VHS tapes

[RCMerchant]

I actually collect them before the was a market for them. I have  atape of the HUMAN MONSTER (1939) with Bela from 1979! There's a promo before the film saying how cool the new vhs technology is and how you can own a movie for only $49!

$49! That was like a lot of money in 1979!   It's a lot of money now!
And by the way- the print of the film is scratchy and washed out. Like it came out of an old theater attic after being played at 100's of Saturday kiddie matinees.

[lester1/2jr]

in the book American Psycho the guy rents and re rents Body Double like 10 times. the idea of purchasing a video was so extravagant even a rich Wall st guy wouldn't do it.

[claws]

Me and VHS tapes:

- My first mail order VHS was The Demon Lover (1976) in the 1990s.
- I paid $79.95 each for Brain Damage (1988) and Meridian (1990) on VHS.
- First movie I bought on VHS was Purple Rain (1984) with a sell-through price of $29.98.
- MacroVision wouldn't let me copy The Manhattan Project (1986) and gave me a hard time with Weird Science (1985). I was finally able to copy Weird Science to beta without MacroVision flashes and jitters.
- I bought a sealed mint copy of Scream (1981) for $5.00 when one of our favorite rental places closed for good.
- The only rental my VCR damaged was Delirious (1991). I was able to patch it up. The rental place never noticed.
- I had about 2,000+ movies on VHS and beta when I made the switch to DVD in 1998.

[Gabriel Knight]

The first VHS I got was the original live action TMNT movie, my dad gave it to me. I think I was 7 or something, the third movie was already out. I still have it somewhere in his house.

[Allhallowsday]

I paid a fortune for a VHS tape like 35 years ago... never watch the movie, though it was just on TCM.  I have a boatload of VHS tapes; lots of Sinister Cinema and gifts people gave me, plus lots of stuff I replaced later on DVD (like CARNIVAL OF SOULS).  I haven't watched a video tape in years. 

[bob]

I have around 20ish VHS tapes -- most are in good shape and I watch them somewhat regularly

among are some I bought and was gifted that I never watched for some reason

[LilCerberus]

During the bulk close out craze, I went hog wild.
I have the original Star Wars trilogy on VHS, pan & scan, before all the revisions.

When I was moving about ten years ago, my stepdad assumed they were all garbage (along with a number of other things), and I wound up spending thanksgiving day fishing around in a dumpster.

He still doesn't understand why I don't trust him.

[Alex]

First VHS I ever bought was Creepshow.

[Trevor]

I've got 60 VHS tapes: mostly films which I can't find on DVD.

The first VHS I bought was the film Baffled! with Leonard Nimoy: I paid ZAR100 ($10) for it and I still have it.

[FatFreddysCat]

I had tons of VHS back in the day but lost them all in a basement flooding incident in the late 90s. At the time I was super p*ssed, of course, but since the format was already on the way out, I guess Mother Nature kinda did me a favor in the long run.

[bob]

my VHS collection: Return of the Jedi, The Empire Strikes Back, MST3K the Movie, The Fly with Jeff Goldblum which could be in better shape, Highlander 2: The Quickening, The Great Outdoors, Ghostbusters, Falling Down, Mystic Pizza, To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday, Ken Burn's baseball documentary (5 VHS tapes), Dirty Dancing, a career retrospective on Cal Ripken Jr., Doctor Zhivago (2 VHS tapes), Forrest Gump, Starship Troopers and Miracle on 34th Street

[Alex]

Actually threw out my last VHS tape today. It was a copy of Bucky O'Hare that I had been given long after the demise of VHS players. Anyway, if anyone wants it, let me know and I'll rescue it from the bin and post it to you.

[Archivist]

During the bulk close out craze, I went hog wild.
I have the original Star Wars trilogy on VHS, pan & scan, before all the revisions.

When I was moving about ten years ago, my stepdad assumed they were all garbage (along with a number of other things), and I wound up spending thanksgiving day fishing around in a dumpster.

He still doesn't understand why I don't trust him.

Never let your stepdad near anything you own. Although, I'm pretty sure you don't need a random Badmovies buddy to remind you of this.

Interestingly, I/we (family) don't have a lot of prerecorded tapes, probably because we had the luxury of two VHS machines which allowed us to copy any tapes we got from the rental store. I've got boxes and boxes of VHS tapes recorded from the TV and from other tapes, though.

One of the first VHS tapes we ever bought was for me. It was The Muppet Movie (1979). I still have that tape, decades on.

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One of my friends was so taken by E.T. The Extraterrestrial (1982) that she bought a VHS tape for the express purpose of being able to show her grandchilddren. At the time, she didn't even have grandchildren yet! But the movie affected her so much that it was something she knew she had to share with her future grandkids. And fortunately, they loved it.

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Another friend asked me to make a copy of Iron And Silk (1990), an independent martial arts movie about an American who traveled to China to learn kung fu. It was a terrible ex-rental copy, so dirty that it messed with my VHS player, something which had never happened before. Told my friend to take that VHS tape far, far away from me.

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[RCMerchant]

I just bought KISS AND KILL, COMEDY OF TERRORS, CREATURE OF THE WALKING DEAD, the CONQUER WORM, and the DEAD DON'T DIE on vhs last weekend at a flea market for $3 dollars apiece! I have a working vhs player too!

[Archivist]

Now that I think about it, there was a period when I bought a lot of prerecorded anime VHS tapes, because it was the only way to see most of these things in Australia. The American imports were crazy expensive, but I still shelled out for them because I loved anime so much. I have two archive boxes of anime VHS tapes from that time, most of them only watched two or three times at the most. I ought to transfer them to digital files, considering a lot of them aren't online.