

Oh, more beauties here, we've got some,

old school as they call it Evil Night, a classic.

Yeah, that's a great one, and of course the remake

I've got down there, Chris Sever.

Some of these from the 90s came out,

and they're just the DVD's transferred to videotape really.

Anchor Bay releases.

Just kept for the hell of it.

Got some Troma videotapes there.

Toxic Avenger, the unrated and R rated versions.

Of course I got the director's cut too.

So those are great.

Home Sweet Home, this is another beauty that's not on DVD.

Thanksgiving slasher from Media, that's just wonderful.

Had a couple copies of this, sold one a while ago.

Howling seven, I think that's one of my most favorites

of the Howling series, it just feels so bad, it's great.

Reminds me of a shot on video movie even though it's not.

Moving on, we've got a great load up of Vestron's here.

I somehow got those Vestron's in order but there they are.

Oh, Last Slumber Party, what a beauty.

That's a classic, I remember buying this

when I came back from a camping trip.

What was the price on this?

Do I even have it?

No, but anyway there's the sale tag number.

But yeah, just a beauty.

More Paragons we got here, Doctor Butcher MD.

Medical deviate.

Always liked Savage Weekend.

This is a really old tape, you can tell by the box cover.

This is an original release.

Just beauties to have on my shelf

because otherwise they'd be gone, they'd be in the trash.

Mayhem.

Not the best movie but still pretty damn good

and I like the box cover.

First it was the child molesters, the dope pushers,

and the pimps, now it's the police, can he survive?

Mayhem.

And lots of gory good pictures on that one.

Just stuff that isn't even on DVD, never came out.

I got a couple Boarding House's here

because I knew that, this is an original release

of Boarding House from the shot on video video transfer

and this one which was a later printing from Paragon

is actually struck from the 35 millimeter master

so it's very interesting to compare the two.

Got a lot, oh Creep in there.

Yeah, Tim Ritter, what a beauty in that one there.

My Splatter Farm, I've got a sealed Saurians.

Got that in a nice deluxe package from SRS cinema.

Thank you guys.

Skullduggery.

Great cover, always loved that cover.

Original labels there.

Moving along, Hollow Gate.

Halloween time guys.

Hollow Gate.

There's a nice wizard for you, Carnival of Blood.

This one I haven't even seen yet but

Twiggy, W, starring Twiggy.

Werewolf, don't know, haven't seen it.

This is a great one actually, comedy movie,

Blue Movies, a couple of guys that want to make a porno.

It's just hilarious, Chris Stone is in this.

D Wallis, her old husband.

Great movie.

Boogeyman Two, Pumpkinhead, Blood Rage.

A lot of people love Blood Rage.

Came out on Blu Ray recently.

It's a great new release.

It actually was from Blockbuster.

You can see there it was 94 I bought it, eh?

Nice.

- Okay so here are a few of my

favorite tapes in no particular order.

We'll start out with Night of the Zombies,

that's a great one.

I got a good deal on it, I don't remember

even where I got it, I just remember I was like

oh cool tape.

So Night of Zombies.

This one The Devil Master, aka

Demon Lover is just constantly in my VCR right now,

I just can't get enough of this movie.

The versions are slightly different,

this one has all the gore, and less of the hippie partying

and the other one has like extending hippie partying

and no gore, it's weird, so between the two,

you get a really good version of the movie.

Next up is Yeti, ah, the Italian movie

where he's like giant and like King Kong's size.

This is great, this was really hard to find.

I don't remember how much I paid for it.

It was you know not super expensive

because it is slightly trimmed

to fit into a smaller clam, but

other than that pretty good.

Here we have one of my all time favorites,

can you see that it's kind of glary.

Night of the Demon in a heavily cut,

heavily, heavily cut box, but,

Night of the Demon, 1980, the bigfoot horror movie.

Actually even though this is cut to pieces

I did pay like 50 bucks for it

and it was actually a good deal.

This is really rare.

- Another one, you know,

good favorite of mine, Bigfoot 1970,

can't go wrong with this.

This is the cool one.

Actually, I think they're all the same.

My all time favorite, Doctor Butcher MD.

That's kind of glary, but yeah Doctor Butcher MD.

This is a really great movie.

Though this is cut to fit in a clam

so I got it at a pretty good price

but it is still just a great movie and a great tape,

it's got the cool red label on it.

- We've got Basket Case, the Evil Dead,

Godzilla, Bigfoot, Zombie Holocaust,

Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

We've got some other ones here.

Now these are the covers I actually have on display.

Everyone's got to have Dawn of the Dead.

Nightmare City Alien Terror.

Media, I bloody love Media.

Everyone's got to have Hollywood Chainsaw Hooker

and Deadly Prey.

