Editorials
[Micah’s Mausoleum] Viva La VHS!!!
A column where horror and nostalgia meet. Topics range from VHS, Vinyl, repertory screenings and a hodge-podge of anything else horror related that that harkens back to the days of yesteryear.
The VHS format rocks. Mono audio? Tracking issues? 4:3 picture? Bring it. Let me tell you why.
After a prolonged absence spanning most of the ‘00s until last year from watching films on VHS I decided to give the format a shot again. Like the transition from tapes to CDs, I quickly dropped VHS in favor of DVDs (and then later DVDs for Blu-ray). I suffer from early-adopter syndrome. That combined with the promise of higher quality home viewing it seemed an obvious progression, and it certainly is for the vast majority of films. However, there lives another breed of nearly forgotten films along with classics that demand to be seen on VHS.
Head inside for more!
I trace back my VHS revival to revival (aka repertory) screenings. I’ve attended hundreds of classic 35MM presentations of cult classics, films not even the most dedicated cinephile has even heard of, and just about everything in between. Those screenings are, without doubt, my favorite cinematic experiences (as long as the audience is there to enjoy the film, not mock it.) Even when the print is faded and the audio sucks it’s still a great time. I attended a screening of The Funhouse last year at Cinefamily in Los Angeles and I swear it looked like we were watching the flick through a goddamn lampshade. Still, that screening captured something that the streaming or DVD version can’t. There’s a rawness and grittiness or, as the French and Americans trying to be French say, a certain “Je ne sais quoi” to those old 35MM reels. This is something that I happily found out also translates to VHS.
Which brings me back to my decision to jump down the VHS rabbit hole. All it took was a trip to the Goodwill and six bucks. That visit netted me a VHS player and a rather old looking copy of Halloween. (It turned out to be an original release from MEDIA, a prominent distributor in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, which was founded none other than Charles Band of Full Moon and Wizard fame.) Seriously, six bucks to get going and the Goodwill was even playing that Macklemore song while I was there. Not even joking. Then I did some digging at home and came across an old box which contained the remnants of my VHS collection. This consisted of a tape of a family vacation to Alaska and for some unknown reason a copy of The Dentist 2 starring Corbin Bernsen. For reference, the best I can tell is I bought that tape new in 1998 and kept it with me through about 10 moves covering 3 states. One cannot simply get rid of Corbin.
I quickly discovered my inner collector had just found something “new” to set its laser focus on. Sure, I already collect original one sheet posters and even a few dolls (I mean bad ass macho action figures), but VHS was altogether a different beast. I was hooked on both the aesthetic box art and the actual joy of watching the films on the same format that I and many others had first enjoyed them on. From there it wasn’t long before I was scouring thrift stores, eBay and local shops for flicks I wanted. It also didn’t take long to realize that this endeavour would not always be so cheap. If you’re gonna collect VHS you might as well get the first editions, right?
Not too long after all of that I hosted an all-horror VHS night at my place and invited a few like-minded friends over. I arranged my rapidly growing VHS collection to mimic a Mom and Pop video rental shop that I named Micah’s Pick-a-Flick. I let guests peruse the collection before deciding on the evening’s picks. It was a Friday night straight outta 1995! The group settled on the absolutely awful Xtro 2 followed by the classic Stephen Dorph vehicle The Gate. We drank, ate boxed movie candies and had a freakin’ blast. Next time I think I’ll institute a ‘80s/’90s dress code. Wait. Did I just become a horror hipster? F*ck.
Kidding aside the night did evoke a strong sense of nostalgia and lengthy discussions about the days of renting videos based almost solely on the box art. Taking a chance on something you’ve never heard of. Discovering a gem amongst the crap, which is how I discovered Evil Dead — a night I will never forget. There’s something magical in those old box covers and tapes. Something that almost everyone who grew up during the home video boom remembers fondly. One of my friends brought up how the creatures in The Gate appeared scarier than they did on the HD version (formerly available on Netflix) due to the limits of VHS clarity. She was right.
And VHS appears destine to continue its comeback and not just in my apartment. The flick V/H/S and its soon-to-be-released sequel play on this trend by blending old and new formats rather cleverly. Numerous films are being released and re-released on VHS format (including the aforementioned V/H/S that sold out of its first U.S. VHS run in a few hours and whose UK PAL version commands serious quid on eBay.) Wizard Video unearthed a ton of original clamshell-sized VHS from their horror heyday and are re-releasing them (with newly duplicated VHS tapes.) And now in 2013 two documentaries focusing specifically on VHS are being unleashed (Rewind This! and Adjust Your Tracking). Rewind This! recently played to much success at SXSW. Adjust Your Tracking premieres on April 5th in Los Angeles at the Days of the Dead convention.
I asked one of the co-directors of Adjust Your Tracking, Dan Kinem, for his thoughts on VHS post-completion of his film. He had this to say:
“I feel like VHS is here to stay. For many it never truly left and for others it just took some time to remember how great it was. For as long as there are movies you can only watch on VHS I will always keep a VCR running. And for as long as there are people who remember growing up with VHS it will always hold a special place in their heart. Some of my earliest memories as a film fan are watching VHS so I’m never going to throw that away for any new format. I think the value of tapes that are truly rare is only likely to go up the older they become and I think marketing limited and collectible VHS, for the right types of movies, will continue. Fans of genre cinema love collectibles and in my cases the movies being marketed on tape nowadays works best on the format with the gritty, imperfect-look VHS provides. Collectors who are in it for the fad will die out eventually, but there will always be a hardcore fan base of collectors scouring the thrift stores and flea markets and looking on eBay at 3 am hoping to find a steal no one else has noticed. VHS will live forever.”
