Lo-fi Terror! 5 Horror Movies to Watch on VHS
by Giaco Furino
Sept. 15, 2011


Yes, you read that right, VHS. We're all for new releases of classics in stunning high definition, but we'd like to point your attention toward a few of our favorite horror movies that we still watch on videocassette.

So squirm into your crawlspace and grab your VHS player, then hit up the flea market for classic flicks. Trust us, the presentation of these movies is half the frightful battle!







1. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)


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Tobe Hooper's grisly 1974 masterpiece needs no introduction. The story is solid, the filming techniques were groundbreaking, and the acting is brave and full of honest terror.

So why would watching this movie on VHS add to the experience? The sound. The roar of the chainsaw, the warble of the music, the radio reports and other diegetic sound, these are all truly enhanced by the sounds of tape over receiver heads.

And the older the copy of the tape the better; it'll only make it more distorted!









2. The Toxic Avenger (1984)


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The allure of watching The Toxic Avenger on VHS probably springs from childhood memories of video rental stores (remember those?).

For some reason small rental stores were always stocked with good Troma tapes, and it was always a thrill to check out the well-watched cassette and let the madness unfold.

We'll take a high-def release of Toxie any day, but we're talking true nostalgia when we talk Avenger on VHS.









3. The Blair Witch Project (1999)


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We know, we know. We can hear you groaning through the computer.

But before The Blair Witch Project became a cliché, and before it spawned hordes of other cheap first person horror flicks, it was scary.


Remember when it first came out and the producers made the actors stay out of the limelight, pretending that this was a documentary? Re-experience that level of fright.

Find a VHS copy of this movie, turn out the lights, plug in the tape and go back to those innocent days where you thought this movie was found footage from four dead kids.









4. Cannibal Holocaust (1980)


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Watching Cannibal Holocaust on VHS? That's a no-brainer.

This nasty grindhouse classic looks all the more real (and troubling) on tape.


Want to truly believe that the footage the TV execs are watching is real? Watch in on videocassette.

The scrape of the tape, the deterioration of picture and sound, it all adds layers upon bloody layers to the experience.









5. Videodrome (1983)


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If you've seen Videodrome you'll understand us when we say that there's something really disgusting about sliding this particular VHS into the player.

All of the effects we've talked about up until now still stand for enhancing Videodrome, but with a movie so focused on the cassette as a physical object, how could you not want to see it on tape?

http://www.fearnet.com/news/b23867_lo_fi_terror_5_horror_movies_watch_on.html

Surprisingly there are still people that believe the Blair Witch really happened(then again there are also people that believe Rose Red is a real house in Seattle, and that the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is based on a real family of cannibals that lived in Texas), I have to say I never believed it from the beginning about BW as I doubt very much any family member would agree to letting that be released on the big screen and no mainstream cinema would agree to show the movie if it were indeed actual found footage, that and the fact that when Curse Of The Blair Witch aired on SciFi Channel before the movie was released it said during the end credits "Shot in Florida"...kind of a dead giveaway.

Toxic Avenger...sure if you were lucky enough to find the uncut version at the vid shop as most carried the drastically cut R-rated version. Same with Peter Jackson's Bad Taste, if you found the copy that has the alien on the cover flipping the bird you were in for uncut gory delight, but if you found the version with the alien holding up two fingers...so sorry, too bad.

But I have to say I do miss the VHS days...every time I went to the video store I would be surprised by new horror releases that I never heard of, as back then the only time you heard about new movies was if you read about it in Fangoria or Gorezone, or saw a trailer for it on another VHS.

I also miss the tacky VHS boxes...the giant oversized ones that were 4 times bigger than a regular VHS box(I'm looking at you Drive-In Massacre), or the interactive VHS boxes...like with The Dead Pit, when you pushed the button the zombies eyes would light up, or Frankenhooker talking to you when you pushed hers.

I miss the VHS compilation tapes- Filmgore(hosted by Elvira), The Best Of Sex And Violence, Zombiethon...which were clips and trailers from horror and exploitation flicks. Filmgore is how I was introduced to the world of Herschel Gordon Lewis...after seeing the gory scenes from Two Thousand Maniacs I tracked down all of his films I could find, which also led me to becoming a fan of gore and schlock.