Okay, some other classics here.

We've got Exterminator films.

Oh my god, there are two.

- I started collecting tapes in high school.

It was while DVD was coming out

so all the tapes were going on sale

and after school everyday I would go to

one of the local video stores, there was probably

three or four at the time, and

I would just try to buy everything

I could out of the horror section.

There wasn't really ever anything that rare,

it was always stuff like Nightmare on Elm Street

or Friday the 13th, common stuff.

But I still had to have everything and I became obsessive.

That was the gateway for me,

I never really stopped after that.

- I began collecting VHS tapes honestly not that long ago

because I grew up with them and when the world

made the switch to DVDs I was

kind of oblivious to the whole aesthetic and

vintage aspect of the VHS,

the significance of it being one of the first,

well pretty much the first major home video medium.

- Oh, I do enjoy an evening with

a little light entertainment.

But when your video heads get dirty, you lose your picture.

Not a pretty sight.

Happily this new Polaroid Video cassette will help you.

It actually cleans your heads as it plays

so dirty heads needn't haunt you.

New Polaroid Video cassettes.

Get the picture?

- Many people have a list as I've found,

which I found only from collecting VHS tapes.

I'll go into a store, or a vendor at a flea market

and there will be, I'll have my list with me,

and someone will walk in and say

oh you've got a list, I have a list too

or the owner, the vendor himself will come

over and say oh you've got a list, I have a

few more customers with lists,

so I guess I'm not alone, I didn't think I was alone.

I thought it was a pretty standard thing for VHS collectors.

- I don't know whether I would consider

the VHS collection I have to be valuable

but to me, personally it's a collection

that I would never get rid of because they're

early VHS releases of some of my

favorite ghost stories for example.

A ghost story for Christmas released by the BBC in the 70s

was released by the BFI on VHS

so I was one of the first to go out and purchase those.

Also even have a collection of Charles Bronson films

like Cold Sweat which is an excellent film.

And also The Woman in Black, when that was released on VHS

after its run on U TV or I TV,

that was a must have, an absolute must have

and actually I remembered the time,

I found the VHS itself in a bargain bin

but there was no cover so I nearly missed it

and then I said that's The Woman in Black.

And then a couple of weeks later, somebody was throwing out

a case for a film and I looked at it

and it was the case for The Woman in Black

and there was no video in it.

So I felt the two were meant to be married so

I took that and I've held that in my collection ever since.

Also films like Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now

which would be one of my all time favorites.

In fact pretty much anything that Nicolas Roeg did,

Walkabout being another classic.

Even though walkabout isn't a horror movie,

it has horrific elements and it's a disturbing picture.

- My most valuable tape, or how much did I pay,

I'm a bargain shopper, I'm thrifty.

I'll sit and spend months getting a good deal on a tape,

I'm just, I'm like that.

On average I pay 30 to 50.

For me the most expensive tape I ever bought

was probably my Night of the Demons from 1980 box

because I paid 50 for it and it's cut to shit,

but it's actually a pretty good deal because

I don't see them for less than $100 normally.

You know, whatever.

- I didn't really aggressively start collecting tapes

until maybe six years ago and since then

I've probably spent something ridiculous

like at least $15,000 on tapes.

Somewhere along the way I got into collecting

exploitation films and that led me into collecting

adult films, and it's been all downhill from there.

- So rare and valuable tapes.

I imagine I have a few.

From a collector's point of view,

I would say America's Deadliest Home Video

which I found for a dollar at a Vineland

you sell flea market in Vineland New Jersey

right near my hometown.

This flick is pretty rare.

I did reanimate with Cat Motion Pictures

so now you can get it.

But this original copy is pretty rare.

- So a couple of my prized possession tapes.

The first on the list would be Wet Wilderness on VCX.

There's only two of these known in collector's circles

and this is one of them.

It's a crazy backwoods slasher and

there's a ski masked killer running around in the woods

raping and torturing people and forcing incest on families.

There's gore and it's insane.

I can't even really explain it that well.

I spent $600 on this and I know that's a crazy price

for a single tape but it's worth every penny

as far as I'm concerned.

Like I said, there's only two in collector's circles.

This is one.

And there's the other one.

- Another is

this copy of The Sorcerers on Allied Artists.

These tapes are really hard to find.

They're just rare like as a collector's standpoint

point of view.

They're just a hard tape to find.

But a different kind of rarity for me

is stuff like Learn the Easy Art of Needle Tatting

with a gate fold sleeve that has an actual needle in it.

Now how many of these do you really think have survived?

Who really gives a crap about these tapes?

Probably not many so there's probably not that many of these

and that's a different kind of rarity.

