Rewind This!

REWIND THIS! takes us on a journey back to those days of yesteryear, when the video cassette was king. We join the experts as they relive the 1980's video rental craze. Interviews with luminaries like grindhouse Director Frank Henenlotter are intercut with VHS mega-collectors and their vast video tape and memorabilia collections.

The evolution of the video phenomenon is tracked from its humble origins to the first piano-sized VCRs, and "mom and pop" video rental stores.

This documentary also covers video trading, and the huge impact of the internet on physical video media. Thrill to interviews with Cassandra "Elvira" Peterson, Lloyd "Mr. Troma" Kaufman, Charles "Full Moon" Band, and others! Everything is chronicled, from horror to adult films, and beyond. Informative, nostalgic, and very entertaining...

Simply put, I loved this documentary! Josh Johnson's ode to the VHS age, Rewind This! (2013) opens with a film enthusiast combing a flea market for VHS tapes, overflowing with the sort of passion any and all global VHS hunters (and film lovers) will immediately recognize. This image sets the tone. Like Not Quite Hollywood (2008) and Machete Maidens Unleashed! (2010) before it, Rewind This! will whet your appetite for rare films to add to your collection, but with the added bonus of causing you to scour the earth hunting for a VHS player the second you finish watching it. Powerful stuff, and a must see for film nuts everywhere! (my favorite moment is director Frank Henenlotter explaining the unique feature on his sublime horror comedy Frankenhooker's VHS box: press a button and hear a reanimated prostitute ask you "Wanna date?" This prompts a montage of several other VHS junkies explaining the same feature, and results in the sort of rush of recognition shared by enthusiasts across the world: I personally hit that damn button a million times with every visit to the video store!)

'Rewind This!' is not just a bunch of 30-40 something white males waxing nostalgic--though there's certainly some of that--it's a surprisingly thoughtful and enlightening look at the history of the format, its many quirks and the people who are caretakers of a very unglamorous bit of cultural preservation.

Even if you've never owned a VCR or watched a movie on video tape I believe that you'll find some genuine value in this bit of pop cultural archeology.

Oh, and I fully understand the irony of the fact that I watched this on DVD.

I've always had a fondness for home media, the variety of formats that once existed, the obscure oddities one can find on VHS, and venturing through video stores and flea markets to make new discoveries. Because of this, I'm part of the obvious audience for Rewind This!, a delightful homage to the brilliant and once-ubiquitous home media that was VHS, and how its impact on the movie industry and the public is still prevalent today.

Here's a film that will leave the devoted fans of VHS (like me) just wanting more. For the reason that I'm a huge supporter of the VHS-resurgence movement and continue to buy and collect the media, I'm going to try to make this review not sound like simple- minded fandom constructed into an essay. The film makes a bold attempt at trying to tackle everything VHS, from its meteoric rise, its unfathomable effect on the film industry as a whole, its fan, and its differences from its contemporaries. The documentary allows several people to make statements, some directors, some preservationists, some distributors (including the late Mike Vraney of Something Weird Video) but many the fans and supporters of the medium who rekindle their love for its simplicity and its immensity.

VHS, to me, is such a unique way to watch film, mainly because of the primitiveness and sensitiveness of the device. With tape, there were many more issues that could arouse, with the worse case scenario it getting stuck in your player. But then there are the imperfections of the picture, such as the glitches, the occasional sloppiness of its appearance, the degradation of the tape when certain scenes are played too much, etc. Then there is the box art, which is a work of art in itself. A section of the film devotes itself to showing how unique and inventive the artwork to the VHS covers were, with them often being handpainted and meticulously put together rather than the depressing, effortless, digitized movie-covers/posters we're so used to today.

Furthermore, the film shows how daring and unique home video really was at the time of its inception. Had it not been for an optimistic soul like Andre Ray, who worked for a video engineering company in the seventies, perhaps home video wouldn't have come around so quickly. Ray, who helped manufacturer videotapes at the time, wondered if you could put a full length movie on a certain size tape. When he discovered it was possible, he contacted several movie studios, hoping to get them to buy into the idea of consumers having their films to cherish and watch at their leisure. Few bought in, but one of them happened to be Fox (pre-Star Wars fame), who allowed them to put several of their classic titles on tape at roughly $80 - $90 a pop.

Ray didn't even foresee the explosion of the rental industry, which simply came along because numerous people wanted a try-it-before-you-buy-it kind of system, simplifying the process of discovering a film for consumers even more. Oddly enough, that became the defining industry set forth by the home video boom. Nobody could foresee the industry taking off let the industry where people wander around a store swarmed with movies picking out whichever ones they wanted for a Friday night viewing.

The film does a good job at articulating a question I had for a while and that is why were so many film distribution companies around during the inception of VHS that have since went on to disappear or go defunct in recent times. This is because of experimentation. When rental stores started popping up, they needed films to line their shelves. And thus, numerous distributors began popping up, inquiring quirky, often weird, experimental slashers or just asinine little gems to produce and help keep stores lined with inventory. Eventually, the studios took over and it became the big five or six companies calling all the shots.

One subject that could've been explored much more in depth was the idea of cheap VHS bootlegging, which was done through magazine, handmade flyers, and communication via mail. People would make list of films they had that were either banned, rare, or out of print and would transfer them to blank tapes then smuggle them through the mail. However, due to some strict federal regulations, often times people would tape part of a TV show to play before the actual film to fool potential inspectors. Vraney talks about his experience as a bootlegger, as well as several others, but the revealing and now extinct process is a bit shortchanged and given maybe three to four minutes of attention.

Rewind This! beautifully articulates obsession, impact, and legacy, and never drags or becomes boring, mainly because its subjects have so much insight and observations to offer. It's a must see for the obvious fans of the medium, but due to its commentary on an industry most all of us indulge in, it should almost be mandatory viewing.

Directed by: Josh Johnson.

I happened to "come of movie watching age" during the era of VHS tapes, so this wonderful documentary had some poignant nostalgia for me. What I really liked, however, was that "Rewind This!" was able to do two things at once:

1. First and foremost, it played on all the nostalgia from people like myself. For those who experienced it, it truly was a magical time. Not technologically-quality speaking, of course, but just the whole concept of time-shifting viewing. I spent hours recording shows and watching them at my leisure, as well as made countless trips to the local video store to rent tape after tape (being careful, of course, to Be Kind & Rewind!). This documentary feeds into that, as it gathers together a group of people who had similar experiences and just lets them tell their stories. There's something fun in hearing that others had the exact same experience with VHS and video stores as myself. "Right in the childhood", as the phrase now goes!

2. Even if a youngster were to stumble across "Rewind This!" (one who doesn't have those life experiences), I think he/she could still enjoy the doc. The reason being, it is also part history lesson. It talks about topics like VHS vs Betamax, the business model of the mom-and-pop video store, the confusing war on aspect ratios, and just the overall significance that home record-able media brought to technology as a whole. For those who've only watched films on discs or through streaming, and have an interest in history, it would be fascinating to see the past timeline of such movie-watching experiences.

Overall, "Rewind This!" captured my full attention and held it all the way through. The filmmakers do a great job of covering many different areas without going too over-the-top, while also providing some history/background so the whole thing wasn't just interviews of VHS enthusiasts and collectors. If you are at all interested in this general topic, you'll find something to like here.