VHS Documentary looking at the culture of VHS and collectors.

VHS lives and never dies! That is, according to the collectors and proprietors in the affectionately nostalgic documentary, VHS Lives 2. Directed by Tony Newton as a follow up to VHS Lives: A Schlockumentary (2017), both films are hours long odes to this bygone format, composed of interviews and glimpses of shot-on-video films lost to the ages.

Beginning with the rise of home entertainment in the late 1970s, we find that the origins of VHS history were pioneered by none other than the porn industry — fitting, for its proximity to the oldest profession! With consumers realizing they can indulge in entertainment in the privacy of their own home, studios also took notice and jumped on the bandwagon. Preceded by the briefly popular Betamax, VHS dominated home entertainment for the 80s and 90s until, as we know, DVD, Blu-ray, and now streaming services have given it a run for its money. But since the fall of Blockbuster, smaller indie stores have room in the consumer market again, and VHS can be considered the new vinyl by millennials and gen-X who take a walk down memory lane, introducing their children to their bygone childhood experiences. In the documentary, each collector takes turn waxing poetic on their favorite videotape in their possession, memories of their first video-watching experience, and their gripes about movies on non-video format. These neo-antique collectors serve as stewards of rare copies of movies, primarily horror, and we get anecdotal insight into their effort to reclaim these lost forms of art, both the film itself and the artful box covers to them.

In the documentary, filmmakers and collectors speak freely about their love of movies specifically on video format. In contrast to today’s films, video elicits feeling and emotion without the use of flashy computer-generated graphics, which some seem to think many current movies rely upon. “You had to be good to be a director back then,” says Richard Chandler (Parts Unknown (2018) director), and he even poses that some directors, frankly, shouldn’t have even gotten to make movies. I can see this argument, as I too appreciate when films use live animatronics and movie makeup over the use of CGI and the like. However! As someone whose first job was at a Hollywood Video on its last leg, I’ve met guys like these, and I’m not sure if they need 2 movies at 2.5+ hours — when someone starts saying things like “there is nothing to watch on Netflix” or “I will never buy Blu-ray” it starts to become a little preachy. What is more gnawing though, the editing is haphazard with the film flitting from interviewer to interviewer, and the sound is inconsistent with interviewers sounding either very loud or very mumbly. For it being a documentary, bare bones and without narrative, the interviewers should have been mic-ed and the movie could have benefited from conscious direction to be more digestible and entertaining.

If you’re making the argument that VHS is not only dead, but is being re-animated, it might help to show statistics, panels or talks about VHS at conventions, specialty group meetings, or at the very least, recognizable and reputable interviewers. It is about a half an hour or more longer than is necessary, and since there is not really any contextual information about VHS, the only thing to break up the revolving door of interviews are a handful of old commercials. The interviews become repetitive because they all have the same narrative – I fell in love with VHS because I saw (blank) as a child, love and miss video stores, and now I collect and or make movies on video. I mean, I agree wholeheartedly, but I was done agreeing after an hour into it. This definitely needed some narration to make this at all captivating — like a search for the holy grail of rare videotapes, a spotlight on a video store closing, SOMETHING. I love VHS myself, I am still the proud owner of a working VCR, having that said, I would have appreciated some affectionate pokes at the downfalls of video and video stores as well, like the dreaded tape getting stuck in the VCR, your video being sold out to rent, having to rewind, etc. The movie rightfully hypes up VHS but could have been more relatable mentioning these experiences as well. If you want to spend 2 hours watching people show off copies of movies so rare that you’ll probably never get to see them anywhere yourself though, this movie will be a good use of your time.

Full of old commercials from the likes of Memorex, Blockbuster, and other 80s and 90s VHS/video companies as well as interviews from video and horror enthusiasts, this documentary about all things video, itself filmed on video, is a blurry, grainy, shoddily mic-ed, but perfectly halcyon movie for nostalgists, horror fans, and videotape enthusiasts. Remember: be kind, please rewind, and give Tony Newton’s VHS Lives 2 a watch via VOD as of February 10th and via DVD as of February 12th, 2019.