On the same page, how about the Eye Improvement

System Home Video, I mean like what is this?

You ever seen this before?

I mean, is this rare, I mean that makes it rare I guess.

Probably many of them didn't survive.

- So my second favorite tape is Water Power on VHL.

Unlike Wet Wilderness on VCX, VHL released it

several times in different covers and variance.

There's several clam shells, there's a big box,

there's a small carton and there's Beta Max releases of each

and so I spent $250 on this tape,

but I've been trying to get every other tape

and those $250 add up and I'm at six now,

and close to $2,000 in on Water Power tapes.

But again, I don't really regret that

because this is the only one of these I've ever seen

and I've been keeping an eye out for four years now.

So yeah that's Water Power.

- And on that suit, how about a video tour

of your new Meyer's store in Ontario.

I mean this is probably pretty rare,

how many of these did they make and who really cares?

Who didn't just throw this away?

And you gotta think when's the next time

you're gonna find something like this

and that's the type of rarity that

I'm really interested in stuff that

really wouldn't exist anymore.

Because it gets thrown away or you know

just nobody cares about it.

It's not like a collector's piece.

It's not like a hot horror tape

or like a sexy exploitation tape.

- So aside from collecting adult tapes,

I've also been collecting copies of X rated films

from around the world for about four years now.

They range from this American tape from Wizard Video

to this Israeli tape.

This one's cool, I never thought I would own this.

I saw one sell for $400 one day

and the next day I found one for $100.

To copies from South Korea and several countries

that released it and it looks nothing like the actual movie.

To copies like this one from Sweden,

and it's from a company called Viking Video which was

apparently co distributed or licensed under Wizard Video

and if you collect tapes from America

you know that Wizard Video's important

because they released all the big boxes

and those were some of the flashiest

covers that there was in the 80s.

As far as these X rated tapes go,

I've probably got like 40 now.

I hate to think about how much I spent on them

and how much I'm going to spend on them in the future

because only rare and rarer ones out there.

But it gives you something to look forward to

finding new tapes like that.

- I love the fact that it's kind of part of history really.

It's kind of these tapes all came out

sort of 1979, 1980 and were available for

three, four years until 1983, 1984 when the

VRA act came in.

They weren't produced in massive numbers

and now they're just kind of part of history

and part of a time when you could go to the video store

and pick up a tape and not have to have ID.

Just go to a video store really.

- But I think the most valuable tapes in my collection

are the tapes that I have from when I was a kid.

My original copy of All Dogs Go to Heaven.

Or The Sandlot, or the home videos of me and my dad

rough housing in the living room

or like playing in the yard,

or like my third grade holiday play,

those are one of ones.

- So again some of my more rare tapes,

we'll just take a quick peak.

Now this one is not as rare, rare, rare as you've got

but Blood Lake is a damn classic,

in fact, it's one of my most favorite films

perhaps the most favorite film.

This I bought many times.

I had a few copies of it and what I was doing

when I was buying multiple copies of Blood Lake

was I was creating a composite because

it's not on DVD and I wanted to have the best quality

I could get, so I had two or three different

quality copies and I was taking the video

from parts if there was a video dropout

I'd switch to another copy and use that video

and I took all the sounds, so we've got nice hi-fi

quality stereo sound.

It just sounds beautiful.

Transfer that to a digital copy.

So Blood Lake videotape is one

of my most prized possessions.

I think the most valuable tape I have right now

because I've sold off so many

is Splatter Farm, the original Splatter Farm.

I did pay a pretty penny for this a few years ago

but I'm a Palone lifer and just had to have it.

Even though I had already gotten copies of this

first edition of the movie because it's

not the same as what's on the DVD.

The original video cassette release is just a treasure.

I always say it's kind of like owning a negative of a movie

because it was shot on video, it's on video,

yeah it's an editing later generation,

but to have an original, yeah,

I think that's probably my most

valuable tape I have right now.

- I quite like this Evil Dead version.

You've got the palace logo on the inside.

I've got this off a tractor.

Other tapes, I think my two kind of prized items

is SS Experiment Camp, because it's kind of

one of the core titles in the whole nasty scandal

and you've got the great cover there,

that nasty looking woman upside down.

Actually this copy's really really nice quality,

and if you open inside, you've got the original

kind of Go Video case there.

The kind of gold Go label on there

and the take itself is really nice condition.

For that I paid 100 pounds for

off of a private seller through Facebook

which is quite a lot of money.

But I think they're kind of worth around about 200, 250 now

if you try and get one on Ebay.

Another tape I really like is Snuff.

Another tape I like to own, not actually watch

because it's actually a terrible terrible film.

