VHShitfest

Welcome to the best VHS website on the planet! Join Dan Kinem and Tim May (and tech guy/McDonalds hater, Dabeedo) as they explore films that are often forgotten, but mostly horrible, viewed exclusively on glorious VHS. Check out our feature-length VHS documentary, Adjust Your Tracking: The Untold Story of the VHS Collector. The Kings: Creator: Dan Kinem Creator: Tim May Official Tech Guy: Dabeedo If you have anything that you think will help our cause, whether that is magazine clippings, old VHS ads, comics, VHS, or just want to write us for the hell of it (we will write back!) you can send them to: VHShitfest 600 Old Mill Rd. Erie, PA 16505 United States Anyone willing to send us any VHS will be loved and showered with any VHShitfest related gifts that are produced in the future. Feel free to message us about them if you have any questions (or email to [email protected]). We also have a PayPal donate button. Any amount no matter how small will help us keep this going and give us funds to further the site and make more videos and cool things. Any bit you have would help us greatly. Thanks a lot.

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My Home Movies 1999

I recently was digging through a box of recorded tapes. Some insane shit (that will appear on the future VHShitfest: The Mixtape Vol. 1) and stumbled across an old home movie tape. After watching it I was flooded with nostalgia and reminiscing on my childhood (age 8 and 9 to be exact). I decided to edit the footage down into a more bite sized chunk for people to check out. This probably won’t interest most people, but I personally love watching and finding people’s old home movies. I especially love watching them when they feature Halloween or Christmas footage, which this has both. There’s some really fun stuff featured, including me flipping out over getting Jet Force Gemini, me as Darth Maul, my brother and I loving Pokemon, me loving some Titanic and Korn, and much more. If you’re into this type of stuff please go check out the video, comment, like, and share. Thanks!

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The Top 10 Rarest VHS of All Time!

I made a new video going over what I believe are the top ten rarest VHS ever. This is of course my personal opinion. I'd love to know what you think is the top ten. Please share, like, comment, discuss, etc. Thank you!

Direct link: https://youtu.be/aQm6rLycMNE

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Update!

I know it’s been forever since we have updated the site. I haven’t stopped collecting or caring about VHS or movies in general. I just got lazy with writing and producing content. However, I have recently been bitten by the bug again and have so many things lined up it’s insane. Just want to tease a few things: I have an outline done for a feature-length horror movie that I think you all will enjoy. Hopefully going to shoot next year with everyone’s favorite, Dabeedo. I just got the rights to potentially 5 new films I’m going to release. A few will be VHS exclusive, but a couple will also be on blu-ray/DVD. As with all our past releases, it’ll be packed with special features. More announces coming soon including VHShitfest: The Mixtape Vol. 1. I am also going to do a couple new videos (once I can figure out the YouTube login lol). I have a review coming later today or tomorrow. I came up with a podcast idea and I’m recording an episode tonight. Look forward to that in the upcoming months. Lastly, I haven’t stopped thinking about Tape Mold. I know I have at least one more massive issues left in me. I will be gathering interviews and content for that now and any updates will be posted about. Currently we are having issues with our website, so just follow this page or the Facebook for updates. Our tech guy is getting married so I’ll be doing all the technical aspects so I apologize in advance for the amateurish quality. You all know that isn’t my specialty but I’ll figure it out. As always, keep shitting and thanks for reading. I’ll make sure to get Tim to do some writing and will get him on the podcast, too, for those who miss him. - Dan Kinem

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HUGE SALE OVER AT www.adjustyourtracking.com/store/ Please tell everyone you know and don’t miss out!

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VHShitfest is proud to bring you Lazarus the Legend (directed by Matt Frazzini) for the first time ever on home video. This early 90s, shot-on-video, kung-fu/sci-fi movie has been nearly impossible to see for two decades. You don’t want to miss out on this awesome and ridiculous gem. As an added bonus we have included multiple short films from the director and a newly shot documentary with new interviews and behind the scenes footage.

This release comes housed in a large clamshell and features nearly two hours of content.

