This is an updated version of a review that was originally published in Bleeding Skull! A 1980s Trash-Horror Odyssey.
Here’s even more proof that everyone involved in the early 1980s home video boom was stark, raving awesome.
Terror on Tape is a true artifact. It’s a Halloween-set VHS mixtape from big box overlords Continental Video that showcases the most depraved scenes from over twenty horror films. For 83 minutes, we’re bombarded by a relentless bloodstream of tongue-ripping, throat-slashing, eyeball-gouging delights. Plus a little sex. It’s gross enough to make Lucio Fulci circa New York Ripper gag, but charming enough to make Lydia Lunch smile. This is like an audio-visual representation of what it felt like to flip through Fangoria at the grocery store in 1985. If that’s all Terror on Tape was, there would be no reason to watch it today—almost every film in the compilation has been restored and reissued on Blu-ray. But lucky for us, there’s a lot more. And it was all captured on video.
It’s Halloween night! The streets of Encino, CA are lit by the warm glow of The Shoppe of Horrors Video Store. Inside the store, piles of Continental tapes and clouds of dry ice fog surround the Video Store Clerk—an ersatz Cryptkeeper played by exploitation legend Cameron Mitchell (Blood and Black Lace). The Clerk is covered with more pancake makeup than Criswell in Orgy of the Dead and takes time out to occasionally lick a riding crop. Armed with a tiny Zenith TV, he unleashes the film clips for three customers who visit the store. First, there’s a nerd whose hair turns gray from fright. Next, a construction worker wants to be scared but “turned on first, from women with no clothes on!” Finally, eminent screen queen Michelle Bauer (Death Row Diner) arrives as a camped-up vampira who can only have an orgasm by watching scary movies (“I’m ready, do it to meeeeeee!”). Sometimes, the Clerk walks around the store and has a conversation with a family of plastic skulls named Mommy, Daddy, and Uncle Frank.
As for the clips? Expect the goopiest of goops from the following trashers: Return of the Alien’s Deadly Spawn, Vampire Hookers, Bloodtide, Cathy’s Curse, Madhouse Mansion, Frozen Scream, To the Devil a Daughter (Filthy!), Eerie Midnight Horror Show, Kidnapping of the President (what?), Nightmares in a Damaged Brain (Even filthier!), The Slayer, City of the Walking Dead, Color Me Blood Red, 2000 Maniacs, Scalps, Blood Feast, Ruby, Night Creature, and Suicide Cult. There’s also a sex montage.
Terror on Tape is rife with the nostalgia of ma ‘n’ pa video stores. Although the store itself is a cheap set in a warehouse, that feeling is present and accounted for. The neon signage. The filthy countertop. The calming door chimes. You can smell the dust and cigarettes. But even if you weren’t lucky enough to glide through the golden gates of a local video store in the 1980s, Terror on Tape is still an irresistible footnote in SOV history. Plus a cozy mood-setter for your next Halloween scumbag party.
The thing I love most about Terror on Tape is the sell-line on the back cover:
“BANNED IN CANADA!”