But this was quite a hard one

to get ahold of back in the day

because as far as I understand,

Astro Video who had I Spit on Your Grave

they had the rights to put this out

and they actually had covers printed up

and they had others printed up for it

and then for some reason they withdrew it

and they said they weren't gonna release it,

but shortly after that tapes came onto the market

and I think the official explanation is

there was an underground pirate company or something

which were putting these tapes out.

But they're very good quality and I think

I honestly think the real reason was

that Astro put these tapes out themselves,

the reason why they didn't put their name on their

and the reason they left the actual tape itself

pretty blank with just a basic sticker on it

is they were trying to sort of

play on the whole mythology of this being like

a real life Snuff movie and this is like

something you shouldn't have.

- This is an original VHS, if you can see it,

big box of Nightmare.

I love this over art because it says clearly on here

that it contains the effects work of Tom Savini.

This tagline was later removed

because I think there was some disagreement

between Tom and the filmmakers as to

whether or not he actually applied the effects

or just consulted, but claimed, it boasted anyway

that the film itself and the effects,

the effects in the film were done by Tom Savini

when in reality Tom said no, I was a consultant

but didn't actually do the effects.

- Well I don't monitor value,

has very little to do with my collecting of VHS tapes.

There's definitely a limit to how much

I'm willing to pay for a tape,

and if I don't like the movie, I'm not gonna buy it.

I couldn't care less.

But I checked around online and apparently,

this one is sort of valuable, I don't know.

It's an Australian edition.

A semi legit edition apparently

of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead.

- Let's just see, this one is quite rare.

It is the Massacre Up North original release,

it's a Canadian shot on video slasher.

It was funny because it's put out by Rodgers Video.

For a while they were doing their own label of releases

called the first rights and it was meant to be

for the independent films so that

the independent films that did not have a distributor

at the time, Rodgers Video which was a video store

and a cable company were dabbling

in releasing their video line.

So this is from early 2000 release.

It's a late 90s shot on video slasher Canadian,

Massacre Up North, that's one of the valuable ones.

- The most I spent on a VHS is a Korean version

of Monster Dog with Alice Cooper, cost 100 bucks.

And it's in the mail.

- Well I think this one's kind of nice.

First it's like a double value for me.

It's Fart, the movie.

Great flick.

It's really interesting though because like they say

it's the movie they said could never be made.

Well, I guess they caught the Fart on camera,

but anyway, what's cool about this release is that,

this movie I actually like 90 minutes long, or 80 minutes,

something like that but this release itself

is only 30 minutes, says so right on the back there.

It's a 30 minute tape.

It's actually a condensed version of the movie.

You can see the big wheels there,

it only has a little bit of tape.

It's a 30 minute long from Wavelength Video.

I kind of had to read about this a bit

but it seems like this version, the 30 minute version

was released straight to the distributors

or companies or something but it was for them

to get just basically a condensed version of the movie.

- One of my favorite VHS as a kid was

this is one of those ones that I rented so many times,

lucky enough I have a copy of this one.

This is a very rare one to find.

This is Popples Funhouse Folly and Other Stories.

This is basically, the only reason that I love this one,

is not just cause it's the Popples,

it's because it has the live action Popples pilot movie

that Shelly Duvall produced.

It's supposed to I think be a pilot TV series,

they were gonna pilot it and see if they actually

continued it on to do a series of this

and it didn't work out or something like that

so they put this on this VHS and it had this great music.

♪ This popples magic popples

I don't know, as a kid, I absolutely loved this one

so much, I would rent this one so many times.

This, and one I don't know where it is anymore,

was My Pet Monster, live action.

Those two are some of my all time favorite things to watch

but this one is probably my top favorite one of all time

especially as a kid's rental.

- Maniac.

Maniac on VHS, I think I bought this where a

a video rental store in Cambridge, Massachusetts

was going out of business.

I think this is one of the films that I bought there,

and I only think that because of

the dot of the price sticker.

- First laser disc I ever purchased was The Lost Boys,

I still have it.

I was so excited because I hadn't seen this in the theater,

I got to finally see it widescreen because

at that point, laser disc was the

only way to watch anything widescreen.

Yeah, this was the first one, I think I ordered

the Star Wars Trilogy from Columbia House

but that hadn't arrived yet.

I drove out to a store and purchased this one

just because I had to watch something,

I had a laser disc player sitting there

with nothing to play on it, that can't go on

so I picked up The Lost Boys.

- Yes, I can understand you.

I'm Leonard Nimoy.

Interesting.

A record player that produces beautiful sounds

and pictures through my TV.

- One thing that I really loved about laser discs,

that you really couldn't, I guess,

actually I never tried but I don't know

that it was as prominent with VHS tapes,

but with laser discs it was always fun to

look for the import movies,

alternate versions of movies on import.