This is a pre-order and the release comes out on December 23rd. If you order on the 17th or before, your item will be shipped on the 18th just in time for Christmas. Thank you for the continued support and for supporting cool, low-budget, and obscure cinema. ORDER YOUR COPY NOW: http://www.adjustyourtracking.com/product/lazarus-the-legend-vhs/

Check out this trailer! How can you NOT want to see this movie? *As requested by the family of the filmmaker, all profits will be donated to the local Animal Shelter.

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You call yourself a VHS fan, but yet you haven't picked the new issue of Lunchmeat VHS Magazine? What are you waiting for? Cruise on over to adjustyourtracking.com, and get your issue today!

Get it here... http://www.adjustyourtracking.com/product/lunchmeat-vhs-fanzine-8/

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It's been almost a year since the last time I showed off tapes. Since then I've sold 6000 tapes and tried to get my collection down to my absolute favorites. I haven't done too much buying since the last time around, but there's some definite quality in the stuff I have gotten. Thanks for checking it out. If you haven't, definitely go pick up a copy of Adjust Your Tracking over on http://www.adjustyourtracking.com P.S. Ignore my fucked up hair.

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#179 - Enemy Unseen (Elmo de Witt; 1989)

By Dan Kinem

End my life, Lord. Please do it now. It normally takes me about a day of thinking to pick a movie to watch. In this case, it took me a week of deliberating. I finally went with an obscure movie called Enemy Unseen. All I wanted was some crazy crocodile killing. Is that too much to ask for, God? What in the world would make me think that a movie with a giant blood-thirsty croc on the cover would have that?

When the movie opened with a song I swear was featured during a Dylan and Brenda 90210 montage I was nervous. "Unique choice of music," I thought. "But maybe they are going with music you wouldn't expect to hear to throw the audience off ala Cannibal Holocaust," I hoped. Nope. A man and woman are wandering around the jungle for some reason when they notice a weird ritual being performed by some natives. During the ritual a woman sacrifices herself to a crocodile and dies. The death was highly underwhelming and entirely off-screen, but I still had hope. Instead of running, they stick around and are immediately noticed by the natives and chased down. The guy is then shot with arrows and falls into the water where a crocodile kind of eats him, but not really. And yes, you read that right. He is shot and killed first, then the crocodile gets to him (although leaves no visible marks of any kind when we see the man's body later on). The woman is captured and taken hostage.

By this point I was very skeptical of the film and began noticing that it was more focused on the natives than on the crocodiles, but I still kept watching. The owner of this foreign land (known as Crocodile Valley -- good choice when buying property) is the girl's father, who hires a hodgepodge team of mercenaries to go into the jungle to find her. How a team this bad was assembled is beyond me, but they immediately start dying off and fighting each other. The only two people in the group that matter are Steiger (played by Vernon Wells) and Josh (played by Stack Pierce). These two actually have fun chemistry and manage to make for some enjoyable moments. It basically plays out like any other 80s low-budget action movie. They end up getting caught by natives, breaking free, saving the girl, and then the girl falls in love with Vernon (just six days after her best friend/boyfriend died). Credits.

What could have set this movie apart would have been some crazy fucking crocodiles, but sadly that never occurs. We get a few scenes of crocodiles biting people a little bit, we get a couple scenes where the crocodiles lay around on the land and watch people, and then we get one or two implied crocodile deaths. Highly disappointing on that front. If you go into this movie expecting the horror elements to be extremely, extremely minimal and the action elements to be extremely, extremely stock then you won't be disappointed. It's just an easy to watch, cheesy action movie in the vein of most other AIP movies.

Speaking of AIP Home Video, I think this might actually be the first film I've ever reviewed released by them (which is crazy to think about considering they've released so much weird/unknown stuff). They were the kings of releasing sleazy movies during the video boom. They released everything from David Prior action films to the Christmas-themed horror masterpiece, Elves. Some of their titles are extremely obscure and are never really talked about, while others are heralded as cult classics. With a catalog as vast and (mostly) fun as AIP's, they are always worthwhile tapes to grab if you see them. I love picking them up, especially since you never know what you are going to get and a lot of the stuff hasn't made it to DVD (Enemy Unseen included). I wouldn't tell anyone to hunt this movie down, but it wasn't bad per se, it was just disappointing. Kind of like when a mother says, "I'm not mad at you, I'm just disappointed." Which, come to think of it, is usually much worse.

