Video rental stores. Now a relic of the past. Netflix kicked its ass to oblivion. But I’ll never forget when video stores were commonplace. Growing up, probably 90% of all the movies I’ve ever seen came from video rentals.
That’s history. One by one, I’ve seen all my childhood video stores close down. The last to go was the TLA on 15th and Locust Street, Philadelphia. It just closed for good this past weekend. In college, I was there all the time. Some of my rentals were for my class studies, but most of them were for my own curiosities. This was where I first rented movies like Re-Animator, Brain Dead, Basket Case, Monkey Shines, Laserblast, many of the films I’ve reviewed as part of Cinemassacre’s Monster Madness! I didn’t even realize it would be research to come in handy later. I have much of it to owe to the TLA.
I found movies there that couldn’t be found anywhere else. Most people would go to Blockbuster video. It was a common chain. Their walls were always full of mainstream releases, and always had 50 copies of the latest Adam Sandler comedy. (Literally covering an entire wall). For film fans like myself, who were searching for an alternative, TLA was the place to go. It felt underground. I enjoyed telling people that I go to TLA, just to see their looks of confusion. It was like telling people about that awesome new band you just discovered, that nobody heard of. Actually, many people thought I was referring to the Theatre of Living Arts (A concert venue on South Street).
You’d never see 2 copies of the same movie on the shelf. Their space was utilized well. From head to toe, you were surrounded by shelves of VHS tapes. It was like getting lost in a maze. The titles were arranged by categories. No, not just Drama / Comedy… But “Midnight Cult Movies,” “Golden Age Comedies”… or by actor, or even director. There was a Stanley Kubrick section, a Roger Corman section… You name it. If you were looking for something specific, you could ask for it, and the movie nerds behind the counter would disappear into a secret back area and come back with the movie. I don’t think there was one movie they didn’t have. I imagined there was a bottomless basement full of every title in the world! It was a video store for movie buffs and they used to be open till Midnight which made it even better.
But that’s over. The digital age is here. I have to admit, I have not rented a movie in several years. There’s no reason anymore. Netflix is super-convenient. Delivers videos straight to your house, and you can take as long as you want to watch them. Being able to browse movies online makes it easy to find exactly what you’re looking for. If the movie is available or not, you can find out in only a few seconds. And if you’re lucky, it’s available to watch instantly.
I definitely don’t miss late fees. It sucked having to run back to the video store at the last minute. Returning videos in-person was never fun. When you’d walk into that video store to rent the movie, it was something you were in the mood to do at that very moment. But it always meant that in 2 days or so, you’d be making that same trip back, whether you felt like it or not.
Still, I miss the experience of walking into a video store. I loved wandering around leisurely, looking at all the VHS cover art, and reading the back of the cases. Sometimes I didn’t know what movie I was in the mood to watch, until I saw it there in person. Browsing online does not have the same feel. It’s more like an over-saturation to the mind, seeing all the thumbnail pics on the screen. My brain goes numb. I miss seeing the actual boxes and being physically surrounded by movies.
With that said, streaming movies with Netflix (or other) is the way to go, but it’s still not quite there yet. At least the way I see it. Most of the movies I try to watch are not instantly watchable yet. I still have to wait for the DVD to come in the mail. If there’s a specific movie that I want to watch at that given moment, running to a video store would be the only option. But I’m too lazy for that anyway. Technology has certainly taken over. Until every movie ever made is instantly watchable online, I say the digital age is not completely ready yet.
I don’t miss the video store enough to ever want to go back to it. But it reminds me of a time when life was more leisurely paced. A time that future generations will never experience.
Share your memories of video stores. Know of any left?
September 20, 2011 at 4:56 pm
Here in Memphis there’s still an independent video store open in the Cooper-Young district called Black Lodge Video. Its a lot like the store you described, except Black Lodge is spread out on the first floor of a former home. Still going strong today. I went there a while back and rented some MST3K films (The Brain That Wouldn’t Die and Space Mutiny) and their selection is always top notch. You gotta appreciate a place like that. I need to go back and rent some more movies.
September 20, 2011 at 4:58 pm
Well said. There is a local video store where I grew up that is still somehow in business (California Super Video in Pacifica, CA), and whenever I go back home I still always rent videos there with my mom. I only have Netflix streaming, and I have to say, Netflix streaming kind of sucks compared to the video store, at least in selection.
Thinking about it, I’m surprised about how important the video store was when I was growing up. I used to go there every Friday or Saturday with my parents and rent two or three movies to watch during the weekend. My dad especially knew all the awesome older movies to get. I guess the local video store might be largely responsible for my absolute love of movies today.