One of my favorites is, what they called in Japan,

Captain Supermarket, which was the uncut Army of Darkness.

This one was pretty hard to get.

I really enjoyed at that point,

not that I knew I would enjoy it,

but looking back I enjoyed the fact that

it took some effort to get these movies.

You couldn't just download it,

you couldn't just buy the DVD that had

11 different versions of the movie on it,

you had to actually, and you couldn't even look

them up on the internet at that point.

- At first glance this player--

Excuse me, Magna vision,

gives the appearance of a highly stylized record player.

However, I notice the absence of a stylus or needle.

An optical laser scanner?

And Magna vision was the first consumer

product in our galaxy to use it?

Now that is an entirely new dimension in entertainment.

- But yeah, that's one thing I really enjoyed

about laser discs was just the effort

and the struggle and the research

and just all the detective work it took

to pick up these unavailable movies in the states

on laser disc in Japan.

I just still have my collection in my room

with all my stuff, so it's not,

I don't think it's in any danger.

I didn't stuff it in a garage or something.

Laser discs, they don't get mold,

but they do get what's called disc rot

which is a rust that develops between the layers of the disc

if it wasn't air tight when they glued them together

and that you can do nothing about.

That is dreaded and that will ruin a disc,

it looks like little colored blips

that just go all over the screen.

It's a nightmare.

Once that happens, you're done.

I had heard that you have to play your discs

at least once a year because it

redistributes the glue inside when they heat up

and start spinning, I don't know how true that is.

Did not have time to play everyone of my discs once a year.

- So, VHS was a big big part of my life for about

I guess 10, 12 years, something like that.

And then of course we had laser discs came out

but I never really...

- No, I never got the laser discs.

- It was just way out of my price range

and most of the stuff that I really wanted to get ahold of

never really came out, it only seemed to be

the bigger films like I don't Aliens or something like that.

- Pretty much anything on DVD was gonna be printed

and printed and printed with obviously some major exceptions

but for the most part, they're still being made.

VHS tapes, again with some exceptions,

are not being made anymore.

What is out there is what is out there.

There's nothing else being fed into the pool

into the population.

So if you find a VHS tape, it's one of a limited number.

For some reason, that attracts me.

There's something about it.

Whereas a DVD if I buy a copy of Friday on DVD,

and then I buy the other million or so copies

out there of Friday, they're gonna make more,

or they'll make Blu Rays but they're still making DVDs

so they're gonna make more of them.

That makes it so that owning Friday isn't that special

because truth be told, I'll never

watch most of these movies again.

Why, because my 1500 movie long movies to see list

is gonna keep growing faster than

I can re watch movies that I love.

- You will find a selection of coming attractions

available on the VRO network labels.

- There's a lot of films, I think My Lie was one

which was one of the first, if I remember,

I could be wrong here, one of the first found

footagy of the recent period

where they kind of took the whole big brother thing,

and I didn't like it until the end

and then once the end hit, I got it,

and was ah, that's amazing, and then I loved it.

So with Netflix and that sort of,

because they're so blood, even love film which I love,

and I use because it's cheap, it's efficient and it's easy.

I'm a film person,

we make films ourselves, and people sag off my films,

some people love them, some people hate them.

But I know how much effort I've put in

and so I know how much effort someone else has put in

so I feel I should at least give the film,

it's entire chance, so when you've got the

disposable ness of it, sometimes you don't.

- I think because of that a lot of people,

a lot of my friends when I ask them what they watch

they just watch series because it's easier,

because they don't want to sit there

and sort of go through the first two minutes

of each film before they decide.

If they know whatever series, whether it's Dexter,

or if they know that they kind of like that

and they don't want to think about it

so that's what they put on,

and they just watch one series and when that finishes

they watch another one, they don't really

watch films that much on Netflix.

That's generally what the people give me as feedback.

I mostly watch DVDs and Blu Rays, still

but we do use Netflix.

My partner particularly likes Netflix.

I often find that there's nothing

that I really watch to watch on it.

- Quality's fantastic on Blu Rays but I'm

unamused that yet another technological advance in media

when VHS is fine with me, I like the rawness of it,

I like how it's a little bit dated.

Why keep printing the same things over and over and over

that are just a little bit better each time.

You know, obviously it's for money

and frankly, I just I have no desire to get Blu Rays,

to watch Blu Rays.

- So the point being, this whole tangibility thing

brings us back to VHS and why we collect them,

because we've gone from big chunky things

to nothing.

So I think that's where VHS lies now.

Why are we still collecting?

