VHS Massacre

Highly insightful and nostalgic look at the VHS era in the 1980s and its eventual decline. Really well made and a must watch for movie fans.

I have only just watched this in 2023, and found it fascinating how much things have changed in the past 7 years. One of the participants comments, and I'm paraphrasing a little, "I can't see any profit in streaming or downloading movies." Now the market is dominated by Netflix, Amazon plus, Disney Plus, etc, etc etc.

Back then they were lamenting the disappearance of VHS, now it's hard to find DVDs. Most movies are available to buy on download, or on one of the afore mentioned streaming services. It is sad not being able to browse the shelves of hundreds of DVDs and sometimes finding a gem.

It is sad the effect major corporations such as Blockbuster, Walmart and later Netflix had on this market, and made it increasingly difficult for indie movies to be made at all.

VHS Massacre: Cult Films and the Decline of Physical Media (2015)

*** (out of 4)

This here is a good documentary that tries to do a bit too much but if you remember renting videos back in the 80's and 90's then you'll still want to check it out. The main goal of this documentary is to show what the lack of "mom and pop" video stores means for low- budget horror and cult movies.

If you grew up "back in the day" then you remember how great it was going into video stores where there were a great number of titles on the shelf and more arriving weekly. This documentary does a good job at looking back at this era and then talking about how Blockbuster eventually killed them off. Blockbuster would then be killed off by Netflix and streaming, which takes us to the final aspect of this documentary. With streaming killing off so many small companies, is there a way for low-budget films to survive?

At just 73-minutes there are a few too many topics that tried to be covered here but for the most part this is still an entertaining look at how the home video wars have changed over the decades. The impact on small movies like PSYCHOS IN LOVE is discussed as well as how illegal downloads are making it nearly impossible for filmmakers to make money anymore. Joe Bob Briggs, Lloyd Kaufman, Juliette Danielle, Deborah Reed, James Nguyen and Carmine Capobianco are just a few of the cult names that are interviewed.

This was a documentary that I threw on while I was at work, late in the day. I treat these like podcasts where I'll listen to them and if something is interesting, I'll look down. I just don't need to give it my full attention. I'll say here to start, I watched the sequel to this, VHS Massacre Too first. I didn't realize that it was the second part.

Now this doc has a tagline of Cult Films and the Decline of Physical Media. This came out in 2016 so it is more about the state at that time. Things have changed a bit and the second part does explore more with streaming since that has become bigger. This is giving the history of VHS and its decline into DVD and then Blu-ray. What makes that interesting is hearing John Bloom aka Joe Bob Briggs who is a legend. His wealth of knowledge is great and I could listen to him talk all day. He's not the only one though. I did find it interesting to hear from Lloyd Kaufman and other indie filmmakers.

Something that worked for me here was seeing the team behind this go out and search places for VHS tapes. Now I'm a collector on a smaller scale, but I listen to podcasts when people used to do this. I did find that interesting. It was fun to see what they could find. There's almost a meta-aspect here since this culminates in them watching tapes they found and called that event VHS Massacre.

This isn't working with the biggest budget and isn't the most professional. I did like hearing from people who are similar to me, who grew up in the video store days. There is nostalgia from that and missing those days. It is interesting to watch this now though with streaming and being in an almost golden age of collecting as well. I did like this team editing footage from things they're talking about. That adds a good touch. I enjoyed my time here and didn't feel like a waste. Plus, I was entertained. If what they were doing here sounds interesting, I'd recommend giving this a watch for sure.

My Rating: 6.5 out of 10.

Tries to be personal, tries to be a summary of home media, doesn't really accomplish either. Don't really feel informed by the end of it, don't really get an emotional pay off. Spends a bit too much time focusing on the production of the documentary when there is no real story there.

Okay to watch but not likely to hold your interest for the full run time. Feels a bit too much like an overly long youtube documentary