And of course Commander USA's Groovie Movies(which aired on USA Network long before they heard of Steven Seagal) where I was introduced to some of the lesser known horror flicks, as every weekend the Commander aired back-to-back double features, mainstream horror like Friday the 13th, and the lesser known stuff like The Children Of Ravensback. Around that time(early 80's) on one of our local networks a car salesman would host movies on weekdays at 3PM(I could care less he was plugging his car dealership all I knew was I was going to see a horror flick)

I can also remember going into the video store and the store was split in 2 sections- VHS on one side, and BETA on the other. Then slowly the BETA section got smaller and smaller, eventually it was one rack of movies, then it was a bin with all BETA tapes marked for sale.

Surprisingly there are still people that believe the Blair Witch really happened(then again there are also people that believe Rose Red is a real house in Seattle, and that the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is based on a real family of cannibals that lived in Texas), I have to say I never believed it from the beginning about BW as I doubt very much any family member would agree to letting that be released on the big screen and no mainstream cinema would agree to show the movie if it were indeed actual found footage, that and the fact that when Curse Of The Blair Witch aired on SciFi Channel before the movie was released it said during the end credits "Shot in Florida"...kind of a dead giveaway.

I spent a lot of time trying to show to people in high school and college that Blair Witch and TCM are not real. Despite what I would tell and show them they were like, "eh, I don't know, there were police reports..." and I'm saying, "Yeah, police reports the movie told you about," but eventually we got nowhere.

I think some people want to believe it's real and some others actually might be actually afraid of it. However, most of the people who believed it was real (at least from my experience) are not really fans of horror. I've never come across any "real horror fans" who believed all of that.

Also, it didn't help anyone (except the marketing team) by creating those faux-documentaries about the stories told in the movies as if it was real. They did this for Blair Witch and Stephen King did something too where he talked about Rose Red as if it were real. So, people actually were convinced from these faux-documentaries.





The Blair Witch Project had great marketing ideas and it's considered a milestone for independent fillm-making.

It's also funny that the legend of The Blair Witch was made up as well, and even the actors in the film were not aware of it. They all assumed it was based on some local legend and even that was made up.

I spent a lot of time trying to show to people in high school and college that Blair Witch and TCM are not real. Despite what I would tell and show them they were like, "eh, I don't know, there were police reports..." and I'm saying, "Yeah, police reports the movie told you about," but eventually we got nowhere.

I think some people want to believe it's real and some others actually might be actually afraid of it. However, most of the people who believed it was real (at least from my experience) are not really fans of horror. I've never come across any "real horror fans" who believed all of that.

Also, it didn't help anyone (except the marketing team) by creating those faux-documentaries about the stories told in the movies as if it was real. They did this for Blair Witch and Stephen King did something too where he talked about Rose Red as if it were real. So, people actually were convinced from these faux-documentaries.





The Blair Witch Project had great marketing ideas and it's considered a milestone for independent fillm-making.

It's also funny that the legend of The Blair Witch was made up as well, and even the actors in the film were not aware of it. They all assumed it was based on some local legend and even that was made up.

And since the actors from The Blair Witch have gone on and done other stuff, I now hear/read people say BW is a reenactment of what happened.

Since the 80's I've had people tell me that their aunt and uncle or parents saw it all on the news about the real killings in Texas back in the early 70's. Gunnar Hansen said he met a guy who claimed to have spent time in prison with the "real" Leatherface.

I miss Continental Videos Double Features. Usually cheesy movies, not always horror, but also exploitation, sexploitation, drive-in flicks.

I own a copy of this one with Scalps and The Slayer.

My mom would rent horror movies for me in the 80's. She got me Children of the Corn, April Fools' Day, Happy Birthday to Me, and we watched the original Fright Night together and encouraged me to watch Silver Bullet. We also saw Cat's Eye in the theater. She doesn't like horror films anymore but I still love them.

