Tales of Giant Bugs on VHS, a Podcast Interview, and Tape Swapping
Although some labels and studios have taken to releasing limited VHS releases of new titles – The People’s Joker (2022) and Alien: Romulus (2024) being the most recent examples – they’re more novelties, if not small test runs to check the viability of further VHS editions of major Hollywood titles, and although VHS has enjoyed a micro-resurgence, its fan base is largely interested in indie works, especially horror titles.
Exploitation genres are perhaps the ideal product for VHS, because they respectively follow in the footsteps of forbidden fruit and rare titles that never made it to DVD or Blu-ray. There’s also the natural relationship between SOV (shot on video) works that originated as SD (standard definition) productions – interlaced in NTSC regions like North America and Japan – and are released on tape-based media that isn’t HD.
If a work is limited to a couple of dozen VHS editions, it falls under the umbrella of a hand-crafted work of art, fusing pop culture, physical media culture, analogue aficionados, and nostalgia on one simple, durable format.
Which is where Roach (2022), the short 3D film crafted by Canadian filmmaker schnudlbug comes in. I’ve posted a review of the half-hour film which made its VHS debut last year, and links to a lengthy podcast interview conducted in the fall, where we discuss a variety of topics including making Roach, the decision to use 3D, the allure of physical media, glitch imagery and grungy sound design, and the influence of bootlegs during the waning years of mass-produced VHS.
VHS was (and is) arguably the video version of a mix tape – a copy of a work or several works made for an express group, if not an individual, and made not for profit, but as a gift, bereft of any monetary value or reciprocal remuneration; a copy made to disseminate artistry, culture, and guilty pleasure crap which one can keep, erase, toss, or return whenever.
It’s that relationship that I detailed in a short non-fiction piece I wrote for the 2nd issue (and 2nd edition) of Film Fvckers: Hard Media, the zine from publisher Brandon Lim. The latest issue is available online and from select vendors – like bricks & mortar video sales & rental shop Bay Street Video. My piece, titled “The Great Tape Swap: How I Learned Even More About Films and People Thanks to VHS,” is nestled among 17 really great contributions by physical media fans, historians, and collectors, spanning formats like CED video discs, laserdiscs, 8mm and 16mm film, bootlegs, and way more. (Later this month I’ll post a reading of my piece, with specially ‘curated’ and treated visual.)
Roach is both film and video art in its concept, with experimental components that draw from schnudlbug’s own editing skillset and his affection for VHS, and although the digital version – available free via his Instagram – has all the sights and sounds drawn from analogue sources, when viewed in its VHS incarnation, the layer of signal noise, colour bleed, and mono sound mix (which is fantastic), it’s perhaps the film’s most ideal viewing experience, especially when blown up and projected on a wall.
There’s one aspect I never asked schnudlbug, and in retrospect, it’s appropriate that it’s left to the eyes & ears of the beholder: If a film exists as a digital master using material from digital and analogue sources, and can be viewed as an HD digital file and a SD VHS source, what is a work’s definitive form, and does that even matter in an age where digital can’t kill analogue?
Citing a few opinions from the aforementioned Film Fvckers issue:
“We collect analog and photochemical media because there’s an organic nature to it… As it degrades, the media we hold dearly develps its own personality. A 4K disc will never love you back like that.” — Eric Veillette, “Small-Gauge Horror: Collecting 8mm and Super 8 horror digests”
“I believe that eah format, rather than to be seen as deficient of the ‘perfect image’, whatever that even is… has its own charm… There are some movies which, for me, play better on “lesser” technology.” — Marc Basque, “VHS is (sometimes) better than 4K: How Fetishizing Quality Distracts Us from What the Movies are Really About.”
And much like Basque, because I use (but also digitize archival material from legacy media), I’ve held onto, collect, and use VHS, Betamax, Laserdisc, and to a lesser extent, CED. CED excepted, I’ve all of my original decks and players; with the exception of my first VHS beasts (a RCA and a JVC), everything else still works (relatively) fine, so there’s added comfort in having the gear that influenced & expanded my cinematic tastes & knowledge mere inches, or a few feet away from my viewing perch.
Thanks for reading,
Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com
Category: EDITOR'S BLOG, INTERVIEWS, podcast
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