Adjust Your Tracking is not the only VHS-fetish documentary in the neighborhood. The same year’s Rewind This! beat it to the punch — barely — but whereas that one chronicled the history of the home-video format from birth to death, this one dispenses with such lessons in about 12 minutes in order to devote itself to the almighty collector. Rewind covered that ground, too — just not at this length.
Here, although with overlap, the focus is on VHS enthusiasts — not necessarily among the millions who made every weekend night a Blockbuster night in the video-store era, but those who today pursue those clamshell-encases plastic rectangles with the fervor of a dog to strips of bacon. Yes, I’m talking about the collector, who obsessively scours flea markets, thrift shops and garage sales for tapes. Judging by those interviewed by co-directors Dan M. Kinem and Levi Peretic, the titles hardly matter; in many cases, the movies won’t ever be watched much less freed of factory wrapping. The subjects’ fervor appears to be more about the sheer act of acquiring the objects than viewing them.
They’re the guys who bid mercilessly on eBay for the shot at proudly proclaiming they own Chester Turner’s Tales from the Quadead Zone — a legitimately terrible shot-on-video effort, but hey, it’s pink-steak rare! Some of the guys consider themselves historians of sorts or cultural archeologists who “save” such relics from landfills because no one else will, yet I’d hardly compare their mission — as one interviewee does — to that of our World War I and II soldiers.
And therein lies my only problem with the never-dull Tracking: the perpetuation — if not glorification — of a VHS-collector stereotype. Almost always male, the collector is arrogant, bearded, overweight, immature, single, poor, likely OCD and possibly removed from reality. Whether or not that’s a legitimate sketch, it’s the one we’re given. —Rod Lott