It was great growing up in the 80's---TBS, USA and TNT would air horror movies every weekend, and when Halloween came around they would air them every night during the month with a big marathon on Halloween night. Now hardly any networks do that anymore unless it's Chiller or Syfy, and they just air their original movies or the same indie stuff from 2000-on. I think TCM does air classic horror in October. These days, if you want to have a good horror-thon, you have to watch uploaded stuff on the computer. :D

And since the actors from The Blair Witch have gone on and done other stuff, I now hear/read people say BW is a reenactment of what happened.

I've never heard of that explanation. People will say anything.



Since the 80's I've had people tell me that their aunt and uncle or parents saw it all on the news about the real killings in Texas back in the early 70's. Gunnar Hansen said he met a guy who claimed to have spent time in prison with the "real" Leatherface.

LOL





Something like this happened again very recently with the first Paranormal Activity.

It was done similar to Blair Witch in that it was made by unknowns, made on a shoe-string budget, was a found footage type film marketed as being real, and it also became an over-night sensation.

They're up to #3 now and not many people still say this is real at this point, but they did when the first came out.

I've never heard of that explanation. People will say anything.





LOL





Something like this happened again very recently with the first Paranormal Activity.

It was done similar to Blair Witch in that it was made by unknowns, made on a shoe-string budget, was a found footage type film marketed as being real, and it also became an over-night sensation.

They're up to #3 now and not many people still say this is real at this point, but they did when the first came out.

When the TCM remake came out, a new generation of people were convinced it was based on true killings in Texas. Of course nobody listened when I asked if this were indeed the case, then WHY would they put a documentary about Ed Gein on the DVD and not one on the Texas Cannibal Family?

Guess you have to give credit to these filmmakers, what better advertising.

Back in the 80's Charlie Sheen contacted the authorities after watching one of the Japanese Guinea Pig films thinking it was snuff he was watching. Charlie was crowned a wacko amongst the horror community decades before his Winning Years.

Ruggero Deodato even got in trouble with authorities for Cannibal Holocaust when they thought actors were actually murdered on camera.

My mom would rent horror movies for me in the 80's. She got me Children of the Corn, April Fools' Day, Happy Birthday to Me, and we watched the original Fright Night together and encouraged me to watch Silver Bullet. We also saw Cat's Eye in the theater. She doesn't like horror films anymore but I still love them.

It was great growing up in the 80's---TBS, USA and TNT would air horror movies every weekend, and when Halloween came around they would air them every night during the month with a big marathon on Halloween night. Now hardly any networks do that anymore unless it's Chiller or Syfy, and they just air their original movies or the same indie stuff from 2000-on. I think TCM does air classic horror in October. These days, if you want to have a good horror-thon, you have to watch uploaded stuff on the computer. :D

I was excited when I first heard about Chiller, but then when Dish Network picked it up it's virtually the same channel as SyFy...what a let down.

A few years ago Dish carried all of the Voom HD Channels, one was Monsters HD which was 24/7 horror films uncut, and they played everything from the newer indie to the classics. And even obscure stuff that hasn't been released on DVD. I miss that channel.

When the TCM remake came out, a new generation of people were convinced it was based on true killings in Texas. Of course nobody listened when I asked if this were indeed the case, then WHY would they put a documentary about Ed Gein on the DVD and not one on the Texas Cannibal Family?

Guess you have to give credit to these filmmakers, what better advertising.

Yes, I remember having to explain that too. These people really believed it because they were convinced from the "police footage" at the beginning and the end of the film.

I tried explaining that it is not real footage and it was made by the movie, but they didn't believe it.





Back in the 80's Charlie Sheen contacted the authorities after watching one of the Japanese Guinea Pig films thinking it was snuff he was watching. Charlie was crowned a wacko amongst the horror community decades before his Winning Years.

Yeah, I remember this one. It actually happened in 1991.





Ruggero Deodato even got in trouble with authorities for Cannibal Holocaust when they thought actors were actually murdered on camera.

Yep, he had to bring the actors out of hiding (going against his own contract) to help prove he was not guilty of murder.