I ordered a vhs tape from a store in spain (only place where i could find it) (1982 volver a empezar) and just loaded it into the vhs player and cant see jack except for a frizzed screen and some back ground noise. any advice.
I understand dvd have regional codes, does it matter with a vhs?

Well here in Europe we have a different tv-system, PAL. You need a PAL compatible vhs-player to play back European tapes on your american NTSC player.

Yep. You are trying to watch a PAL encoded tape on an NTSC VCR.

Either buy a multi-standard VCR or have someone convert it for you.