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#178 - Science Crazed (Ron Switzer; 1989)

By Dan Kinem

Canada is a very weird place. For one, they put disgusting cheese curd on their already perfectly delicious fries. For two, their BBQ sauce tastes like taco sauce. For three, they aren't nearly as proud of Degrassi as they should be. And for four, Science Crazed.

That last one might not be as obvious as the other three but it's the most bizarre of them all. Science Crazed was the one and only film from Ron Switzer (though he may have done another that never got released called Buzzsaw Nightmares), a Toronto-based madman/experimental genius. It was made in 1989 as a "spoof," though somehow I am doubtful of this. It's so lost and absurd in its execution that it is impossible to tell the true intentions behind this film. I'd like to view it as an extended drug-induced noise pop music video rather than a horror/comedy spoof. "Spoof" in this instance is a marketing attempt to play off the film's flaws, but rather those flaws should be embraced because they are what makes this film so special.

The movie is basically a fucked-up Canadian retelling of Frankenstein. Dr. Frank is decades ahead of his time but only he knows it. He gets the boot from his job half-way through his most important experiment -- which I'll dub "The 21-Hour Birth" (or is it the 18 hour birth? The math gets a little jumbled, but that's not the point). Frank -- in the way only a genius could -- kidnaps a girl and makes her carry a fetus to birth in a extremely accelerated time-frame that kills the mother and her freak of a son... or does it?

The rest of the movie is 77 minutes of extreme close-ups, experimental lighting, and noise. Yes, noise. Not only does the soundtrack sound like a lion with a bone stuck in its throat, but the rest of the time is filled with sounds from the son, or The Fiend, as he is referred to. The sounds he makes while he slowly kills his victims can only be described as a helicopter trying to start that literally only has a drop of gas left yet won't stop trying. The whole effect is a cacophony of noise coupled with this bizarre art student cinematography that must be seen to be believed. The Fiend being the slowest motherfucker in film history and the whole cast being the dumbest motherfuckers in film history only adds to the effect. Close-up of The Fiend's boots dragging on the ground. Close-up of two girls faces while they work out. Repeat. I'm not lying when I say "repeat," either. It's on an endless loop. Yet, each shot is more entrancing than the last.

Where the film succeeds with flying colors is the dialogue. It is entirely dubbed and boy does it sound like it. Sometimes the actors mouths will move and Switzer makes the brilliant decision to just say nothing. Other times he does the opposite, having straight-faced characters continually repeat lines like, "Mommy, Momma, Mommie" over and over. Each character is more hilarious and ridiculous than the last, but the legend of the movie is the detective. With each line he spits out I was crying. He was masterful in his over-the-top seriousness. My favorite being... "And I'll tell you something else! It looks like our baby... is a grown killer."

I will not call this movie entertaining, though it is. Instead, I will call it a Canadian Stan Brakhage Frankenstein adaptation on the marijuana with a Yo La Tengo soundtrack. While The Fiend lived at the end of the film and lives in our hearts to this day, it's just a shame he didn't make the end-credits promised follow-up appearance in "Return of the Fiend." That would have been next level.

Not surprisingly, the movie was only released in Canada (the only country that could handle its brilliance). The company that put it out was TriWorld Films, an extremely rare VHS company that released the cult classic Things and Donald Farmer's Scream Dream. As far as I know, these are the only movies released by TriWorld, though the catalog numbers leave me with some doubt these are it. All three tapes are incredibly hard to find, but Science Crazed is lightyears harder than the rest. I don't know many people who actually own a copy of this film and if you are lucky enough to come across one then hold onto it for dear life and share it with the rest of the world.

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Happy 4th Anniversary!

