You know, when I was in school..I was really an ass. Now the reason I say this is because when DVD got big and was the Blu Ray of way back when, I jumped right on it saying “to hell” with my VHS tapes! I gave them away, I tossed them aside, and I rode the digital wave all the way to the large DVD collection I have today..I was a fool.
See, I tossed aside my childhood really, because one my most fondest memories of my childhood was going every weekend to the Video Store (When it actually was a VIDEO store) and renting three or more VHS movies at a time, because the weekends were the only time around here you got to keep your rentals for more than just one day, you got them the WHOLE weekend. Sure me being the little Wrestling fan that I was I’d bitch until I got to rent the latest WWF (Now WWE) or WCW (Then NWA) wrestling video that was out but I always got into the horror videos my Aunt would rent.
Sure once DVDs came out VHS was shown the door due to many reasons like not having to worry about the VCR “eating” your tape..which could happen from time to time, but one of the coolest things about VHS were the cases. No matter if it was the HUGE closing cases that they came in, or the simple slip cases they all settled into later, the one thing that always stood out to me when it came to horror VHS was the covers. Where computer photoshop work is the norm for movies now days back then a lot of horror films had artist making the covers and they would look really awesome even if the movie that they were about weren’t. That’s one thing I liked a lot about the Hatchet DVD, it had that kind of art I’m talking about. I LOVED that stuff and wish more movies went all “old school” with it now days.
Another weird trend a lot of horror VHS had was putting women (hot women) on the cover of the boxes when those women were nowhere to be found in the movie. I guess that was just to grab the dudes’ in the stores attention, but when your a kid it just came across as odd. But one thing you can’t deny is do to the lessor quality of most tapes, the horror films tended seemed more “real”. Maybe it was cause I was a kid, I dunno, but things just seemed to be more like a recorded documentation rather than a movie production at times…Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Faces of Death on VHS anyone?
One reason I write this isn’t just to go down memory lane, which is cool for people to do every one in a while, it’s to say now that I find myself getting older and DVD’s being slowly pushed to the back of the line with Blu Ray leading the way, I think I understand how a lot of folks who grew up with VHS felt. My giant DVD collection is soon to be looked at by young “punks”, not much different than I was as a kid, who will look down on it as inferior because all they’ll know is the perks of HD. They’ll one day very soon look at a thing like my SAW DVD with the same unsatisfied way I looked at a friends Evil Dead VHS once upon a time when DVD got rolling. And now being older and wiser, I realize how silly that really was.
In the end all horror fans, true horror fans, are going to love horror no matter what format they have it on. After all, it’s the movie that needs to be judged not the format. And as time moves along and we got from VHS, to DVD, to Blu Ray, to whatever comes next..I just got to suggest that you remember where we started from and always, ALWAYS respect it. So heres to you, VHS tape, I once tossed you aside…But I’ll never forget ya.
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