Recycling Analog Trash into Digital Trash: My AR VHS Horror Movie Rental Shelf

It's been said that you can't go home again, but you certainly can use augmented and virtual reality software to re-create it.

As a fan of trashy VHS cover art (see previous posts here, here and here), I still miss the local VHS rental store experience from the '80s and '90s. It was almost like going to a tasteless art gallery that's filled with shocking, gaudy paintings. Since the VHS era has been over for a long time and video rentals have shifted to online transactions and vending machines, I took it upon myself a year ago to use AR to re-create the kind of horror movie rental shelves I remember from those bygone years.

Of course, I'm not the only one who misses the VHS rental experience and I've seen a few re-creations of video stores on social VR platforms. One of the most accurate replicas I've seen is a Blockbuster video store that's part of the same shopping plaza as 77077 Arcade & Bar, which can be found on the VRChat platform. However, these virtual VHS stores usually feature mainstream titles the most people will recognize, not the obscure selections that used lurid and grotesque artwork to attract the attention of potential viewers. Even if some of those films are best left forgotten, the art used for their VHS box covers are very memorable. 

The exterior (above) and interior (below) of

the virtual Blockbuster video rental store in VRChat.

I used Adobe Aero to create my AR video shelves. I took high-resolution PDF scans from VHS Collector to assemble the boxes, and I got the shelf model from Sketchfab. I assembled the boxes in Aero, instead of creating the boxes by using 3D modeling software such as Blender. I figured that it would be easier to build my shelves using one program, instead of shifting multiple models between two programs.

Here is the list of the movies included in this AR model, starting from the top shelf: Buried Alive, Exorcism, The Beast, The Gates of Hell, Headless Eyes, The Possessed, Demoniac, Terror Out of the Sky, Body Shop, Burial Ground, House on the Edge of the Park, The Video Dead, Making Contact, Seven Doors of Death, Death Ship, Asphyx, Blood Castle, Monster Dog, Fear, Rana: The Legend of Shadow Lake, Inn of the Damned, Attack of the Beast Creatures, Crypt of the Living Dead, Don't Look in the Attic, The Icebox Murders, Crocodile, Dr. Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks, Death Warmed Up, The Stuff, and I Spit on Your Corpse.

I was able to add some interactivity to my AR model, although it is limited. Users can touch any of the VHS boxes on their tablet/cell phone screen, and the selected box will move off the shelf and flip so that the user can look at the back of the box. However, I never figured out how to program the interactive feature to return the boxes to their original shelf placement; for that, users will have to close and reopen the AR model.

A closer look at the Death Ship VHS box.

Below is a QR code you can use to access my AR model, so you can put this piece of nostalgic digital trash in your own personal space.

Here's the video that I made about my AR VHS horror movie rental shelves last year.