Rewind This! (2013)

Fantastic!

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Rewind This! (2013) *** 1/2 (out of 4) Extremely entertaining documentary takes a look at the VHS boom of the 1980s and how VCRs and video stores really changed how movies were made and especially how they were marketed. REWIND THIS! has already become a favorite among horror fans and it's easy to see why. If you grew up in the 80s then you obviously remember walking those video store shelves looking for new and strange movies. Many of these have never been released since their VHS days and this documentary touches upon that subject but also the creation of VCRs, the way the major studios didn't believe in the format and of course we get into things like the important of artwork and nudity. The film works for those who remember those video store days but it also works because even if you're young and don't remember those days then the film manages to be a great educator. We get some wonderful commercials of the early days of VCRs as well as the "hot" item of remote controls. Even better is that we're given all sorts of great interviews with the likes of Charles Band, Frank Henenlotter, David Gregory, Don May, Jr., Roy Frumkes, Lloyd Kaufman, Cassandra Peterson and Something Weird Video's Mike Vraney who talks about how he started off as a bootlegger and how this started his career. The art of bootlegs are also discussed including those wonderful ads in various horror magazines. REWIND THIS! is really a wonderful throwback to the days where the video box was every bit as important as the movie itself. Fans of the 80s horror and exploitation pictures are really going to have a good time here.

Josh Johnson's "Rewind This!" is a look at the rise of home video and the effect that it had on entertainment. As a member of the first generation that never knew a world without video cassettes, I could relate to some of the stuff that the interviewees say. I of course started out by watching Bugs Bunny cartoons on the newly released videos, and I always liked watching them over and over again.Part of the pleasure in the documentary is watching the scenes from some of the movies that the featured video stores carry, such as disemboweled bodies. Sometimes my friends and I would watch scenes in slasher flicks over and over again (namely the tent scene in "Jason Goes to Hell"). Thanks to Movie Madness, I've seen some pretty obscure flicks."Rewind This!" prompts me to ask another question: why aren't certain movies available for home viewing? My mom often tells me about "The Gravy Train" (about some friends who hatch a robbery scheme to get rich) and Michael Apted's "Stardust" (about the rise and fall of a rock star; not to be confused with a 2007 movie with the same title). She saw both movies in the theater when they got released, but neither ever got released on VHS, and neither has gotten released on DVD. One would think that since the studios could make money by releasing them, so that would be enough of a motivation. Meanwhile, they release every stupid Tom Cruise movie.Anyway, it's fun to watch the documentary and learn all this stuff about the medium. Truly fun stuff.

I've always had a fondness for home media, the variety of formats that once existed, the obscure oddities one can find on VHS, and venturing through video stores and flea markets to make new discoveries. Because of this, I'm part of the obvious audience for Rewind This!, a delightful homage to the brilliant and once-ubiquitous home media that was VHS, and how its impact on the movie industry and the public is still prevalent today.Here's a film that will leave the devoted fans of VHS (like me) just wanting more. For the reason that I'm a huge supporter of the VHS-resurgence movement and continue to buy and collect the media, I'm going to try to make this review not sound like simple- minded fandom constructed into an essay. The film makes a bold attempt at trying to tackle everything VHS, from its meteoric rise, its unfathomable effect on the film industry as a whole, its fan, and its differences from its contemporaries. The documentary allows several people to make statements, some directors, some preservationists, some distributors (including the late Mike Vraney of Something Weird Video) but many the fans and supporters of the medium who rekindle their love for its simplicity and its immensity.VHS, to me, is such a unique way to watch film, mainly because of the primitiveness and sensitiveness of the device. With tape, there were many more issues that could arouse, with the worse case scenario it getting stuck in your player. But then there are the imperfections of the picture, such as the glitches, the occasional sloppiness of its appearance, the degradation of the tape when certain scenes are played too much, etc. Then there is the box art, which is a work of art in itself. A section of the film devotes itself to showing how unique and inventive the artwork to the VHS covers were, with them often being handpainted and meticulously put together rather than the depressing, effortless, digitized movie-covers/posters we're so used to today.Furthermore, the film shows how daring and unique home video really was at the time of its inception. Had it not been for an optimistic soul like Andre Ray, who worked for a video engineering company in the seventies, perhaps home video wouldn't have come around so quickly. Ray, who helped manufacturer videotapes at the time, wondered if you could put a full length movie on a certain size tape. When he discovered it was possible, he contacted several movie studios, hoping to get them to buy into the idea of consumers having their films to cherish and watch at their leisure. Few bought in, but one of them happened to be Fox (pre-Star Wars fame), who allowed them to put several of their classic titles on tape at roughly $80 - $90 a pop.Ray didn't even foresee the explosion of the rental industry, which simply came along because numerous people wanted a try-it-before-you-buy-it kind of system, simplifying the process of discovering a film for consumers even more. Oddly enough, that became the defining industry set forth by the home video boom. Nobody could foresee the industry taking off let the industry where people wander around a store swarmed with movies picking out whichever ones they wanted for a Friday night viewing.The film does a good job at articulating a question I had for a while and that is why were so many film distribution companies around during the inception of VHS that have since went on to disappear or go defunct in recent times. This is because of experimentation. When rental stores started popping up, they needed films to line their shelves. And thus, numerous distributors began popping up, inquiring quirky, often weird, experimental slashers or just asinine little gems to produce and help keep stores lined with inventory. Eventually, the studios took over and it became the big five or six companies calling all the shots.One subject that could've been explored much more in depth was the idea of cheap VHS bootlegging, which was done through magazine, handmade flyers, and communication via mail. People would make list of films they had that were either banned, rare, or out of print and would transfer them to blank tapes then smuggle them through the mail. However, due to some strict federal regulations, often times people would tape part of a TV show to play before the actual film to fool potential inspectors. Vraney talks about his experience as a bootlegger, as well as several others, but the revealing and now extinct process is a bit shortchanged and given maybe three to four minutes of attention.Rewind This! beautifully articulates obsession, impact, and legacy, and never drags or becomes boring, mainly because its subjects have so much insight and observations to offer. It's a must see for the obvious fans of the medium, but due to its commentary on an industry most all of us indulge in, it should almost be mandatory viewing.Directed by: Josh Johnson.

"Rewind This!" is a documentary about VCRs, VHS tapes and the people who collect them. The story begins with the war between the Betamax and VCR formats, which of course the latter won despite the fact that Betamax was a far superior technology – but it could only play tapes of an hour or less, so any movie would need to be on more than one tape, a design flaw that killed it fairly quickly. Once VCR had won, people started discovering the joys of being able to watch movies at home, at the time of one's choosing – or at least they did once the price of the machine and the tapes (originally priced at $99!) came down. The film interviews a plethora of modern-day fans of the format (my personal favourite was a woman who organizes her tapes by the dominant colour of the box) as they describe falling in love with video, making home movies themselves and searching for old tapes at flea markets and the like – some collectors have over 100,000 of the clunky boxes! And, of course, the film includes a variety of scenes from videotapes, especially that genre of straight-to-video creations, which are a hoot to see. Definitely made me want to hunt up our old VHS tapes that are slowly rotting somewhere in the basement!