September 20, 2011 at 5:08 pm
There is a great video rental place here in Seattle known as Scarecrow Video. You can find ultra rare videos to rent (of course to rent hem you have to put down a deposit on your credit card). They have thousands of videos to choose from, and hey are all broken down into great categories. Next time you are in town for PAX you should check it out, it is located in the U-District close to the University of Washington.
September 20, 2011 at 5:15 pm
When I was growing up my mom took me and my borthers to rental place to rent a video game and movie for the weekend. We took turns who get to rent a movie or video game. I really love those days. But now I’m older now and I use Netflix now to rent movies now. However I don’t rent video games anymore. If there a game I want to try out. I will just go out and buy it. Like it or not.
Also James nice article. You made me remember the good old days.
September 20, 2011 at 5:19 pm
I’ll bet that TLA has nothing on Winnipeg’s Movie Village. Most of the other rental places are gone, but this one’s not going anywhere.
Why? They carry stuff that you’d NEVER find on Netflix. Obscure art films, obscure foreign films, locally made films, silent films, gay/lesbian films (not my thing, but it’s there), TONS of TV series, sports compilations, B-westerns, not to mention new releases (including new indie films), Blu-ray, and (I especially love this) a HUGE chunk of the cinephile-oriented Criterion Collection (including EVERY Akira Kurosawa film!).
They do have actor & director sections, you have the option to buy most of the titles, a Canada-wide Netflix-style mail service, late fees are only 65 cents a day, and you can get 10 films for a week for just $14!
The only thing missing is a VHS section, as there are a ton that have yet to be re-released on disc…
https://www.cinemail.ca/index.cfm
September 20, 2011 at 5:21 pm
Now we know how our parents felt when the last drive-in theaters closed. Kind of a sucky feeling. I’d still rather rent from a store than stream.
September 20, 2011 at 8:40 pm
Here in Texas we still have plenty of drive-in theaters.
September 20, 2011 at 5:22 pm
I used to frequent TLA Video when I was living in South Philly (even though the Hollywood Video on Washington was much closer to where I lived). I ended up moving out to Malvern and discovered there was a TLA Video in Bryn Mawr. Same great selection as the Philadelphia store, organized in all the ways you described in your post. I’ve moved yet again, so I haven’t been to Bryn Mawr in over a year. I wonder if it’s still there…
September 20, 2011 at 7:37 pm
@mjcanan I wonder too. I knew there was one on South Street but don’t know if it’s there anymore. Also, there was one in NJ. I think Marlton or Cherry Hill, somewhere. It closed a long time ago. TLA was the best, hope there’s still one around.
September 20, 2011 at 5:24 pm
Hehehe yeah I know exactly what you mean, we used to have a small privately owned video shop where I used to go bacause it was cheaper than Blockbusters and you got the video for a week instead of just a couple days. This was way back in the days of VHS, and i remember picking up a copy of the original Fright Night and marveling over its cool 3d embossed box, im sure it had a light inside the case as well as it glowed. The guy who worked there was dead friendly and he’d give me his old cardboard standees and film posters when the films they were for got out dated.. happy times!
September 20, 2011 at 5:40 pm
All the blockbusters are gone around my area but there is this one store called Family Video thats still doing pretty well. It’s secret to success is simply having the store in a poor neighborhood where no one can afford Netflix. Imagine predicting that Family Video would outlive blockbuster. People would call you crazy xD
September 20, 2011 at 5:52 pm
the only rental center left in my town is a local one called ‘Sydney Video’. I’m actually thinking of applying to get a job there. I have very fond memories of renting movies when I was little, and working there would certainly beat the hell outta some cashier gig at McDonalds.
September 20, 2011 at 6:05 pm
There were sooooo many obscure hard to find vhs tapes back then. And nobody cared how old you where as long as you didn’t go into the “backroom” underage, so i was watching Cannibal Holocaust, Faces of Death, Fist of the North Star, Dead Alive etc etc at a really early age. By the year of 1990 I had seen every horror movie at our local mom and pop shop, a passion i still have today when I see a copy of a movie like Basket Case 1 or 2 sitting forgotten in a yardsale for .50 cents. The glory days are gone but thanks to people like James we can still remember them fondly. Can’t wait till Monster Madness starts. I’ve been watching them since the first one and every year it takes me back to those glory days of my childhood, alone and scared shitless watching those old terrible movies.
