VHS: Absurd, Odd, and Ridiculous Relics from the Videotape Era

VHS: Absurd, Odd, and Ridiculous Relics from the Videotape Era

Joe Pickett

Language: English

Pages: 272

ISBN: 076244259X

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


The decade of 1988-1998 was the Golden Age of VHS, a time when anybody with a pulse, a camcorder, and a few bucks could market a video. Comedy writers Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher have spent the last 20 years collecting the best odd and unintentionally hilarious videotapes ever produced. Since 2004, they’ve resurrected them for sold-out audiences across the country as part of their touring show, the Found Footage Festival. Now, for the very first time, they’ve collected the greatest VHS covers into one handsome compendium—along with their priceless snarky commentary throughout.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

tapes, no matter how weird or terrible or fucking insane, was the result of someone’s real passion, an attempt to fulfill a dream. Knowing that someone poured their heart and soul into producing these videotapes may complicate the enjoyment we feel at their existence, but it shouldn’t dampen our appreciation, it should only deepen it. Because as wildly funny as these VHS tapes may be to us, they’re no joke. Almost unbelievably, they’re all one-thousand-percent genuine. Someone devoted their lives

entertaining as your copy of Die Hard, and thus, these videos quickly ended up at thrift stores. If this cover teaches us anything, it’s don’t get caught mid-whistle. By setting it on fire? Learn how to make all the fashions you admired so much on your kindergarten teacher. That’s certainly an impressive pile of crafts. “Please, call me Dennis. My dad is Mr. Baby Proofer.” . . . To a transparent house with hundred dollar bills for grass and yellow blobs for

This American Life Soon after my ninth birthday, when melting plastic army guys with a magnifying glass had lost its luster, I started spending afternoons at our corner video store—a place called Video Watch, which sat between a kebab joint and a Domino’s Pizza, but had the distinct odor of an old sneaker found in the woods. I hadn’t the cash to rent any movies, nor an account with which to rent one, but still I’d haunt the aisles, gazing up at the VHS tape covers crammed along the shelves,

Burton. Metal Method courtesy of Doug Marks, Metal Method Productions, Inc. Parties of Sturgis courtesy of Big Sky Video & Video Marines, Billings, Montana. Fast Boats and Beautiful Women courtesy of Bennett Marine Video, 2321 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice, CA 90291. www.bennettmarine.com, Email: sale@bennettmarine.com, Phone: 310-827-8064 War of the Monster Trucks courtesy of Tom Edinger, www.marshallpub.com. This program is now part of the DVD, Monster Truck Classics, available at

courtesy of Nobuhito Noda. Psalty’s Funtastic Praise Party courtesy of Psalty’s Kids Co., and Rettino/Kerner Publishing, www.psalty.com, 949-888-8811, with thanks to Debby Kerner Rettino. 10 Crunchy Carrots courtesy of Hug Bug Music Inc., under legal license from Charlotte Diamond Music / Charlotte Diamond Inc., www.charlottediamond.com, with thanks to Charlotte and Harry Diamond. “Garbage Can Turkey” courtesy of Gerard Marquetty, 9740 1st Street North, Saint Petersburg, FL 33702,

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