People arrive at Cinemagic movie theater for VHS Night on Aug. 7, 2026, in Portland, Ore. VHS Night is held every first Friday of the month at Cinemagic and features VHS cult classics on the big screen.
Saskia Hatvany / OPB
On a hot August night in the heart of Southeast Portland, dozens of moviegoers lined up under the soft glow of the Cinemagic Theater marquee. Inside, where the smell of fresh popcorn lingered in the air, people buzzed with excitement.
It was a sold-out crowd in the single-screen auditorium. But the audience didn’t come to see the latest summer blockbuster.
“When we had ‘Oppenheimer’ on 35mm it didn’t sell out. But ‘Bad Moon,’ 1996, on VHS? No problem.” Cinemagic co-owner Ryan Frakes said to an excited crowd. “Are you guys ready to fire up the VCR?”
It’s the first Friday of the month: VHS Night.
For nearly five years, Frakes and co-owner Nicholas Kuechler have teamed up to showcase films and trailers on VHS that may have otherwise been lost to time and obscurity. Zany, underground B-movies like Philippe Mora’s “Pterodactyl Woman from Beverly Hills,” “Rumpelstiltskin” and “Shakma” are played on a physical VHS tape.
August’s pick? “Bad Moon.”
“It’s a criminally underseen film that has my favorite werewolf design ever,” Frakes said.
A person walks to the VHS Night showing on Aug. 7, 2026 in Portland, Ore. VHS Night is held every first Friday of the month at Cinemagic and features VHS cult classics on the big screen.
Saskia Hatvany / OPB
In Cinemagic’s projection booth, a lone VCR sits on a music stand, sharing space with the theater’s hefty digital and film projectors. If the tape warbles or jumps, it’s part of the experience. The crowd loves the imperfections.
The monthly event is a pillar of Portland’s VHS scene. It’s easy to know when people become regulars.
“I know at least 20 people by name that come in every month,” Frakes said. “I start to build relationships with those people, and they become VHS Night family. Straight up.”
Olivia Salazar is a part of that family. Over the years, she’s attended VHS Night with her husband Romeo. She said Cinemagic has been an important community hub in the city, especially coming out of the pandemic.
“Being able to enjoy something that, sure, you could stream it alone by yourself. But you could be in this room full of people and have an amazing time. That is just beyond what you could ever get on your own,” Salazar said.
“We live in such an amazing town for movies, and I’m so glad that Cinemagic is part of that,” said Salazar, who held her wedding party at Cinemagic with a double feature of “Brainsmasher…A Love Story” and “Voyage of the Rock of Aliens.”
“I love sharing it with everybody, especially the people that I love.”
Be Kind, Rewind
This analog revival may seem recent. But for many Northwest cinephiles and collectors, VHS culture has been thriving for years.
People arrive at Cinemagic movie theatre for VHS Night on Aug. 7, 2026, in Portland, Ore.
Saskia Hatvany / OPB
The Rose City hosts regular VHS tape swaps at local watering holes like Cult Classics, a VHS-themed bar where video tapes and old, analog TVs decorate the walls. There are also neighborhood lending libraries with VHS exchanges and a VHS-themed haunted house. Hundreds of VHS titles at video rental store Movie Madness are set to relocate to their new home in the Hollywood District in 2027.
The vintage video format from the ‘80s and ‘90s might seem niche. But fast-forward to the present, and you’ll find a passionate community that champions the medium.
Billy Organ is a Portland artist who runs Retro Release Video, where he works with movie studios to put out officially licensed VHS tapes of new and reissued classics. Organ said he’s seen a growing number of younger people turn to VHS and the analog horror genre.
“I think VHS is a rejection of whatever AI slop is coming out,” Organ said. “Being able to physically hold your movie is such a foreign concept to [young people.] Once they see that DVDs and VHS [tapes] are coming back, they’re like, ‘I want that.’”
Collectors and tape vendors say the fuzzy aesthetic of VHS oozes nostalgia and is a warm reminder of simpler times. It can even offer comfort for folks who didn’t grow up with VHS at all.
“I think the present is very scary to a lot of people. We live in very politically and environmentally uncertain times,” said Bill Kilby, who operates the Portland pop-up video store Pictureshow Collections with his wife. “I think a lot of millennials and Gen Z cinema fans — to be able to reach back in time and experience the media they love in a simpler way, it’s attractive.”
Pictureshow Collections is a frequent vendor at tape swaps in the region. Their tables are stocked with dozens of tapes, ranging from millennial classic “The Mummy” starring Brendan Fraser, to movies filmed in Oregon like “Stand by Me” or “The Goonies.”
Hillary Buckholtz is the other half of Pictureshow.
“We feel like a lot of people view VHS tapes as trash,” she said. “We clean them. We test them. We restore them. And we sell them to people so that they can have another life.”
In an era when streaming services are getting more expensive with seemingly infinite choices, VHS also allows for someone to have complete ownership of their movies, with no fear of losing their media.
“People like having the ability to own media and not have to focus on which subscription they have to watch what they want,” said Alex Burnett, co-founder of the horror podcast Brothers in Blood.
Burnett admits that tapes are not as crisp or sharp as other forms of media, but he says VHS leans into life’s blemishes.
It’s a lesser media compared to a Blu-ray. But seeing that grain, hearing the hum of the TV, there’s a beauty to it that you lose," Burnett said. “With VHS, you kind of lean into that grittiness.”
Burnett, along with his brother Logan, also founded one of the biggest VHS tape swaps in the Portland region: Drive-In of the Dead. This year’s event at the 99W Drive-In in Newberg featured 55 vendors celebrating the horror genre.
The brothers say horror and VHS go hand in hand because many popular horror movies of the ‘80s and ‘90s were initially released on the format. Classics like “Halloween III,” “The Thing” and “They Live” are hot commodities for collectors.
“Horror fans love practical effects and physical media,” Logan said. “VHS embodies all of that.”
At Variety Records, preserving physical media is a higher calling
Outside of tape swaps and horror markets, Portland also has no shortage of mom-and-pop shops that specialize in selling VHS.
Southeast Portland’s Variety Records is a physical media oasis. The store’s shelves and walls are stocked floor-to-ceiling with DVDs, Blu-rays, vinyl records, CDs — and a truckload of VHS tapes.
“There’s got to be at least 25,000 VHS movies just in these two rooms alone, probably 10,000 titles,” said Gilbert Zimmerle, the shop’s co-owner.
Zimmerle runs Variety Records with Richard McClellan in the Foster-Powell neighborhood. At the ages of 65 and 71, respectively, Zimmerle said the store is a passion project of a lifetime. The shop opened in 2004, drawing from Zimmerle’s personal collection of 10,000 records. Then came the movies.
Gilbert Zimmerle, left, looks through a box of VHS tapes with a customer at Variety Records, Oct. 28, 2026, in Portland, Ore. According to Zimmerle, he acquired tens of thousands of VHS tapes thanks to a friend’s family who bought out several defunct Blockbuster and Hollywood Video stores west of Denver.
Donald Orr / OPB
“All of a sudden these VHS [tapes came from] ... the Blockbusters and the Hollywood Videos that were closing down and we had a big collection of movies come our way,” Zimmerle said.
Zimmerle said it’s his life mission to preserve physical media in order to share it with the next generation of film fans.
“This media has never left. It never died, not in my world,” he said. “As long as I’m alive, I’m gonna try to save it as much as I can.”
OPB digital video producer Joey Lovato contributed to this story.