September 20, 2011 at 6:11 pm
My opinion on renting from a video store Vs. renting or streaming from something like netfilx is the same as my opinion on getting games via download. To me half the fun of renting or buying a movie or game is having that something physical to have in your hands and read, store on a shelf etc. I just dont feel like I get my moneys worth with just a download or disc.
September 20, 2011 at 6:17 pm
Where I live there is an amazing video store downtown. There are 2 floors of the most famous and the most obscure movies you will ever see. On the second floor there are actor sections where there are sections for different actors with all of their movies on the shelf. Even Godzilla has his own category now THAT kicks ass.
September 20, 2011 at 7:33 pm
@RomanNicholson Sounds awesome. What’s the store called?
September 20, 2011 at 6:44 pm
I miss video rental stores. In my town we had a store called “The way we were” which was within a Radio Shack. I have fond memories of just wandering down the isles looking at all the covers not knowing what I wanted until I found it. But it’s gone now
September 20, 2011 at 6:47 pm
I used to go to “Franklin Video” in West Chester, PA (USA). The best part was when I got old enough to go in the porn section and rent porno movies.
September 20, 2011 at 6:47 pm
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. One thing I’ll always miss from my youth is the weekends when my brother and myself were allowed to to select a handful of movies and stay up all night watching them, eating junk food and camping out in the living room. Most times they were campy horror movies or raunchy ’80s comedies, which happen to put anything that is released in theaters these days to shame, especially in terms of entertainment, style, and creativity. Watching countless movies from all sorts of classic genres sort of taught us the various nuances of humor and innuendo that we wouldn’t have learned anywhere else at that age, as well as forming many different concepts and building blocks, in terms of creative inspiration. In retrospect, I can definitely say the many weekends spent with a stack of VHS tapes next to the Pringle’s and Pork Rinds, without a doubt, helped shape my creative sensibilities in all kinds of areas that aren’t even directly related to film and probably in many ways that I still don’t even realize. I guess what makes me sad is the coming generations (more to the point, my own children, someday) aren’t going to have the privilege of that late-night culture 101. And like you described, James, there is a special feeling about going to personally pick out each of your movies, taking them home and trying to decide which order to watch them in — and then actually spending the whole night just relaxing, watching movies. Back then there were no cell phones and hardly as many interruptions or distractions; like you said: just a leisurely pace that is hard to come by these days. I don’t know, maybe I am just caught up in nostalgia more than anything, but renting VHS is certainly an encapsulation of something future youth just isn’t going to be able to have. At least not the way we did.
September 20, 2011 at 7:34 pm
@ZakSindon Absolutely.
September 20, 2011 at 6:49 pm
All old video stores had odd names, the two in my town where Movies and Munchies, and Video Solution. Another thing I remember where the games, especially in the 80′s they always had systems for rent and boxes with obscure crappy accessories. Sure when you got them home they usually sucked but the boxes looked soooooo great it was worth 15 or 20 bucks to rent a Neo Geo or a CDi or something for a few days.
September 20, 2011 at 6:55 pm
Lost Weekend Video in San Francisco is the shit.
That’s all.
September 20, 2011 at 7:15 pm
movie madness in portland, or. best video store in the universe. massive b-movie, underground selection. thousands of waaay out of print vhs tapes. if they don’t have it, i’m pretty sure it doesn’t exist. recently expanded to cram in more awesomeness.
September 20, 2011 at 7:27 pm
hollywood video. god i miss that place. i dont even care about returning movies. theres such an atmosphere in a video store that i just love. its really a shame.
September 20, 2011 at 7:29 pm
There’s a fun video store in Hell’s Kitchen, NY still around for some reason. It’s on 46th Street and 9th Avenue. I lived nearby last year and it has a bunch of weird movies and old stuff. Unfortunately they got rid of their VHS’s. There used to be a little section for kung fu movies and other cool sections, but the DVD sections are still pretty good. New releases suck, which for me is a nice feature. It’s still got it’s adult section behind a curtain so it’s also got the old West Midtown vibe. There’s a place in the village that organizes by director exclusively and has a whole lot of foreign features, but that’s always felt too pretentious for me. You can’t get something ridiculous without being judged by people who majored in film theory.