I’m in that latter group. I forgot how great VHS was. It’s a relationship that I once neglected, but going forward will cherish always.
So tell me: Has the VHS bug bitten you? Did you ever stop collecting? Are you down with new films on VHS? Do you remember a tape you used to watch over and over? Let’s chat.
Follow Micah on Twitter and make sure to check out Poster Collective, his movie poster specific site which is releasing a brand new limited edition screen print for the sic-fi classic, Metropolis, on April 5th.
Due to a complex series of anthropological mishaps, the Wayans Brothers are a huge deal in Brazil. Around these parts, White Chicks is considered a national treasure by a lot of people, so it stands to reason that Brazilian audiences would continue to accompany the Wayans’ comedic output long after North America had stopped taking them seriously as comedic titans.
This is the only reason why I originally watched Michael Tiddes and Marlon Wayans’ 2013 horror spoof A Haunted House – appropriately known as “Paranormal Inactivity” in South America – despite having abandoned this kind of movie shortly after the excellent Scary Movie 3. However, to my complete and utter amazement, I found myself mostly enjoying this unhinged parody of Found Footage films almost as much as the iconic spoofs that spear-headed the genre during the 2000s. And with Paramount having recently announced a reboot of the Scary Movie franchise, I think this is the perfect time to revisit the divisive humor of A Haunted House and maybe figure out why this kind of film hasn’t been popular in a long time.
Before we had memes and internet personalities to make fun of movie tropes for free on the internet, parody movies had been entertaining audiences with meta-humor since the very dawn of cinema. And since the genre attracted large audiences without the need for a serious budget, it made sense for studios to encourage parodies of their own productions – which is precisely what happened with Miramax when they commissioned a parody of the Scream franchise, the original Scary Movie.
The unprecedented success of the spoof (especially overseas) led to a series of sequels, spin-offs and rip-offs that came along throughout the 2000s. While some of these were still quite funny (I have a soft spot for 2008’s Superhero Movie), they ended up flooding the market much like the Guitar Hero games that plagued video game stores during that same timeframe.
You could really confuse someone by editing this scene into Paranormal Activity.
Of course, that didn’t stop Tiddes and Marlon Wayans from wanting to make another spoof meant to lampoon a sub-genre that had been mostly overlooked by the Scary Movie series – namely the second wave of Found Footage films inspired by Paranormal Activity. Wayans actually had an easier time than usual funding the picture due to the project’s Found Footage presentation, with the format allowing for a lower budget without compromising box office appeal.
In the finished film, we’re presented with supposedly real footage recovered from the home of Malcom Johnson (Wayans). The recordings themselves depict a series of unexplainable events that begin to plague his home when Kisha Davis (Essence Atkins) decides to move in, with the couple slowly realizing that the difficulties of a shared life are no match for demonic shenanigans.
In practice, this means that viewers are subjected to a series of familiar scares subverted by wacky hijinks, with the flick featuring everything from a humorous recreation of the iconic fan-camera from Paranormal Activity 3 to bizarre dance numbers replacing Katy’s late-night trances from Oren Peli’s original movie.
Your enjoyment of these antics will obviously depend on how accepting you are of Wayans’ patented brand of crass comedy. From advanced potty humor to some exaggerated racial commentary – including a clever moment where Malcom actually attempts to move out of the titular haunted house because he’s not white enough to deal with the haunting – it’s not all that surprising that the flick wound up with a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes despite making a killing at the box office.
However, while this isn’t my preferred kind of humor, I think the inherent limitations of Found Footage ended up curtailing the usual excesses present in this kind of parody, with the filmmakers being forced to focus on character-based comedy and a smaller scale story. This is why I mostly appreciate the love-hate rapport between Kisha and Malcom even if it wouldn’t translate to a healthy relationship in real life.
Of course, the jokes themselves can also be pretty entertaining on their own, with cartoony gags like the ghost getting high with the protagonists (complete with smoke-filled invisible lungs) and a series of silly The Exorcist homages towards the end of the movie. The major issue here is that these legitimately funny and genre-specific jokes are often accompanied by repetitive attempts at low-brow humor that you could find in any other cheap comedy.
Not a good idea.
Not only are some of these painfully drawn out “jokes” incredibly unfunny, but they can also be remarkably offensive in some cases. There are some pretty insensitive allusions to sexual assault here, as well as a collection of secondary characters defined by negative racial stereotypes (even though I chuckled heartily when the Latina maid was revealed to have been faking her poor English the entire time).
Cinephiles often claim that increasingly sloppy writing led to audiences giving up on spoof movies, but the fact is that many of the more beloved examples of the genre contain some of the same issues as later films like A Haunted House – it’s just that we as an audience have (mostly) grown up and are now demanding more from our comedy. However, this isn’t the case everywhere, as – much like the Elves from Lord of the Rings – spoof movies never really died, they simply diminished.
A Haunted House made so much money that they immediately started working on a second one that released the following year (to even worse reviews), and the same team would later collaborate once again on yet another spoof, 50 Shades of Black. This kind of film clearly still exists and still makes a lot of money (especially here in Brazil), they just don’t have the same cultural impact that they used to in a pre-social-media-humor world.
At the end of the day, A Haunted House is no comedic masterpiece, failing to live up to the laugh-out-loud thrills of films like Scary Movie 3, but it’s also not the trainwreck that most critics made it out to be back in 2013. Comedy is extremely subjective, and while the raunchy humor behind this flick definitely isn’t for everyone, I still think that this satirical romp is mostly harmless fun that might entertain Found Footage fans that don’t take themselves too seriously.
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