VHS tapes are improbably popular again, with horror leading the way

Late last November, Ashar and I went to a horror convention in Mesa called A Christmas to Dismember. It was very cool. There were minor genre celebrities signing autographs, you could get your picture taken with Krampus (some people even brought their dogs) and there was a whole hearse-and-coffin setup from Phantasm outside. 

I made one impulse purchase. There was a booth selling VHS tapes and I couldn't resist the box art on two old horror movies: 1946's Shock, starring Vincent Price, (which I'd never heard of!) and the 1941 horror comedy King of the Zombies (which I'd never seen).

Of course, I still couldn't watch them. We have a blu-ray player and a couple of streaming services, but haven't had a VCR connected to our television for at least 12 years, if not longer. Eventually I was able to track down DVD versions of both films, and I was not disappointed. Shock has an entertaining early villainous role for Price. And King of the Zombies, while a bit hokey and uneven, is an interesting entry in the corpus of zombie films and is at its best when Mantan Moreland and his Black co-stars (including Marguerite Whitten and Madame Sul-Te-Wan) are on the screen.

And now I have two nifty VHS boxes to showcase on a shelf, which, yes, is the exact opposite of my slow-moving downsizing goals. I still have no VCR and no plans to get a VCR, so what the hell am I doing with VHS tapes in 2025? I unloaded my videocassette tapes years and years ago, when they were taking up significant space and were already barreling toward being phased out.¹

So what's with the new boom in old tapes?

The VHS revival, spurred by collectors and a new generation of enthusiasts, began pretty quickly on the heels of the great VHS dumping of roughly 2000 to 2010, when DVD became the dominant format.

I hate to promote The Washington Post these days, but an article by Reis Thebault in December 2023 summed up the dynamics of the rise of the "tapeheads": 

"A swirl of societal forces has made the moment ripe for this unlikely rebirth: A booming nostalgia economy that was supercharged during the pandemic, fueling skyrocketing sales of all things retro; mounting fatigue with increasingly costly subscription services; and a growing disillusionment with the algorithms that mediate so much of modern life in favor of unexpected human connections."

There are numerous aspects to this fervor for tape, drawing people in from a wide array of directions. Some people truly like the "VHS aesthetic" of fuzz, glitches and less than perfect video presentation. Some filmmakers release their new movies on VHS. Websites such as Lunchmeat are thriving. Zines and VHS-themed events have helped build momentum.  

At our Bookmans Entertainment Exchange stores here in Arizona, used VHS tapes are taking up more prominent spaces at the front of stores. I took these snapshots at a Tucson Bookmans in early July.

The horror genre is very well-represented in those in-store displays. Horror has been a main driver for the VHS revival and is one of the hottest and most expensive markets. Some people seek out their favorite films; some chase the scarcest titles in their most limited releases; some collect solely for the box art; some relish boxes and tapes still covered with video rental store or library stickers, while others want pristine tapes that are still shrinkwrapped. And some collectors target gory straight-to-video releases that few people have ever heard of — and even fewer have seen.

Ashar, dipping his toe into the VHS marketplace this month, just acquired a tape of 1959's The House on Haunted Hill, one of his favorite films. (And one of my favorites, too.) It will be added to his shelf decorations.

For an article this month on Back Market, Thomas Hobbs interviewed Lunchmeat's Josh Schafer, who said: "A lot of horror movies, especially the more low budget fare, just feel better on VHS. Not everything has to be super hi-def. Sometimes it’s okay to blur the world a little bit, because if things look too real it takes you out of the cinematic world.”

Maybe I should collect all of my childhood horror favorites on VHS. Then set up an old-school television with a VHS player and chase that vibe of watching horror movies on dark nights as a kid in Clayton and Montoursville. It could be a lot of fun. But the true horror might end up being how much disposable income I spend chasing the past, when I could sit on the couch next to my cats and watch a big-screen, crystal-clear version of Suspiria, Kwaidan or, yes, even the original Night of the Living Dead. Nostalgia is fun, but there are only so many rabbit holes I can go down.

Footnote

1. I deeply regret, though, that I got rid of all my MTS3K and St. Elsewhere VHS tapes, plus some other stuff that had been taped off TV. If nothing else, there's a substantial market now for old tapes that include commercials, bumpers, news updates and other record-from-TV content. Add those tapes to the list of ephemera I wish I still had, if only because I could have made some nice coin from selling them now on eBay.