Great coffee table book
"Beautifully manufactured, sturdy binding, crisp pages, and quality printing. It arrived exceptionally well packed and super fast shipping."
Details
VS Press was initially founded as an in-house artisan screen printing studio, focusing on VS-related shirts and posters. We are thrilled to announce the expansion of VS Press into books and print media, where we will bring art books, critical explorations, novelizations, and more to the publishing space.
VS Press presents The Basement Tapes—a curated deep dive into the eclectic VHS archive of The Basement, a studio and art collective based in San Francisco’s Mission District. This book offers a unique look at their collection, shaped by a fascination with greasy horror films, obscure science fiction, niche special-interest nightmares, and exploitation cinema. The Basement Tapes serves as both a visual archive and a passionate tribute to these often-overlooked pieces of analog media history.
edited by: Luca Antonucci & Mitsu Okubo
essays by: William Boswick, Jon Dieringer, and Luca Antonucci
cover design by: Shea Hardacre
2025 / 352 pages / Color / English / 11" x 7" x 1.25"
Additional info:
- Limited run of 2,000 units
Overall rating: 4.85 / 5 from 20 reviews.
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Reviews
Awesome Coffee Table Book!
"This sort of product is really cool for anyone to just pick up and flip through. Filled to the brim with interesting covers. Very high quality and well made."
A Treasure Trove of Weirdness
"There's been a spate of books recently that feature old VHS box art, but this one stands head and shoulders above the crowd. Whereas most of the others go in for straightforward collections of genre movies, not only does The Basement Tapes feature a selection of truly obscure oddities from the furthest corners of horror, sci-fi, crime, action, and beyond, but the book is also full of the kind of incredibly strange VHS tapes you used to come across at library sales or in the home of a slightly odd relative. "A Celebration of Jackets"? "Tree Stand Safety"? "Hip Hop Pronunciation for the Classroom"? What looks a lot like a video catalog for a mailorder bride company? All these and more can be found in the pages of The Basement Tapes, beautifully scanned to show the creases, dings, and price stickers that accumulate like battle scars on these old tapes. Unlike most similar books, they also scan the back covers, so you can read the unbelievably overheated ad copy and review excerpts. A truly fun book to own."
Awesome Coffee Table Book!
"Amazing artwork and content."
Perfect Coffee Table Book
"This is a high-quality book with beautiful images of some of the best VHS artwork. They certainly don’t make ‘em like they used to."
The Basement Tapes - Softcover Art Book
"Lovely book that I managed to get at a very decent price. Full of rare and unknown to the classic we love."
The Basement Tapes
"Love this book!!!!"
Great Content, Crummy Binding
"I was really looking forward to receiving this book but was greatly disappointed by how cheap the binding was. Immediately when I opened the book the binding started to crack. It's one of those books where eventually the pages are going to start falling out because the glue holding the pages is going to start to give away. The book's content is really cool; over two hundred pages of VHS tapes (both front and back covers) that can be found in San Francisco's The Basement VHS archives. . . plus, about forty photos of the actual basement, itself. The forward and introductions about how the archive came to be is fascinating but I'm afraid this book is not going to hold up over time, especially if I am going to read it more than a few times. I was sort of expecting high quality like Mondo's "These Fists Break Bricks" or "Warped and Faded" but it looks like Vinegar Syndrome should stick with what they know; releasing awesome films on Blu-ray and 4K and stay away from trying to run a publishing house."
The Basement Tapes
"I just received my copy of The Basement Tapes, and I can’t wait to read it!! I already read the reviews and I know it’s gonna be a really juicy read! Especially, because it’s gonna give me a lot of ideas of new Vinegar Syndrome movies to watch!!"
Awesome Book
"Great VHS artwork, ultimate display book to put alongside my collection!"