It was worse than that. The head drum continued to spin throughout the entire duration of the pause, rubbing against the film at high speed. That's because the

It was worse than that. The head drum continued to spin throughout the entire duration of the pause, rubbing against the film at high speed. That's because the VCR didn't have any "memory" to hold the entire frame¹, so the lines of the frame had to be read from the tape over and over again. ¹ It was actually an interlaced field, not a frame, but that too much nitpicking.