September 20, 2011 at 7:34 pm
Thankfully we still video rental stores here but they’re a mix of buy and rental, I heard most of them only make profits of the candy they sell which they always seem to keep a bigger selection of an always fresh. So I suppose it’s true, I don’t think we have any store that has everything, the ones I’ve seen are mostly mainstream but there is a few video stores in the centre of town that carries a heavier selection but they’re mainly buy only. I reckon it won’t take long until they’re gone too though but I think if you have a mix between selling and renting stuff out you have a better chance of surviving the new era. The library also has a lot of movies you can borrow, they mostly stick with movies of some sort of significance though but they do have a lot of old stuff and mainstream stuff but I doubt you can find a horror movie like cannibal holocaust in there.
I mean especially since Children run around there.
September 20, 2011 at 7:39 pm
It’s quite sad though, I loved going down to rent a VHS tape. I used to stand there for hours looking at all the movies, as soon as I got enough money to rent one I ran down during the weekends to check the movies out. I think overall we’ll probably see stores like that go the same way as CD stores. I haven’t seen one of those since I was 16 but really though, the best way a store that rents out stuff can survive is to have other things to provide a costumer. There’s barely any pure video selling stores or CD ones, they’re all mixed with games or clothes and shit these days.
September 20, 2011 at 7:46 pm
I’ve got this one in Lyndhurst, OH called Cap’n Video and the guy behind the counter has seen everything. and I mean EVERYTHING! Yeah, he added an adult section cause people don’t rent movies anymore, but hopefully that place isn’t going anywhere. He’s got a classics corner, recent films wall, cool stuff in the center… So yeah
September 20, 2011 at 7:55 pm
It’s a bitter-sweet feeling reading and watching people like you and the Nostalgia Critic talk about your Nostalgic memories of the 80′s. On one hand, I’m learning a lot and am fascinated by it, but it seems that so many amazing decades, rich with culture, have passed me by. I was born in 1996. Of course, the internet was still kicking off, so no one really imagined anything like Netflix happening any time soon. I did go to the Video Store, with my Mom, and I have found memories of it. But I would only get children’s videos. That experience of being a young adult and hunting for obscure horror films in the “Midnight Cult” section until 12AM is one I will never have. DVDs gradually took over the store, and eventually, they moved to a smaller location and about half of their stock was DVDs, not to mention BluRay was sneaking in too.
They’re gone now. They left just as 10th grade started for me this year. They set up for a huge “Blow-Out sale” weeks in advanced and I would come almost every day, saving my 5 dollars lunch money to buy Xbox and PS2 Former-Rentals and VHS Tapes. In retrospect, I wish I had come more often, especially when the sale first started, and prepared more in advance. Because of this store, the many Yard Sales where I live, and an Antique store in my town, I’m up to about 40 VHS tapes; but ideally I’d have a VHS tape of every film I’ve ever liked. One day I brought in a list of films I wanted and the seller, who wasn’t that older than me, and they didn’t have any of them.
I don’t really know why I love collection VHS Tapes so much. My apartment is already a disaster and my room is puny. Besides, I too am subscribed to Netflix and rent most of my films from there. So why spend so much money and use up so much space on them? I really can’t answer that. I would say I was Nostalgic, but I’m NOT, I mostly purchase VHS tapes from the 1980′s and for 80′s films, and besides, I collect Atari and Nintendo games as well. Maybe it’s just that their relics of the past, they’re a part of history, they represent a new wave of technology when people were able, for the first time, to conveniently see some of the greatest pieces from this age-old Art form…
(PS: I’m PleaseRewind from before. I like this new comment system much more!)
September 20, 2011 at 8:19 pm
James, I just had to post on this post. It brought so many memories back from my early twenties it’s not even funny. You and I are both 30, and I remember my Junior year in college where my classes got 10 times harder and I spent most of my time studying and gave up partying altogether. My salvation was Video Warehouse in Statesboro, GA, where they had every VHS tape known to man (each was a 5 day rental for $1.00 each).
When I was a kid, I always loved going into a video store and walking through the horror section. I would look at all of the cover art and read the back cover and be fascinated about imagining how scary the movies would be. When I got older, I found Video Warehouse and became addicted renting the very movies that would cause those fearful feelings when I was a kid staring at the cover art (i.e. Phantasm, F13, Re-Animator, From Beyond, etc). My ritual for months that year was to work my butt off Sunday – Thursday, and then Thursday at 3:00pm, I would go down to the video store, rent a stack of movies for $5.00, buy a case of Southpaw and usually buy a 10 pack Taco Bell Burrito/Taco meal, and hole myself in my apartment. It was great because I lived off of peanuts, and I got my horror movie fix. This is where I learned all about horror movies, and your Monster Madness is often a blast to that 80′s B-movie delightness. The movies had such an impact, especially watching on an old VCR (often having to mess with the tapes so they would stop skipping). I, to this day, still have Halloween horror movie marathons with friends, and it all evolved from that year and a half of Video Warehouse Thursday night B-Movie hunting.
