Dead End Drive-In: Now Showing – ‘Adjust Your Tracking: The Untold Story of the VHS Collector’
Written by Rob Lane
Saturday, 30 August 2014 04:00-
How could we squeeze a review of the UK release of ‘Adjust Your Tracking: The Untold Story of the VHS Collector’ onto Uber Rock? How about getting Rob Lane, the movie-obsessed mainman behind Straight To Video, to write one for us?! Genius!
‘Adjust Your Tracking: The Untold Story of the VHS Collector’ (VHShitfest/Lunchmeat/Wienerworld)
Once the DVD and Blu-ray movie format hit the high street it seemed pretty much every person on the planet sent their once prized collection of Video Tapes either to the local rubbish tip or gave them a glimmer of hope at the local Car Boot Sale grasping little more than maybe 10 pence each. Unknown to most though (and something many would find unfathomable) is there survives a small group of film and movie fans (mainly Horror based) with a love of the VHS format who avidly collect, trade and obsess over VHS tapes to this day.
Film makers, and fellow VHS enthusiasts, Dan Kinem and Levi Peretic have assembled an ensemble of these colourful characters in this brand new documentary which is a brilliant love letter to a genre that once defined an era, but seemed to be simply cast aside by the mainstream as an outdated and dead format once something ‘better’ came along!
What is great about this film is how it brings memories and feelings flooding back the instant it starts. Looking like it’s been pirated more times than a black market copy of ‘E.T. The Extra Terrestrial’ in 1982, ‘Adjust Your Tracking’ introduces us to people who by the end of the film feel like old friends who we wanna hang with. Mainly headed up by Zack Carlson, and featuring the likes of Troma’s Lloyd Kaufman, the cast of characters introduce us to their incredible collections (with amazing organization methods), vast haul stories and even huge bidding wars for rare tapes such as 1987’s ‘Tales from the Quadead Zone’, proving that crap films can often command huge prices if they’re rare.
Spending the past couple of years touring cinemas and film clubs throughout the US since its completion, it’s great to see this great documentary getting a mainstream release for everyone to enjoy. VHS may not hold the appeal of vinyl, which many feel sounds better than other music formats. VHS films look like crap, they’re clunky and they’re ‘outdated’ but despite all this, they’re in our heart! If you wanna take a trip to revisit an entertainment genre that literally dictated the film viewing methods of a generation, then this is just the ticket. No late fees included and no need to rewind either – unless of course you pick up the VHS version!
To pre-order the sequel to Straight To Video’s debut EP visit here:
http://www.pledgemusic.com/pr+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ojects/straighttovideo
https://www.facebook.com/Wienerworld.Ltd
