Adjust Your Tracking: The Untold Story of the VHS Collector

A wicked documentary showing the sub culture of finding and collecting VHS even though it gets harder and harder to track them down. Mostly horror VHS is sought with people paying ridiculous amounts for certain titles ($660.00 for Tales Of The Quadead Zone). They look at several collectors collections and interview them. I'm an avid collector myself with almost 7000 dvds so I enjoyed it. I don't care myself what format I get as long as I get to watch it.

It is cool however that people like Massacre Video now release on DVD all those rare VHS only titles like Tales From The Quadead Zone and Spine. Very informative flick. Of course I watched this on DVD.

I've to tell you that i have been a collector for a long long time. And since the new era, all this digital media has really stroke me deep in my heart. Now you play a movie by Digital Media, you watch it, you enjoy it, but the experience its not the same. Its not intimate, its not personal.

Adjust your tracking immerse you to the past and makes you remember how movies were supposed to be experienced. The guys from Adjust your tracking are people who cling to the past, who don't forget, who fight against the digital era.

You will find some surprises beneath the stories from Adjust your tracking that you really want to hear. From independent video stores, to block buster era and some of the coolest collectors experiences.

Adjust you tracking it may change your life... or at least you will see a VHS not like something obsolete, but as something forgotten with a really strong bond to your childhood.

Watching this documentary is like watching an old VHS. That is something that makes you fell that blast to the past kind of felling.

If you are a collector (like myself), or at least 20 years old. You are going to love this documentary.

Long live the VHS!

Even as an executive producer (well, one of 200!) I can look at this from a distance, somewhat. It's entertaining, sometimes very funny, but also a bit unfocused. I wish it had a little more about the change from VHS to DVD and how now DVD is becoming "dead" due to VOD. But the collections are fun to look at, the Quadead Zone story is epic, and you can tell they all either love what they are collecting, or are, at worst, the kind of people you might WANT to watch on Hoarders.

The highlight though for me is the gentleman who has such a collection in his basement that it has become a video store, complete with a crappy old computer, magazine from twenty years ago to tell you what is good or not, and sections delineating this or that film (surprise, he doesn't like drama). On a personal level it bugged me just slightly that the film doesn't have any other video collectors except the horror-hounds (or maybe some collect porn, though I'm sure they hide that - or maybe not, I dunno, I'd need to look through the film again with a fine-tape comb). Are there other collectors out there than JUST horror? Or maybe horror and sci-fi and genre stuff is just where the fun collections are at. Why just have stuff like Ingmar Bergman films when you can have basically home movies that have cool covers? Some of these folks love movies that are featured I'm sure. Others? A stamp collection might be the same thing.

But I say these criticisms with affection. I too am a collector, not to THIS extent that we see with these subjects - one of whom, I must admit, is to the point of possible madness as to pay over 1,000 for a single tape. I will want to watch this again though to soak up some of the titles and the anecdotes. I'd be curious to see what folks who aren't in the "Know" think of all of this; the screening I saw the film was loaded with fellow VHS collector-geeks, some of whom wanted to trade and buy tapes right there. A collector never sleeps, really. Whether someone will actually WATCH Tales from the Quadead zone after they plunk down a month's rent, I am sure I still don't know. As a look at a handful of people holding on to and praising a supposedly "dead" format, it's charming, mostly harmless, featuring crude animations and the "look" of VHS which is appreciated, and has some bite. If it had a little more about the format itself, not just about the collectors, then it would be truly great.

The film shares the inner workings of passionate collectors of the solid box tapes from times past. The honesty and personality of each interviewee expands on the culture and its many attributes. Further, the aesthetics and visual stimulus of rare movie cover art, collectors' showcases, and video stores around the US was extremely entertaining. Being uneducated in the landscape of VHS, I still found it easy to follow and easy grasp the value, importance, and satire in the film. I highly recommend this film for any one who appreciates the vastness of the human experience, because I assure you that it showcases an interesting side of it.

A documentary capturing the modern day VHS culture and VHS collectors.

If you are not already interested in VHS and the culture of those who collect it, this is going to be a very strange film, possibly boring and altogether confusing. Not confusing in the sense that it is hard to follow, but it may leave you wondering, "Why do these guys do this and what sort of person spends their money on such things?"

Now, for those already interested, this will get you better acquainted with some of the more noteworthy collectors, provide you with some of the collecting motivations (not least of which is that many of these films have never been on DVD). And we even get a few bigger names like Lloyd Kaufman and Matt Moore, who is well-known as the HorrorHound columnist that popularized this craze.

Crazy or not, this is a group of passionate people. Perhaps it is crazy to spend $660 on a copy of "Tales From the Quadead Zone". But if they could turn around and sell it for more, maybe this is not so crazy. Many of us have our own collecting idiosyncrasies, our own investments. The question is: will this one continue to grow or will the bubble burst? (For many of these folks, that is not even the point.)

If there is anything missing here, it is Charles Band of Full Moon, Empire and Wizard Video fame. Band is not a hard man to track down, so getting him to talk about his years in the VHS world would be no huge undertaking. Even more to the point, however, is a huge controversy Band sparked in the VHS community by re-releasing Wizard "big boxes". He claims they are originals, while the collectors say they are fake. At $50 a piece, they ought to be real, or these folks should file a class action lawsuit against Band for deceptive practices.

Many, perhaps most, of the VHS collectors are particularly interested in horror. No one is collecting Fox or MGM tapes (finding "Speed" for fifty cents is easy), but the obscure films that no one has heard of. And horror fans are probably the ones who will most identify with this documentary, whether they are collectors or not. We all have films that we loved on VHS and took forever to come out on DVD (and some that still have not).

This might be worth checking out if you are a die-hard movie geek who misses the "old days" and the thrill of visiting the video store.