VHS culture is a thing of the past. So are the days of browsing aisle after aisle in search of the perfect video rental. These days, movie lovers scroll through Netflix or Amazon Prime in search of a new flick to stream.
For those who miss the physical film formats, there still exist dark corners of the internet where VHS lovers can gaze upon the spectacular original covers lost to the passage of time. For those who also love horror, this list showcases 10 VHS covers guaranteed to blow your mind.
Doom Asylum (1988)
Richard Friedman's slasher comedy features all the classic tropes: a crazed killer, attractive women, and an insane asylum. The plot, though not especially important, involves a lawyer who is institutionalized after being disfigured in a car accident.
10 years later, a group of scantily-clad ladies have a picnic on the grounds of the asylum where the mad lawyer continues to spend his time. It's easy to imagine what happens from here. If you're struggling, the cover art makes it clear.
The Horror Star (1981)
There's a lot happening in the cover art for Horror Star, also released under the title Frightmare. Basically, some drama students decide to dig up the corpse of their favorite actor, a recently deceased horror movie star named Conrad Razkoff.
Unfortunately, along with the body, the aspiring actors excavate ancient black magic that kills them one by one. All of the bloody action unfolds, of course, in a giant mansion.
Waxwork (1988)
With its confusing tagline - is a barrel of mummies fun at all? - and a montage of disembodied heads, the cover art for Waxwork is equal parts absurd and creepy. Waxwork, and its sequels, combine dark fantasy and horror for comedic ends.
The movie follows a teenage entourage who stumble upon a wax museum. Inside, in addition to strange displays, are flesh-eating zombie hordes. It turns out the wax museum is sort of pathway to the afterlife.
The Nest (1988)
As if roaches aren't creepy enough, The Nest reimagines these insects as mutant bioweapons that breed with other species and eat people. If you're afraid of bugs, this isn't the film for you. You'll never be able to erase the image of a human-roach hybrid from your memory.
The VHS cover for The Nest features a thin woman in her undergarments wrestling with a massive roach. The struggle between them also seems like an intimate, romantic embrace.
Dream Demon (1988)
The cover art for this British psychological horror film looks like an advertisement for an experimental theatre company production. It stars Jemma Redgrave as a wealthy young woman whose troubled past catches up to her when she revisits our family's old mansion.
Alongside Redgrave, Dream Demon also stars well-known British actors Timothy Spall and Nickolas Grace. Moody and visceral, Dream Demon is much more than a creature feature or second-rate slasher.
Island Claws (1980)
Within the claws of the eight-foot-tall crab depicted on this cover hangs a limp blonde beauty. Island Claws traces the fallout from a biological experiment in Florida that leads to an invasion of massive, murderous crabs.
Island Claws is a sub-par creature feature that tried to capitalize on the success of 1975's Jaws. It doesn't come close. Instead, it features terrible acting, questionable monsters, and forgettable dialogue.
Flesh-Eating Mothers (1988)
Vulgar and hypersexual, Flesh-Eating Mothers is a campy B-movie about a mysterious STD that turns suburban moms into cannibals. The film's ridiculous viral pandemic originates with a neighborhood womanizer, a man who systematically seduces all the lonely housewives around.
The virus gives the women a strange appetite, and they start consuming their own children. The baseball-playing child being fried up in the cover doesn't seem too concerned, though.
The Oracle (1985)
The cover art for 1985's The Oracle is an eye-grabbing example of classic VHS art. In the film, when a young woman named Jennifer moves into a new apartment, she soon realizes she's not alone.
The apartment's former tenant, a spiritual medium, left her special automatic writing device behind, a device she used to connect to the spirit world. When Jennifer engages with the device, she becomes possessed by a murdered man who wants vengeance for his death.
The Power (1984)
The Power is a psychedelic, mind-bending horror film about possession, Aztec dolls, and innocent high schoolers. When a man named Jerry comes across an old Aztec doll, he takes it home.
Unfortunately for Jerry, a demon named Destacatyl lives inside the doll. It doesn't take long for the demon to switch hosts from the doll to Jerry. Eventually, demon-fueled Jerry crosses paths with a group of high school students.
The Video Dead (1987)
Nothing sums up VHS horror culture like a movie about a supernatural television that serves a portal for zombies to enter the human world. The movie stars Michael St. Michaels as a writer who finds said television on his doorstep one day.
The television only plays a never-ending black and white zombie movie in the vein of The Night of the Living Dead. The television also gives birth to zombies eager to kill and eat people.