Because we like going back to the days which

it was an adventure, going to the shop

and looking through those rows and rows and rows

and trying to look at the horror ones,

and the ones with horror ticks on the front

which you're not going to look at

when you're with your parents or when you're

a bit older, with your Misses

and you're kind of like just trying...

There's a whole thing to it which you don't get now

and I think that's what a lot of collecting is.

Other people collect antiques or anything

you're harking back to something you're enjoying.

That was such an enjoyable experience.

I think holding the VHS you are getting that again.

- Exactly, picking up some of the,

I've still got some of the big box soft cover ones.

They're a bit squiggly.

- Clam shells?

- Clam shells, that's it.

And when you open that up and inside you've got

the stamp of the video shop over the film title label

and all of that, they're so beautiful.

If you do have the space to display them

I think they're just valued works of art

because as you said the posters are incredible.

You generally very rarely get

real posters on films nowadays.

There are a few sort of genre famous artists like

Graham Humphreys. - Graham Humphreys.

- Okay here's a VHS phenomenon

no one's ever been able to explain to me in my satisfaction.

Fricken clam shells.

Certain companies didn't believe in the same

cardboard cases that everyone else is

shipping out their VHS tapes in.

No, no, no, these guys, their stuff is so precious

they have to develop this technology

of this padded plastic kind of case thing

to send their stuff out in.

Unfortunately, this case is about one point two seven times

the size of a normal VHS tape so you know what

it's not fitting on your shelf kids, sorry.

- I think my strangest VHS memory has to be

as a young boy, when Poltergeist and ET

hadn't yet been released in our cinemas,

a friend of the family decided to go up to this place

in Tallah which is a suburb of Dublin

and he decided that he was going to get us a surprise

and he knocked on this door.

The guy behind the door, didn't open the door

but he responded and he said what are you looking for?

And the friend of the family said, "ET and Poltergeist."

So he was instructed to put some money

through the letter box and then he just passed out

these two blank VHS tapes, and when we got them home

to our shock and incredible surprise,

it was Poltergeist and ET.

So we got to see them pretty much before nearly anyone else

in Ireland in the early 80s.

So that probably is the strangest experience

I would've had with VHS.

There's been other odd experiences but

I think that tops them all.

- One of the most bizarre situations

I was ever thrust into for finding VHS tapes probably

me and my girlfriend found this ad on Craigslist

and they said they had a bunch of adult VHS titles

and I don't really collect adult titles

but I have a lot of friends that do,

so we decided to go check it out.

So we get to this two story house in suburbia,

fairly like rich looking house.

They opened the door and it's just like two

harmless looking middle aged people,

very normal looking people,

and it's already like hm, that's kind of weird.

We walk in and they are having like

a pseudo estate sale and everything in their house

is marked with like little post it notes,

and they have prices on the little post it notes.

They're trying to sell us a cookie jar

and a whole fireplace and stuff like that.

So finally we get to the porno,

and they have like 20 banana boxes,

like boxes like this big full of big box porno

and it's all from later era like 80s and 90s

and we're going through it, and as we're going through it,

you can just feel the embarrassment in the room

and they're just like super uncomfortable

and they're sitting there like biting their nail

as we're going through it.

And we're not really feeling it, or whatever,

there wasn't much, anything we really wanted there,

and at the end of it they were like

are you sure you can't take any of it?

They seemed desperate to get rid of this porno,

like it was this dirt or blood on their hands

and they were just like so embarrassed to have it

and the whole vibe was kind of bizarre and kind of funny.

Really nice people but man it was just weird

and really funny.

So yeah, porno at the suburban white people's house

was pretty weird.

- Actually, I have a funny story about adult VHS tapes.

In college a buddy of mine found a girlfriend finally,

loved the guy, Vinny the mouse.

He was a very tiny guy, very short, very thin,

wonderful guy.

Met this really tall beautiful woman,

she dwarfed him in every way.

Love at first sight.

Unfortunately he had a extensive porn collection.

She did not agree with the porn collection.

So he had to get rid of it.

He was stashing it in friends places because he wasn't sure,

they'd only been dating a couple months.

So he stashed his porn collection

with a bunch of different friends.

I was one of them,

and I found myself in possession of

The Ass Master.

Thanks, Vinny.

- So collecting tapes has gotten me out of my house

and brought me to some pretty strange places.

Two stories that happened on the same day.

We were in New York hosting a screening of

Desperate Teenage Love Dolls

and our friend Matt from Horror Boobs

decided that he wanted to take us out

to look for tapes at the old porn stores

near 42nd St in Times Square.

The first few stores we went to

we didn't really find much.