That's right, we aren't dead. In fact, VHShitfest just turned four years old today. What started out as a review website strictly for movies viewed on VHS has turned into a distribution company and a film company. I never thought it'd go from shitty reviews of shitty movies to traveling the country doing what we love to do. I can't thank everyone who has supported us along the way enough. It really means a lot to still get messages and comments about old reviews or videos we did that we basically have forgotten about and to hear all the positive responses to Adjust Your Tracking.

We don't update this website nearly enough, but that doesn't mean VHShitfest isn't still kickin'. This year has seen our first feature-length film, Adjust Your Tracking, come to living rooms around the world. We also released a movie that I have been trying to get released for years: Donald Farmer's Invasion of the Scream Queens (available on Amazon). And we even secured the rights to our next VHS release (but it's still a secret). Expect many more things to come, too. Hell, I'm even doing a review to celebrate the occasion! Keep shitting, Dan Kinem (with Tim May and Dabeedo)

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Have you been wanting to see Adjust Your Tracking but don’t feel like paying (or want a second copy to resell)? Fangoria is offering up the chance to win a copy! Go over and enter and share the link around! Good luck to everyone! http://www.fangoria.com/new/win-vhs-doc-adjust-your-tracking-on-dvd/

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This Saturday is the 3rd Annual VHS Collectors Unite Convention in Stroudsburg, PA! Do not miss out on this if you are anywhere near the area. We will have convention exclusive items for sale, as well as hundreds of VHS! See you all there! Please tell your friends about it and help this convention continue to grow!

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By giving me a chance to help fund Adjust Your Tracking, and being kind enough to list me as an Executive Producer, I now have an IMDb page and I feel ridiculously happy about myself. So, many thanks to you, and congrats on the documentary!

Thanks so much for the support on the movie. We really couldn't have done it without you and the other people who donated! The least we could do is get you on IMDB. Now start bragging to all your friends and tell them to go buy the movie you have credit on in Best Buy, FYE, or any other place that carries DVDs on June 17th!

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Hey guys, just received my VHS/DVD copy of Adjust Your Tracking and you guys did a great job, really enjoyed it. Loved all the extras content you packed in. Is there another horror vhs collectors unite vhs convention being planned for this year? I've never been to one and seen in the past they've been in May and usually announced by March.

Sorry I am getting to this message so late. I just saw it and have no idea when it was asked, but the next VHS convention is actually this Saturday, the 24th! Anyone in the Stroudsburg, PA area make sure to stop by the Sherman Theater and have a good time!

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Adjust Your Tracking fan rockin’ her new AYT tape shirt! You know you need this! You can get one yourself over at http://www.adjustyourtracking.com If you haven’t bought the movie yet, you can do so by either buying a copy or downloading the film at the link above, too!

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Today is the last day you will be eligible for our limited time special offers! At 12:01am EST on Wednesday March 5th you will no longer be able to get free shipping if you spend over $50 and you won’t be able to get the exclusive 3rd bonus disc when you buy the Big Box set. If for some reason you can’t buy it today (don’t get paid till Friday, etc.), then please message and we can work something out! Thanks for all the support! http://www.adjustyourtracking.com/store/

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Finally! Finally, you can officially pre-order Adjust Your Tracking on home video! We are offering a 2-disc DVD packed with over 7 hours of special features or you can get the Collector’s Edition Big Box VHS/2-disc DVD set. It includes the DVD set with all the extra features, as well as an extended version of the movie on VHS. To add some extra incentive to pre-ordering we are offering an extra bonus disc with 29 extended interviews to anyone who pre-orders the big box set. Also, if you pre-order anything from the store equaling $50 or more you will get free shipping (to anywhere in the United States)! These great deals will only last until March 8th, which is when everyone’s order will ship out! Please support DIY, independent film and get a copy (or ten) and share this link! Everything in the store will ship on March 8th and will count toward free shipping! Please message if you have any questions or if there are any technical problems with ordering and please reblog this picture as much as you possible can! Thanks again! http://www.adjustyourtracking.com/