I, too, recently dumped many of my films on VHS for space reasons. However, if you are a teacher, and you want to show a clip in class, nothing beats having a film cued up to the exact point you need it, which you can do easily with VHS. Plus, VHS tapes are far less finicky than rented DVDs. I once rented a VHS of a film I needed for class, and it had peanut butter smeared around the “business end.” But I shoved it into the player anyway, and it worked fine. I used to keep my tapes in the window of my car all day, cold or hot, and had no problem with them. Chalk dust permeates the VHS and DVD players in the room I teach in, yet it poses no problems for the durable VHS. However, if you look at a DVD sideways, it develops a scratch and skips. If that happens, the screening is over, because you will never get the DVD to play after the scratch, or precious time is wasted trying to re-cue the film.

While I understand the benefits of the home-viewing revolution, because we all get to own/rent our favorite films, I can’t help but see the down side. The average viewer rents/buys only what he feels comfortable watching — familiar favorites, some reocmmendations from friends. Few people will watch films outside their comfort zones — something I realized after talking to my students about why they don’t watch old movies, or foreign films, etc. When I was a kid and watched movies on TV, I was at the mercy of the station’s schedule. This forced me to watch movies I might not otherwise have watched, which expanded my tastes and experiences. Sometimes getting to watch anything you want anytime you want only serves to narrow tastes.

I still have many many VHS tapes, and sometimes do go back to them, and love to see the ones that I recorded off commercial TV. It’s a time machine — you get to see all the ads and news promos. That’s what really makes them valuable. In terms of the film quality it’s horrible and they are often edited, but boy, do I love seeing the old local L.A. ad spots!

I agree with you, Suzi, about the narrowing of tastes and preferences if you only watch your favorite things. The things I was exposed to as a kid in a great TV market like L.A. was astounding — newer movies on network TV, foreign films on PBS or even one of the local indies, classics on the independent stations, really old cheaper titles on the lesser independents. Just reading the TV Guide — it used to be my weekly thrill — was an education in movies in itself, and really prepared me for my job when I had to analyze huge movie libraries for purchase. Unlike many people, I didn’t have to look up the titles. I knew them by sight, and still freak myself out when I realize how much of that old knowledge is still in there. If I can’t name at least two stars of a movie, I feel like I’m losing it! :-) I’m sure most of us reading this post are the same way!

Glad many of your titles still live with you, RHS! Couldn’t be a better home for them!

Great blog Richard! When I moved last summer, I threw out more than a hundred VHS tapes for space reasons, and regret losing all those copies of TCM’s original intros (now that they’ve ‘updated’ them). I was surprised this fall when my kids wanted to watch one of ones I’d kept (because I thought they’d outgrown it; they had, but it was hilarious for all of us to watch it again anyway). I began to think of what was lost in the purge, movies which may never air on television again nor be distributed on DVD (or derivative formats) ever. I guess there will always be eBay, Amazon, and other on-line brokers for such material.

I cleaned out most of my VHS tapes several years ago – it felt cathartic – but like you, I still kept some because of their cover art (THE APE WOMAN, THE VAMPIRE’S NIGHT ORGY) and some because they aren’t available in any other format (William Klein’s THE LITTLE RICHARD STORY, EYES OF FIRE, THE TOUCHABLES, A QUIET PLACE IN THE COUNTRY). And Suzi is right; it’s much easier to cue up a VHS for a specific scene to amaze your friends as opposed to trying to find it quickly on a DVD even with chapter headings. By the way, TCM showed GOKE, BODY SNATCHER FROM HELL last year.

I got rid of damn near everything a few years back. I kept only a handful. Of those I kept were the original three Star Wars films because they have the original special effects and Greedo doesn’t fire at Solo in the Cantina. I don’t think we’ll ever get those on DVD so I kept them for history sake. I aslo kept the original release of The Exorcist letterboxed edition since that is now out of print as well. Although, I have no way of watching them as my VCR broke years ago. Oh well.

So far I have kept my huge VHS collection. Years ago I wrote down a list of the films I wanted and now that I have collected most of them, I am certainly not going to put them in garbage bags yet.

As a volunteer I bring VHS movies to a local senior center for the elderly to watch. Each week they show a different one from my collection. I think the seniors would prefer more recent films than ones made in the 50s, 40s and 30s, but the center is located on the bottom floor of a church and I am not going to cause a scandal by having some right wingers walk in and get shocked at seniors watching “dirty movies.”
Sometimes the seniors are excited about what they’re watching. “Meet Danny Wilson” with Frank Sinatra and Shelley Winters got them all worked up. Sometimes the small group all falls asleep. The lesson I learned from that instance was: Don’t show them George Raft. Once an elderly couple held hands while they were viewing that week’s feature.
Last week was Roberta, with Irene Dunne, Randolph Scott, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. After Fred and Ginger had performed one of their most dazzling dances, I asked an elderly lady how she liked it. “It’s okay,” she said.

