By Quin
If you have ever handled a VHS tape, you may remember the advisory written on the edge telling you not to touch the tape inside. Some tapes also had instructions as to which end to insert into the VCR – which always seemed intuitive enough to me. But that advisory always made me wonder what would happen if I did open up the back and run my finger along the tape. I can even remember pushing the little button on the side and flipping it open, but I never did touch the tape. I think I probably didn’t want to risk erasing the film. VHS tapes used to be ridiculously expensive and who would want to risk having to buy a rental?
That VHS advisory is the basis for House of VHS, a French film with a multinational cast from director Gautier Cazenave. Here the advisory is really more of a warning. We all know, in films like this, no one follows warnings.
A group of friends have driven to the countryside in France to stay in an abandoned old house. The power and water are turned off. While searching for a way to turn it back on, one of them finds a big box of VHS tapes and a small television and an ancient VCR. They distinctly talk about the advisory on the tapes, but tape gets touched and then they all start binge watching tape after tape until things start to get strange.
That’s a short synopsis, but this movie has a pretty bare bones plot. The pacing throughout is off-putting. The set-up of the group driving to their destination with the getting-to-know-you chit-chat combined with searching the house for electricity literally takes up almost half the movie, and these characters are stereotypes with absolutely no depth. You never really get to know them or care about them.
It should also be noted, there is no real horror until the final moments of the film. I’m guessing most of you would be disappointed by this, so now it won’t be a surprise. The scenes without power could have been creepy. It’s daylight outside, but the characters opt to use flashlights instead of opening shutters. This all reads to the viewer as ridiculous, but the sort of jokey tone in the first half makes me wonder if the director thought this was funny. While horror-comedy is always a slippery slope for me, almost all attempts at amusement fall flat in this film. Although I did laugh surprisingly hard at a mispronunciation of “laser disc” early in the movie. I won’t tell you what it is exactly so you can have that one small moment too if you decide to see this.
Where the film gets a little interesting and may appeal to fans of old B-movies is when the group starts watching the videos. Two of the first titles they discover are “Attack of the Two Headed Invaders” and “Sasquatch Returns” which don’t ring any bells for me. Initially, I was impressed at how vintage the footage shown looked, but then I started to notice some things that I recognized. They showed the ghouls in the water from Carnival of Souls as well as scenes from Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and The Brain that Wouldn’t Die. It seems to me like they were determined to make use of films that are now in the public domain and have no copyright, which is what MSTK and Elvira used to do. While the collection of clips here are pretty great and edited together in an interesting and at times artful way – it just goes on way too long. You will probably fall asleep way before anybody in the movie does – and they do.
If you are a fan of old horror movies and comedy I would recommend tracking down a copy It Came From Hollywood. It’s a 1982 film featuring clips of B-movies with skits in between featuring John Candy, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner and Cheech and Chong. And for the fan of more serious (and sometimes unintentionally hilarious) horror I’d check out Terror in the Aisles. It’s a 1984 documentary about horror films and the things that scare us narrated by Donald Pleasance and Nancy Allen. But as for House of VHS, I’d steer clear of it completely.
House of VHS is out on DVD in Australia from 21st September (pre-order here), or on demand from Vimeo right now, via Bounty Films.
House of VHS (2016) aka Ghost in the Machine from Bounty Films on Vimeo.