Adjust Your Tracking: The Untold Story of the VHS Collector

 

It wasn't too long ago for myself that I was deep into collecting horror films and I had movies on almost every format-DVD, Blu-Ray, Digital and the particular chunks featured in this documentary... VHS tapes. Anyone who grew up in the time frame that I did has to have some kind of fond memories or nostalgia for these slabs of magnetic magic, and yeah-there really is a special kind of fuzzy feeling that you can garner from holding a piece of moving art in your hand that is stored and printed onto this specific cut of plastic. DVD's and Blu-Ray's may have cleaned everything up visual quality-wise to much because then you can see all the film grain and make-up mistakes and everything else that that low-res aesthetic covers up and puts you into a haze to suspend your disbelief with whatever it is that you're watching. And that's honestly part of the fun. Was I ever a hardcore tape collector? No. I never wanted to be. When I was still in the game, I want to say about 80% of my collection was actually DVD because they took up less space, they felt like the main menus had more punch and creativity to them while their loop was playing before you started the film and they almost always felt like they had more special features and behind the scenes materials to go through once the film was done. Also, DVD as a format also had a slump for a long while where it just didn't seem like anyone wanted them or gave a shit about them anymore, so they became very inexpensive to obtain. So honestly if I started collecting again and wanted to go back to an older format that's still relatively cheap, I myself would go to DVD. But that's me personally. Collecting movies in general is an insanely addicting hobby and it doesn't even have to be horror movies-just movies in general can give you that rush and that urge where you just have to find something or you just have to add something new to the collection because you just need more and more of it and "here's a title in this genre I don't have" or "this flick has this person in it-I've never seen it before" and you just put your foot in your mouth and buy it. The foam seething from behind your teeth comes to the forefront and you just eat that shit up. We all become rabid dogs over something, and that something for some of us just happens to either be horror movies or just movies in general. It's no different than video games or books or literally anything. People collect anything. People collect rocks. I've seen videos about people who collect and sample different mustards and ketchups, people collect toys, people collect boxes of cereal from the 70's and 80's that have never been opened. Again, if there's an interest and a market, people will undoubtedly fucking collecting anything. Adjust Your Tracking is a documentary about people who inhabit the VHS collecting world and there are some stars here-my boy Gary P. Cohen that directed both of the Video Violence movies is here, Zack Carlson from "Destroy All Movies!" is here, Paul Zamarelli of VHSCollector.com is here, Mike Raso who is the owner of my favorite horror movie label of all time Camp Motion Pictures is here... there are a plethora of known people here if you've been anywhere near the cult film or horror film space for the better part of twenty or so years now, and that just elevates this documentary even higher than it would have been if it was just a piece focusing on the people in the community and that's it. If you're at all interested in VHS tapes or film preservation, this is a doc for you. If you have fond memories of consuming weird and bizarre content on VHS back in the 80's and 90's, this doc is for you. If you love the smell of body odor, piss, poop and heated up plastic from tapes being watched and rewound over and over again as you stumble into a mom & pop video rental shop-this is a documentary for you. I personally loved it because it's another alt-culture sliver that most people never think about or get involved in because it's "weird" or "not normal" or an outsider's game-and yeah, it is. Being a horror and cult film aficionado is completely for the misfit that doesn't shower, go to parties or cleans their assholes (even though I do that and do in fact take showers every single day) and just revels in their brevity because they actually found some kind of space with a piece of mind where they actually belong. Kudos to the kids that buy up all of these tapes because now you're in this for life. There's one main tidbit here that I wanted to touch on with Adjust Your Tracking and that's where everyone talks about the copy of Tales From The Quadead Zone being sold on Ebay. That shit was bought by someone in the community for two dollars, and it is indeed a rare tape. There were barely any copies of it that were produced when that film was released and everyone wants a copy. It sold on Ebay for $660. $660 for a VHS tape. That's pure insanity. But if people are that hungry for it, they will clamor and wait and sell a kidney while they're at it to make sure they have it. Whether it's a conversation piece, prestige or bragging rights, it has to be on their shelf. I had the dual DVD pack from Massacre Video that had Tales From The Quadead Zone and Black Devil Doll From Hell on it and let me tell you something-I wish that Chester Novell Turner had made more movies. That guy made two of the fucking weirdest, overly mystifying, painful to watch films that I think I had copies of when I still had my collection and more people need to see them. Is it worth $660? Not even close. That may have even been his budget to make both of those films, let alone just one of them. But to a diehard VHS collector, it's the tape. The crown jewel. The holy grail. The gem encrusted golden goblet to which you sip the finest of wines. But to me, it's a piece of weirdo cult film history that needs to be preserved because someone took a part of their life to create something for other people to enjoy. And I think that's where my pipeline here lies. This documentary shines a light on something that makes these particular people happy, and that's all that really matters, right? We need more positivity in this world (especially right now) and if you're at all that slightest bit piqued by this little slice of film collecting or what have you, go on Tubi right now and watch Adjust Your Tracking. I think you'll love it.