We were buying stuff just to buy stuff

and say we bought stuff,

but the third place we went to we went upstairs

because that's where they kept all the tapes

and the guy that owned the place didn't really tell us

what else was upstairs but there was

lap dance booths, and there was probably like 12 of them

and there was these girls that were walking around naked

and they were bringing guys into get lap dances

while we were looking for tapes.

They'd be walking past us to have cigarette breaks

on the fire escape.

It was pretty weird.

The second story is kind of weirder.

We went to another porn store and we asked if

they had tapes, the guy that owned the place, said,

"Oh yeah, we get a lot of tapes but they're in the basement.

"And I'm only going to let two of you down there at a time."

So Matt and I decided that we'd go downstairs

and all the tapes were in these giant

industrial size trash bags, and the guy that

brought us downstairs kept on saying not to look around.

Don't look around, and I noticed

that there was probably a dozen racks

of VHS duplicators running and they were

duplicating some pretty interesting porn

while we were digging around through tapes

and we actually found some good stuff that day

in that place there was big boxes and rare kung fu shit.

It was worth being in a nasty basement with

gross Japanese playing.

- So my strangest VHS memory

is probably when I was a kid and I walked into

this small Indie video store and there it is

eye level with me, the continental big box for

City of the Walking Dead.

Now, if you don't know what that is

or what I'm talking about, let me explain.

The cover of the box is a still from the movie

and it's this naked chick with her eye gouged out.

So here I am this pubescent kid and I'm seeing this

and it's totally weirding me out with this

mix of like sexuality and repulsion,

so every time I was in that video store

I'm staring at that box,

just kind of trying to figure it out.

Trying to figure out how I feel about it.

Personally I think it traumatized me.

- Now when it comes to strange VHS memories,

one thing I always remember that was kind of weird

was how VHS used to be released.

When the things used to come out,

now when a movie comes out, it's a new release,

it comes out to Red Box, DVD, Blu Ray,

you can buy it everywhere, on Amazon,

everywhere you can get stuff,

it comes out the exact same time.

When VHS first was coming out

you used to have to actually go and rent it first.

That was the only place you could get it.

So it was always a weird thing because I always

me, loved to have tapes and loved to have the collection.

So it was always for me as a kid,

always such a strange thing that you would

have to wait another like six months to a whole year

to actually buy the movie,

because like I said you could rent it first,

but you could not buy it.

So as a kid, it used to always drive me crazy,

and if you really really had to have it

right when it first came out, it would be like $110

or something like that to buy it right away.

- Well I got into a fight once in a video store

with the clerk, after renting a Swedish horror movie

or slasher.

God bless them.

Basically I demanded a refund and the guy refused to.

I was furious.

I'm kind of big on bad movies.

I'm a huge Ed Wood fan and I like Trough too

but this one was awful and I demanded my money back.

The guy finally just got tired of me

and told me sure, you can have your money back but

does this work the other way around

so you're willing to pay double if you rent

something you really like?

And for like a millisecond you just go.

No.

God damn it.

So he kind of won that argument.

- So that was always a very strange thing for me

as well, as back then too before you could go

on the internet and you could look things up,

I didn't know things were coming out.

Some of my favorite things like some of the Ernest movies

I used to kind of just discover they were out

when I went into the video rental place.

That was the thing that was kind of cool

about renting movies as a kid,

you didn't know what was out until you actually

got to the video rental store.

Now you kind of know, you can look on websites

and see upcoming new releases

and you can go on the digital bits and see cover arts

and things like that, if things are actually coming out.

But back then, the cool thing was going into

the video store every Friday, because that's when

I used to always go as a kid,

and actually go in there and see what new things

were out on the shelves, it was the experience

to go oh yeah, what is this movie,

and you kind of were discovering things way more than now.

There's not as much discovery with movies.

- It was funny, I think Palace Pictures,

Palace Video had to be the most exciting

because when the logo came up,

it appeared at the opening of the film,

you always knew you were in for something really exciting.

You know some of the best films,

like Evil Dead appeared on the Palace label.

For some reason every time we get a copy

of a Palace release, it always seemed to be

I don't know, it always looked as though

it would never play and then suddenly

the I can't remember what it's called,

the tracking, the tracking system,

when that kicked in, then suddenly the video played

because so many people would have rented a Palace Pictures

release so by the time you got to it,

and our local video store there would have been

a lot of people booking out certain types of films,

Evil Dead being the main one of the Palace releases

that everyone wanted to see at the time.

It was just, I don't know, it was always quality.

I think Palace Pictures, they only really

acquired the very best that came in from America

or in fact terrestrially in the UK.

It was just always an exciting experience.

- I don't know, I have so many great memories associated

with so many companies, I mean, the logo would come on

and kind of set the mood, and you knew you

were gonna see something you probably shouldn't be seeing.