I can remember when all the local stations and some cable stations showed old movies all the time. Often you started watching something you never intended to spend time seeing.

But things change.

I am really thankful for TCM and I hope they never change their format like AMC did.

This week I am showing “Jane Eyre.” In coming weeks: Not as a Stranger, The Gunfighter, Angel and the Badman. (Of course there is no charge and the films are not advertised.)

See ya at the movies.

I have kept many of my VHS tapes, only getting rid of them when I decided it was worth buying the DVD of it again. ANd yes, my VCR still works, which is good as i haven’t yet figured out how to disengage it from the hookup system I have now that the DVD player, the digital cable/DVR box, and Playstation and Wii all flow into it and then the cord comes out from the VCR into the tv… it’s a lot easier to keep the setup the way it is, than to pull out the VCR to me. So I am down to the (relatively small number compared to others here) few tapes that I haven’t felt a need to replace on DVD or haven’t been released on DVD yet, but still do want to watch occassionally.

I just wanted to give an “I hear ya!” to Johnathan Lapper…I, too have the original Star Wars on VHS, and hate watching the changes they made to it on DVD. When my son was old enough to enjoy it with me about two years ago, the VCR version is the one I showed him…he was gonna watch it the way I had seen it long ago, and not the way it is now…I just can’t bring myself to embrace the updated version that is now being sold, and dread the day that the VCR eats one of the tapes, or breaks.

“Rituals” is available on DVD as part of several public domain movie sets like Mill Creek’s 50 Drive-In Movie Classics set. You probably aren’t aware if this because it goes by the name “Creeper” (as distinct from “Creepers”, a renaming of Dario Argento’s “Phenomena” available in the same set).

I too had a large collection of VHS and Betamax tapes, some bought used, some recorded off the late show. I made copies of all of them either using a computer with a TV card and Virtual Dub or with a Toshiba DVD recorder, or both.

When I was done I gave everything away to library sales or through Yahoo Freecycle. The DVDs and CDs I made take up much less space than the tapes did, and the quality of the copies is nearly as good as the original. I keep the DVDs and CDs in the binders they sell at Best Buy and record stores, and I have a bunch of them.

I still use the Toshiba to record movies off TCM. I sometimes use a TV card to record shows off other channels and make a DivX copy with the commercials removed. Some of these I’ll convert to watch on my ipod.

So while I agree that VHS and Beta were a boon to us film buffs, we do have some pretty attractive alternatives these days.

What is the thinking, a VHS tape could record 6-8 hours and while a DVD recorder may have the capability of recording 8 hours, I can only find discs that record 2 hours. Why would the industry veer in this direction?

Someone please name the Movies that were aired on Turner-
a year or so ago,during what was called,a week of race movies.

I’ll probably have to be buried with my VHS and Beta tapes, not to mention laserdiscs. Good thing I never pursued RCA’s cumbersome SelectaVision format.

I should get rid of more of them, but it’s hard to upgrade when a title was full-frame to begin with, or the DVD offers no significant extra features. I still have a square tube set too; the few times I’ve tried to watch tapes on a larger flat screen they look terrible, so maybe it’ll take a TV upgrade to finally convince me to dump the tapes.

But there are still all those titles I can’t get elsewhere…Mask of Dimitrios, Rolling Thunder, Murders in the Zoo, The Boogens, that series of Paramount silents that included W.C. Fields’ Running Wild and Docks of New York, and utter trash like Little Girl–Big Tease or The Arousers (Curtis Hanson’s first feature, a.k.a. Sweet Kill, with Tab Hunter). At least I hear Murder at the Vanities is coming out on DVD from Universal in a collection of pre-code titles. Maybe we’ll finally see a release of Temple Drake?

And like that copy of King Kong, there’s the VHS of Frank Henenlotter’s Frankenhooker that says “Wanna date?” when you press the button on the box. And nowadays they think putting a disc in a metal tin is clever marketing.

Please help! I can’t find a VHS or CD of Jackie Burroughs’ “A Winter Tan.” Is it possible they don’t exist? It is not even listed among all her films. I’ve searched for years. I know it’s been panned by critics, but I knew a woman like that in Mexico and I thought it a very accurate and painful portrait, the character often described as a female Malcolm Lowry.

Arlene, I’m very sure that A WINTER TAN, which was put out by Kino on Video, is now out-of-print. Beyond pointing you to eBay, there’s not much I can do for you. You might try an ad on Craigslist looking for the movie. I’m certain people have it stashed in the back of their collections and would be amenable to passing it on to you for a nominal fee and/or a trade.