As a teenager i used to get my horror film fix by scouring the markets,car boot sales, charity shops and various other cheap places for vhs masterpieces.

 

I would drag friends of mine along for the ride, much to their annoyance. This was because once i'd found a place that was stacked with mouldy old video tapes (very few, if any dvd's then), i would forget about everything else. My good friend Richard Bayliss used to get extremely annoyed when we went into our local cash generator in Wakefield. They had (back in the day) one hell of a video section and i sometimes got a great deal on eighties 'video nasties'.

 

I remember him on one such outing telling me the staff were watching us because I was stood in the same spot looking over the stock for over 10 minutes. In my mind i was making damn sure i hadn't missed any potential goldmines, in theirs i was probably a thief who was waiting to pocket something.

 

The best thing about these shops was the fact that, unlike Hmv and Blockbusters (yep i said it), they never seemed to ask for any i.d. Although i did get turned away once for trying to buy Evil Dead 2, it was at the market and they knew i was no where near eighteen. Lucky for me i had come into town with the family and got my mum to come back with me.....it worked didn't it?. That film was well worth any embaressment i got from the looks off the staff working there.

 

I still remember my excitement when i found a used copy of Creepshow on sale for £9, which was practically my savings in those days (not far off now either). I badly needed to see this as i'd caught half of it on tv some time before. They sold it to me without question and put it in a small brown paper bag, as i walked through town with a smile on my face, i began to realise what it looked like i had bought and made a speedy retreat to my home.

 

Collecting video's was definatly an obsession with me during those years and i always wanted to find more and more. My bookshelves were layered with them and could barely take the strain. Today everyone has dvd's which are a hell of a lot less of a strain on the furniture i can tell you.

 

I've never lost my fondness for video tapes and the joy they brought me back then. The artwork alone was worth the price a lot of the time. I find myself being less wowed by dvd art nowadays, they seem a little too polished and lack the charm of a video box mash up. I genuinely think there was something about the investment of a video back then, there was no Youtube or "free" content floating around at the click of a mouse.

 

I've gotten rid of all but a handful of vhs tapes now, unfortunatly they were just dead weight in moving and with my dvd collection rising over the years it seemed silly to keep them. However i have turned many of the covers into various things, just check out my desktop for proof (last picture).

 

I like to think everyone has a few skeletons in their closet or, at least, a few video tapes they couldn't quite bare to part with.