Since the success of last weeks discovery, I have been going through my collection and ripping out any of the mainstream titles. The sort of titles that you can pick up in any charity shop for around 5-10p each. Boxing them up and placing them into safe storage. While performing this thankless task it had me wondering if I had managed to somehow miss a few obscurities from the shop. After all, I only had time to briefly scan over the many thousands of tapes in attendance, and it was getting late.

So armed with the knowledge of ‘if it looks awful it’s probably awesome’, I made plans to go back. But this time I was taking my Brother-in-law and 80’s guru Simon along with me for extra eye help. On the drive up I gave him a lesson in health and safety VHS hunting. I couldn’t allow him to go through the various pitfalls and tape traps that I had to pass through last week. By the way my cut from last week is steadily turning into a scar, I just hope it’s V shaped. That would make one hell of a story.

We figured it would be best to scan each room at a time, paying close attention to every title and making sure we don’t miss a single gem. Simon quickly got to work on one side and I did the same on the other.
After running our eyes over a few shelves and finding no less than 13 tapes, it quickly became apparent that I had definitely missed some potential classics on first visit. I grabbed an empty crate and we began to fill it with all sorts of trashy 80’s movies. The way I see it is, how many times do you see these sort of movies on tape anymore? And how long will this store keep them before deciding it may be best to bin them and free up extra space in their shop?
We had one rule and stuck by it through the entire inspection process. We’d pick out a tape if the title sounded right or if the label was a good one, quickly run our eyes over the cover art and tagline, and then decide if it looked good enough to make the crate.
Below are the movies that fitted the bill perfectly.

Again like last time there are quite a few mainstream titles like Something Wild, The Stepfather and The Stepfather 2, Maniac Cop, A.W.O.L. etc. But I bought them with the sole intention of replacing the smaller cased ones in my collection. Plus I had amassed around 94 films in two crates and the shop owner said that I may as well make it up to 100. I wasn’t about to argue over free tapes.

Simon also decided to donate the rest of his VHS collection that he had been holding back (I already have the others), to the tomb of tapes that is my movie room collection. I always knew he had a few titles that I was after so I was over the moon when he brought the mystery box along for the ride.

Some of them I already own but only in the small case release, so these will be replacements for those few. Others like The Wizard of Speed and Time, i’ve been trying to get my hands on for quite some time now, along with both Eddie and the Cruisers movies.

Most serious collectors may find very little from my recent hauls but it’s not about the value for me. I will at some point or another screen every single tape in my collection, and from the last two weeks i’ve found films that I didn’t even know existed. I will always try and preserve the good name of VHS, even if it means keeping a few copies of films like Pretty Woman in my collection.
I shall now return to the task in hand, removing the common and mainstream titles from my room and replacing them with trashy 80’s movies. Until the day I move house and they can all be united once again in one huge library. VHS rules!