Grim Reaper 3

 

Look at this cover art and tell me that you'd want to sit through Grim Reaper 3. No one, and I mean NO ONE is going to champion this film individually let alone on the merits and confines of the trilogy itself. I really had hope for what I wrote about in my previous review for Grim Reaper 2 that this next piece would pull a Scarecrow and bring this thing back from the brink in the third and final entry, and it did not. It somehow was worse, slower and even more plodding than the first two and I didn't even think that was possible. This hilariously terrible photo for the poster art tells you everything you need to know from how the mask for the reaper himself became shittier and cheaper than the second film, the same boring chick that plays Bethany is back from the second film and the sludgy, sluggish, slothy means of presentation is also back from the second movie, except it somehow was multiplied beyond what I was expecting. Even officer Wilkins from the second film is back again and he plays sort of like a rent-a-cop version of Dr. Loomis from the Halloween franchise and has some very similar dialogue and beats as he did trying to track down and analyze Michael Meyers in the fictional town of Haddonfield, IL. But that didn't help either. Nothing here propped up this final bit in any shape or form. Look, we know as horror fans that films like this are made because some people just want to do it to say that they worked on projects like this because they're passionate and they want to have fun. I get that aspect of it. But there has to be a level of actual entertainment there and if it isn't there, the whole thing falls apart and you end up having a droll mess that no one wants to clean up or admit to the fact that they were ever involved with it in the first place. Here's the skeleton-so Bethany is looking for some kind of job at an art museum type place, she gets the interview with the weird lady that runs it, she gets the job and then she ends up living there in the upper part of the building as part of the package of working there. Cool. A little tidbit that was also cool for me as a photography nerd is that she went to art school for photography and there's a scene where you see her taking shots with an awesome old school film Canon camera that has the "SLR" letters plastered on the front of it. I dug that for about thirty seconds. But outside of what's going on with her living in this art museum and dating this guy named Dylan, it's all just extraneous wet drippings sliding off of the face of the villain Clayface from the Batman franchise. A few people get killed by the reaper because they're in his way, Wilkins is trying to track him down, Bethany is living her life, and then at some point we get to where Wilkins and Bethany meet each other because Wilkins finds the reaper around where Bethany is-he shoots her and then Bethany beheads the reaper. That's it. No grandiosity, no build-up, no real climax. Just a subtle bubble up of steam that feels hot enough to cook something, but it never does. And that's all I have. This trilogy fucking sucks. I actually don't know which one of these is going on my worst of the year list, but I'm pretty sure that Grim Reaper 3 is replacing part 2. It has to. See you again soon.

 

Grim Reaper 2

 

Last week I wrote a review about the original Grim Reaper flick that was released in 2021, and this the second entry was put out just a year later in 2022. Man, look-I'm all for a shitty low budgeted shoestring production sometimes if the mood strikes, but holy hell is Grim Reaper 2 just more bleeeccchhh. I stated that in my review of the first one that it was just fucking boring upon boring and not a whole lot happens besides the semi-decent kills and gore effects, but the backstory and exposition is so weak that it's like shaking a two liter until all the carbonation is gone and you're left with a flat bottle of flavored water. This sequel is even worse and even slower than the first one-I'd say this time around it's like getting a bottle of that Mio stuff to add some flavor to a water bottle and then when the time comes to add said flavoring, you barely, barely squeeze a drop into it to change the formula. The solution you've just attempted to create is pretty much the same except it's even lamer than what you did previously and there's nothing left but a hefty weight of disappointment, regret and wasted time. Sure, Grim Reaper 2 is only about fifty five minutes, but that's fifty five minutes that I could have done better with like reading whatever book I'm into at the moment or looking for a better job or looking at a new house that my family could move into because we've been wanting to move for a long while now-but no. I had to continue on with this Grim Reaper trilogy to see how awful it was going to get. I'm actually not really going to write to much more here about this film because there really isn't much to expand upon besides that it's pretty much more of the same in comparison to the original. Hell, there's a few scenes here where the Reaper himself is literally sitting in a folding chair just drifting off into space mentally while daydreaming and reminiscing about the kills that he committed in the first entry before he goes and just stalks around the swamp and some abandoned factory in the middle of nowhere Indiana where this is supposed to take place. I just-there's nothing really positive to say here. All I'm going to leave you with here zits and zombies is that I truly hope that this trilogy pulls a Scarecrow and brings it all back with the third movie because in that trilogy the first one is great (and it has Tiffany Shepis in it) the second one stars "The Candyman" Tony Todd and was an absolute wrecking ball of pure cinematic shit, and the third one titled Scarecrow Gone Wild ended up being probably even better than the first one now that I think about it because it had a tone of comedy, horror and fun to it that the first two did not. So, out of sheer curiosity I would only recommend this Grim Reaper 2 to see how terrible this trilogy gets, but I'm warning you-it's fifty five minutes you could spend better somewhere else. Also, it's getting thrown on my worst of the year list as a place holder for the last spot that I have open unless I somehow watch something worse than this which is highly possible-anything can happen when you're into the horror film review game. Anything can happen. Until the third.