Some of the logos themselves were pretty spooky.

But for me, it's kind of a tie between Gorgon,

because I mean, that logo is probably one of the best ever

plus they released Night of the Bloody Apes

which is probably one of the best movies ever.

Then Embassy because they released Phantasm

which is definitely one of the greatest movies ever.

- So my favorite distributor for video tape.

I've had to think about this because there's been a lot.

I really just there's great films, and you see one,

you start to see other ones on the same label

and you realize right away, oh these guys,

whoever's releasing this on this label

must be really having a good idea because

they're putting out great flicks one after the other.

So there's obviously my favorites,

but I would have to say when it comes to videotape,

my deep down 100% favorite company, favorite company is

Paragon Video.

Yeah, it's Paragon, and it's everything.

It's the way that the star field opens up,

the way the music comes in,

the way, just Paragon comes with

the many layers of Paragon behind it.

Everything about it is so,

it's so over the top, and it's so hard set on early 80s.

It knows it's getting into a new field video.

Nowadays you look at it and it's almost cliched

the way it's so electronic, and over stars,

like almost a Superman effect to it, but Paragon.

Their output was just wonderful.

Paragon did a smart thing which is probably

why I love it so much, is that

not only did you have their opening logo

but then they ran like 15 minutes worth of

other trailers before their own movie.

- Another one here to put you.

Superb little film.

Films like Cannibal Ferox, some of the old video nasties.

Brilliant art and super,

you've got to have these in your collection.

Pieces, one of my all time favorite films.

Preset of Pieces, brilliant.

Now these presets like this video drone

stuff like that, they were small box, not big box,

but really a valued edition to anyone's collection.

One of my favorite all time distributors

has got to be Wizard.

I love their huge big box,

they're like bloody twos.

I would say probably Media and Wizard

are my two favorite all time bloody distributors.

Both in boxes are literally so heavy.

Look at this.

Superb.

So my two favorite distributors are Wizard Video and Media.

- Some of my favorite VHS distributors,

Midnight Video, they had the best big boxes,

they put out a lot of the Herschell Gordon Lewis movies,

Microwave Massacre.

I love Vestron, Lightning Video.

Gorgon, all that stuff, but I would have to say

my favorite one is probably

probably Vestron because of the amount of titles

they had and I have so many memories about those movies.

- What does VHS mean to me?

Well VHS is happiness.

I discovered almost all of the movies that I love

by first seeing them on tape.

I've always loved movies, and I'd rather watch

a low budget movie with heart

than a giant Hollywood flick made by producers

trying to appeal to the largest demographic

so they can make a billion dollars worldwide.

VHS is the complete opposite of that.

It's awesome art, it's discovery,

it's taking a chance on something new.

Sometimes renting a movie twice

because you got fooled by an alternate version

or retitle.

The days when VHS was king, even if something sucked,

you could still have fun taking about how shitting it was.

Unlike now, when you finish a movie

and 20 minutes later you forget you've ever even seen it.

- And my daughter, my five year old daughter

who's turning six soon,

knows how to work a VCR.

- Honestly, VHS changed my life.

I don't think that I would be where I am without

the hobby and without the sub culture surrounding it.

I've traveled so much because of tapes.

I've met so many people because of tapes.

I've gotten into filmmaking myself

which has been a goal of mine since I was little.

It's crazy to think that something

that so many people think is obsolete

and people throw away could do so much for someone.

So I'm grateful for that.

- The reason why I really like VHS is

because to me when I think of childhood,

when I think of back to us being a kid, I think of VHS.

- I love VHS!

VHS lives!

- Look in here, I got boxes,

I got like four or five boxes just filled up

with tapes like this.

Let's see what's inside this one.

It's this Nasty Hero one.

This one's Gor, I have a lot of Gor,

it's the sequel to this Gor.

Fancy cheese ball movie, I think it's Italian.

This one's great, we have Ninja The Protector.

Transworld Entertainment.

I love that so good cheese.

It's not even in the movie, this cover,

it's not even in it, but it's awesome.

What we got here, also a classic.

Madballs, I got this sort of like four months ago.

I got this at a convention.

Very good one right there.

Gotta love some junior.

Great, great movie.

Not really like a slasher, more like a revenge kind of movie

but it's still super fun and cheese ball.

What do we have here?

Freakmaker by Vidcrest.

Donald Pleasence's great great monster kind of movie.

Love it.

What else do we have here?

Hardrock Zombies.

Good good stuff.

Love the cover of this.

This is a great one.

One of the better heavy metal horror movies.

The best one is Trick or Treat.

This is right up there with some good cheese.

Look at this, Nico Mastorakis' Grandma's House.

Also did Island of Death.