House of the Devil is a bit of a favorite around the site, so much so that James and I devoted one of our few Spoiler Alert podcasts (Download Here) to it, and it is with great pleasure and excitement that I discovered a few days ago that it would be released today on DVD. And not just DVD but Blu-ray as well. And while I’m not a fan of Blu-ray I have to admit the film should look fabulous in that format.

But in a rather shocking twist, I also found out that House of the Devil can also be purchased on VHS! Oh that’s right, for just a few dollars more you can have your very own VHS copy of this film along with your DVD copy. And unlike Blu-ray I am a huge fan of VHS and this kind of release is sheer brilliance considering the style and tone of the film. Kudos to whomever came up with the idea, you’ve totally sold me.

And now, just when I thought VHS was dead and buried I now have a reason to dust off the old head cleaner and fire up the VHS player. Scha-weet!

Tags: amazon, Blu-ray, DVD, film, House of the Devil, James, podcast, Spoiler Alert!, VHS, vhs copy, vhs player

Growing up during the Eighties I was a first hand witness to the bitter battle between VHS and Betamax for supremacy of the budding home video market. My family carefully avoided this format war for years, predominantly because of my father’s educated unease with buying anything during the early adoption phase. You see my father is an engineer and he has taken the rational, methodical and utterly boorish position that new technologies should be avoided on early release, to allow the engineers ample time to work the kinks out.

So it was several years after VHS had scored a decisive victory before we finally owned our very own VCR. It was so long after the Beta/VS battle had been decided that not soon after acquiring our VCR that Laserdisc became the new leap forward in technology for home theater enthusiasts. Needless to say, Laserdisc never wrestled away a big enough foothold from VHS for us to ever purchase a player. (more…)