There are thousands of New Zealanders still collecting VHS tapes in 2026 – and Alex Casey is proud to be one of them.
It all began with a Marketplace score destined straight for the pool room. While scrolling through secondhand armchair options for our dog to destroy, I stumbled across a nearby VHS of the 1994 Australian cult comedy The Castle, still in its original factory seal, for just $2. Within 24 hours, I was picking up three Pak’nSave bags of VHS tapes from the next suburb over. Free, but coming at a huge emotional cost for my clutter-averse husband. He could see the twinkle of mania in my eyes as I lugged them inside – something ancient had been stirred deep within.
The VCR (Video Cassette Recorder) arrived in Aotearoa in the early 1970s, and breathless reports from the time signalled that a seismic shift was coming. “Just when some mortals – feeling oppressed by the flood of information that comes at them from all the media – are about to cry ‘enough’ another major revolution is looming,” reads a remarkably frightened story from The Press in 1971 . “It comes in the form of video cassettes, cartridges that can be slipped easily into a special television set and that can play virtually anything.” Sounds… fine?
“It threatens to reshape the foundations of education, entertainment, and all communications.”
By the early 80s, there were dozens of different VCR machines available, ranging from $1300 to $3000. “Now available: VHS The World’s No 1 Home Recording System!” hollered a print ad for Ashby Berghs in Christchurch , which featured a television set plugged into a VCR that inexplicably appeared to be ‘playing’ the Mona Lisa. Renaissance appreciation aside, the ad boasted life-changing benefits: you don’t need to stay up anymore to watch the big international sports games, or miss out on the Saturday night feature if you’ve got plans.
Aside from taping things off the television, the VCR was also touted as an opportunity to curate your own custom viewing experience by purchasing or renting your favourite movies on VHS. Another bold prediction from The Press in 1971: “A library of tapes to supply all of Christchurch with each week’s episodes of Coronation Street would be a formidable proposition,” the report reads . “Television libraries of the future are more likely to be concerned with serials and will, perhaps, concentrate on accumulating stocks of classics or other popular programmes.”
We never did get our dedicated Coro Street video library, but we did get United Video, the first video store chain to open here in 1984, closely followed by Video Ezy in 1988 and later Civic Video. With 100s of video shop franchises across the country and countless more independent stores, these places were a brightly-coloured haven for running your fingers along the spines of film history and widening your eyes at the mysterious fleshy land beyond the beaded curtain. I once saw a man emerge with a big stack of “Fresh Meat” pornos, most likely five for $10.
Growing up in Featherston in the South Wairarapa, the nearest cinema was three towns over and about 40 minutes away. We didn’t have Sky, or even sexy new channels like TV4 or Prime in the late 90s. That meant that Star Video, a dark treasure trove nestled on State Highway 2, was my portal straight to Tinseltown. I can still see the precariously perched TV by the counter playing trailers, casting an alien glow on the already fluorescent yellow bags of popcorn. There were Tangy Fruits, there were tubes of old movie posters, there were endless possibilities.
Natasha Loh at Video Ezy Grey Lynn in 2017. Photo: Aaron Yap.
When I wasn’t taking clutches of videotapes home myself, I was watching them with my friends. The terrifying 1991 VHS board game Nightmare saw a rapidly decaying Scottish gatekeeper bellow at you from the screen while you frantically rolled the dice and squealed with glee, trying to beat him before your time ran out. My childhood best friend wasn’t allowed to watch television but she could select from her parents’ small VHS collection, which meant we spent most of 1999 watching Silence of the Lambs, every single weekend, with the door and curtains closed.
Fast forward a few years later to the early 2000s, and things were changing fast with the introduction of the DVD, a smaller, sleeker and higher quality way of watching movies. Star Video downsized from its premium shop front to a smaller and creakier shack next to the Mobil. They began to sell off their VHS tapes en masse for $1 each, and I nabbed the murderer’s row of Bring It On, Miss Congeniality, Dumb and Dumber and Best in Show. I was 12 years old and watched them every night in my room, diligently rewinding each time for my future self.
When I moved up to Auckland in 2005, the video (now DVD) stores were even more impressive. The Civic Video in West Lynn shops, now a luxury indoor golf club, had enormous high ceilings like a cathedral, and a fairytale fibreglass tree in the centre…
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