Geeking Out Over the Bloody Legacy of VHS

It may be hard to believe, but some movie buffs are touting the superiority of the VHS tape, to the point of trying to preserve and even resurrect it. The thing is, many movies that were released on VHS have never made the leap to DVDs, and therefore are either hard to find or totally unavailable to many viewers. Collectors Weekly talked to Dan Kinem, director of the documentary Adjust Your Tracking. He talked about how videotape revolutionized the movie industry -and since a large chunk of profit would come from home video, movies started to be designed to fit the format, particularly horror films.  

“Especially for movies that were direct to video or shot on video, viewing them on DVD doesn’t make a lot of sense, because they were originally intended to be viewed on VHS,” continues Kinem. “These are movies that feel too cleaned-up on DVD and Blu-ray, as if they were never meant to look that good. You can see the mistakes they made and the bad makeup and everything. Watching them on VHS is closer to the old drive-in or grindhouse theater, the way the director intended it to look.” For Kinem, Peretic, and many other VHS fans, there’s an authenticity to viewing certain movies on VHS that’s integral to the film experience, no different from the way record fans think certain albums should only be played on vinyl.

Read more about the resurgence of the VHS format in the full interview. Link


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