Five years ago, when news spread that Harmony Korine was shooting a feature on VHS, it was hailed as an ingenious use of a retro technology. More recently, the band Prodigy was lauded for shooting a music video on VHS. Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel, 21 Grams) recently made news by shooting a film on the same “crap camera” that his family had used for home movies. This caused me to wonder how mainstream this nostalgia had gone. Checking the Apple store, I found an app that lets you add VHS effects to your iPhone movies. When I checked Google for VHS effect, the search results turned up a hit for almost every movie-editing software. VHS nostalgia is officially a thing.

What is fueling this nostalgia? Many people point to the analog appeal of vinyl records. VHS is a lower resolution medium, so everything has a softer focus. The sound is also less crisp. One area that is due for further exploration is the changes that occur from generation to generation when VHS tape is duped. Ghosting begins to occur until the screen is a series of moving psychedelic patterns. At the blog Cinemassacre.com you can see a display of what occurs from generation to generation.

Besides the physical nature of VHS, there is a distinct aesthetic at work on films from the VHS era. Cameras became cheap and portable by the mid 1980s, but the resources for editing VHS lingered out of the financial reach of most people. Today you can shoot a digital video and edit it on a sophisticated program on your laptop computer. Back in the VHS era, it was a matter of hooking up two clunky machines to at least get things in the right order. There is even an effect on some software to duplicate analog editing techniques.

Also fueling the nostalgia is content. When things went straight to video in the ’80s and early ’90s, much of the content was meant to be disposable. The best way to get a real feel for how awful this content was is to look to a compilation series called TV CARNAGE. Derrick Beckles collected oddball video footage from the moment it started turning up at flea markets and yard sales. He was part of an informal network of collectors who traded the most jaw-dropping examples of trash culture. When he was laid up with an injury in 1996 he got two VHS machines and started editing together the most horrible clips. His genius at juxtaposing these has created a new generation of VHS aficionados.

Beckles recently turned up as a host on an Adult Swim show called Hot Package. The format is a panel like Entertainment Tonight where they review a mix of vintage and current clips compatible with the junk culture aesthetic. One of his co-hosts is an animated talking VHS machine that spews pink goo. His latest project: Totally for Teens blends vintage after-school-special material with new footage with the intent of “giving these teens the worst set of ethics and morals possible.” If you weren’t around for the glory days of awful VHS productions, TV CARNAGE is here to show you what you missed.