For horror fans like Evan Husney, a movie that looks like it’s been art-directed to death is a real killer.

“It’s hard to get into the aesthetic of shakycam, pretty people, safe scares — like something jumping out at you — and the digital photography and CG blood,” he said.

Husney, the director of the independent distribution company Drafthouse Films, is part of a small but devoted subset of fans, distributors and programmers who thrill to low-budget horror from the movies of the 1980s: The kind in which brains were made of Jell-O and the cast was paid in wine coolers. These fans aren’t watching movies on a tablet or DVD. Instead they’re blowing the dust off their VCRs and sliding in movies that have been newly released on the behemoths known as VHS tapes.

David A. Prior’s shot-on-tape slasher film “Sledgehammer” (1983), released by Intervision on VHS (and DVD) this year, is a good example of the appeal of neo-VHS. The plot is Horror 101: Young people spend a night at a remote house unaware that a shape-shifting, maniacal man-child is out for blood. Originally shot on tape, the movie has the dime-store feel so appreciated by VHS fans: With spotty lighting and a droning synthesizer for a score, the slow-mo is extra slow, the blood is too runny, and the set looks like taped-together plywood. The acting is equally wooden.

“I enjoy the aesthetics of VHS,” said Josh Schafer, the founder of the horror magazine Lunchmeat. “I like putting it in the VCR and rewinding and pausing and fast-forwarding. It’s an experience nobody gets to do anymore because they consider VHS dead.”

To meet the demands of the video-obsessed horror consumer — many of whom weren’t even born when VCRs were in their heyday — several distributors are releasing (or rereleasing) selected ’80s titles on VHS as well as DVD.

Dan Kinem, who writes for a blog devoted to VHS culture, said the terrible quality of VHS “works well” for the horror genre.

“You just don’t get the same feeling in a pristine print of a DVD,” Kinem said. “With VHS it’s like I’m experiencing an old grind-house movie theater. I would never watch them on a computer.”

The distribution arm of the blog for which he writes will release the 1986 micro-budget horror film “Gore-Met Zombie Chef From Hell” on VHS this year.

Paige Kay Davis, director of business development for Camp Motion Pictures, chalked up the popularity of the format — sales of “The Basement” exceeded her company’s expectations, though she wouldn’t give figures — to a mix of nostalgia, remorse and discovery.

“VHS represents a period when you could walk into a mom-and-pop video store, and what you could rent was limited to what was right in front of you,” Davis said. “There were these amazing illustrations on the big boxes, and no one had any idea what the movie was. You were taking a gamble. It’s the opposite of instant gratification.”

Releasing films on VHS can be a chore. The titles tend to be obscure, and many were shot only on low-quality video to begin with. It can be hard to track down who owns the rights. Hiring a company to produce boxes and labels for a product that was thought to be obsolete can be expensive.

Willing to deal with those hassles is a small cottage industry of microdistributors. Louis Justin, the 21-year-old owner of the one-man company Massacre Video, in Michigan, released Wally Koz’s 1988 splatter video “555″ last month on VHS and a limited-edition DVD packaged to look like something that would be found at that mom-and-pop store.

“I was not around during the main VHS boom, but I’ve never liked DVDs,” said Justin, who has a VHS tape tattooed on his arm. “When I was younger and I went to the record store, my parents would push me to get the CD, but I wanted the cassette. I’m an analog nerd.”

At a time when movies live in digital clouds, holding a VHS release in your hands is an experience that fans who grew up in the DVD era say is a lost pleasure.

“VHS is cumbersome,” said Husney (who was creative director of Intervision before moving to Drafthouse).

“You have to maintain it. It has to fit on a shelf. You may have to dust it off. But you also get to interact with a piece of art on a personal level.”

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