Blockbusted: A smashed video cassette. Photograph: Dan Chung
It's a common phenomenon when moving into a new flat to inherit the unwanted artefacts of the tenant before you; the tinned peas that couldn't be shoehorned into that final cardboard box, the dog-eared copy of Heat discarded behind the toilet, the electricity bill their deposit wouldn't stretch to paying, that sort of thing.
Upon entering my new abode, however, I was faced with something far more interesting; namely teetering Jenga-towers of black plastic and half-inch tape that occupied much of the living room, a veritable lost ark of outdated technology, untampered-with childhood memories, and every Schwarzenegger film known to man. To blazes with Blu-Ray and HD-DVD - does anyone really care about being able to see Tom Cruise's teeth in child-frightening Hi-Def anyway? I'm spooling back the years and reverting to VHS.
Why? It's not just nostalgia, although that's an obvious attraction. After all, who can forget the illicit thrill of Simon Bates - AKA the man from the VSC - informing you in his familiar sonorous intonation that, yes, what you are about to watch contains both sex and violence? Or, for that matter, the inevitable 20-minute trailer-parade for films called things like No Retreat, No Surrender 3: Blood Brothers and I'm Gonna Git You, Sucka?
But VHS offers more than mere memories; in an age of myriad Directors Cuts and Definitive Editions, it's the cineaste's last window into a world where Greedo doesn't shoot first and Deckard isn't a replicant, where you can enjoy a film in the form you first saw it, not one that's been endlessly (and needlessly, in George Lucas' case) tinkered with. As film-makers get more and more precious about their output, VHS is fast becoming the only way of being able to see what they don't want you to.
Happily, for the pathologically curious, it works both ways. VHS is certainly the only way I know of to watch the fascinating chronological edit of the Godfather trilogy, currently unavailable on DVD and found just last week behind my bookcase.
Then there's the lucky dip factor. Ever popped an unlabelled cassette into your machine out of bored desperation one day, only to find it contained Peter Jackson's hard-to-find felt-ploitation muppet masterpiece Meet the Feebles, taped off the telly back in 1993? I have. It was better than sex. And why bother spending a fortune buying re-issued classics on DVD when a tenner will buy you a lost week's worth of films from your local Oxfam?
Tech-heads and people who simply need to buy stuff will use lofty terms like "anamorphic transfer", "high resolution" and "surround sound" to ridicule the trusty VHS. I have no doubt that HD-DVD will take us all closer to Jack Nicholson's nostril hair than we ever could have dreamed possible, but is it really worth it? As I write this, I'm watching a VHS copy of Ghostbusters that's as old as I am. I dug it out a few days ago because my six-month-old DVD of Nixon is now unplayable. Surely it's time for a vinyl-style VHS revival?
