From Basic Witchcraft to Dancin’ Grannies, The Vista Group puts hidden VHS gems online
For as much as the modern TV and film industries love to fetishize the bygone aesthetics and entertainments of the ’80s and ’90s, there’s nothing quite like the real thing. While we love nostalgia-choked shows like Stranger Things, they’re so mired in an idealized version of the eras that they forget just how lame so much of it was.
Thankfully, video collectives like the Found Footage Festival and Everything Is Terrible! have spent years preserving (and often subverting) the explosion of amateur, studio, and cable access content that manifested in the VHS era, when anybody with a camcorder could put their vision to tape and disseminate it to the masses. Last month, a new archivist entered the arena after uploading hundreds of new, unseen clips to the Internet Archive’s VHS Vault, a vast repository of forgotten footage. Calling themselves The Vista Group, their trove of cleaned-up ephemera includes head-scratching, out-of-time clips like this one about yo-yo form and this gun safety video hosted by Jason Priestly and an animated eagle, but also an abundance of era-specific commercials as they aired on stations like UPN and Las Vegas’ Channel 8. We previously highlighted eight of our favorite uploads from the collection—like the Miracle Bow How-To Video and MTV’s Manson TV—but there’s so much more to explore.
We got the chance to talk with The Vista Group, who prefers to remain anonymous, about their hobby, their favorite videos, and the footage that eludes even them. They were even nice enough to put together a hour-long supercut of commercials, including everything from Rogaine commercials to ads for sex and psychic hotlines. Check it (and the interview) out below.
The A.V. Club: What can you tell us about your background?
The Vista Group: I come from a media management and digital design background, and have been involved in media capturing for a year this May. I am from Las Vegas, so heavy entertainment and gambler’s-dream-idealism has entered my psyche very early.
AVC: How did this hobby of yours begin?
VG: Pretty randomly! I have made a couple of holiday-themed video mixtapes with my partner, and I found this very obscure, yet amazing, music video from the ’80s. It’s called “Hollywood Halloween.” The quality on YouTube was terrible, so I had to get my hands on its original format. Turns out, it was from a music video mixtape that a music label sent to stores in Germany. I found the tape, bought a multi-system VCR, and the hobby began from there.