Walking into a movie store is a huge nostalgic feeling. This was before DVD’s polluted the walls with 50 copies of one movie…it was sad seeing the old VHS tapes getting phased out. Thank you, James for posting this..you just brought back some awesome memories.
September 20, 2011 at 8:29 pm
man I remember the video store (and im only 14) but man did I love it, I would always rent scary movies and my dad would yell at me for watching them in the first place and then there was a time when the last two things I rented from a video store were two ps2 games, (almost a week before Blockbuster closed!) and we never got to return them. I really would have loved TLA if there was one near me ( I live in CT so PH is a ways away!) because on Netflix I can’t even watch The ORIGINAL Karate Kid whats up with that? I really miss being a kid and my parents renting a movie for us to watch that one night we’d order pizza for the occasion (we didn’t go that ofter sadly) so if you can’t tell I really miss the video stores THEY SHOULD COME BACK!!!!!!!!!
September 20, 2011 at 8:36 pm
Oh and by the way on one street (still in CT) theres a store that sells retro games (there are arcade cabinets) manga, anything retro gaming you name it and I’m pretty sure you can rent movies from there too (while they may not be VHS it still feels like when I would rent old scooby-doo VHS tapes from blockbuster) so I just thought you’d like to know
September 20, 2011 at 8:37 pm
theres still a few of them around my area..family video, family theathere, hollywood video..places like that
September 20, 2011 at 8:38 pm
I’ve been feeling this way about Borders a lot. even though in recent years my local borders stupidly made a friggn shrine to tween vampire book franchises (yeah, plural) and I couldn’t even go into the place, I still loved going there to get a book when I was a kid. I do NOT like this new kindle or nook or whatever people use now. I like paper books that you can physically turn pages with, and feel the paper in your fingers. the smell of paper, weather old or new, was just awesome. I always bought all my novels there., and I had planned on getting all my books there for as long as I could. but now it seems like I’ll have to go to Barns & Nobles, which is ok, but like James and his video stores, it’s just the principle of bringing back memories, and experiences. Borders used to be one my most favorite stores anywhere (well, before the tween shrine anyway,) and I can’t believe they’re gone for good. I’m going to miss it so much, I mean, yeah I’ve been pissed off at them for having so much retarded twilight shit, but I didn’t want the to go out of business! this new digital age is starting to suck.
September 20, 2011 at 8:38 pm
Our Movie Gallery franchise shut down a couple of years back. Our Blockbuster is closing down fairly soon. That being said, my favourite local video store growing up is still going strong, as is the one that nobody I know and nobody they know goes to. The chains are dying, but the locals are doing fine where I am.
September 20, 2011 at 8:39 pm
My earliest video store memories are as a little kid growing up in the 1980s, picking up WWF tapes at a local place called “Video Park.” Going to the video store was always a treat. Like you’ve stated, they’re obsolete, but it’s nice to reminisce of a simpler, “more leisurely paced” time.
September 20, 2011 at 8:47 pm
Honestly, I used to go to video stores all the time a few months ago. I especially go to the library during October to rent monster movies because they have all the classics, and for free! Yeah driving back is a pain in the ass, but once I walk in the building I’m suddenly in the mood to watch movies again. Last October, I watched all the classic monster films: Dracula, Frankenstein, Invisible Man, Wolf Man, and The Mummy. I used to go to video stores because they sell big hit movies at cheap prices, unlike the library. The only reason I don’t anymore is because I don’t have the time. I have school and a job, and the library is much more peaceful of a place. But there are still rental places where I live. Blockbuster still exists here, man. Hollywood Video closed a year or two ago and they sold all of their movies. I got a bunch at really cheap prices, and a few video games to boot. I go to redbox if Netflix doesn’t have a movie I want. And if I’m really in the mood to see a movie I can’t find online, I just go out and buy it. Buying a film gives me a rush. A rush of going somewhere familiar and being able to own a memory. I recently bought King Kong (1933) and I get the same feeling I got watching it as I did when I was a kid.
So basically what I’m saying is, I go to video stores all the time, although recently I buy more movies. I almost exclusively buy VHS tapes. They’re usually a dollar (or less!) and they work splendidly. I found a copy of Spanish Dracula, factory sealed, for 50 cents, along with Die Hard, Blade Runner, and the original (unaltered) Star Wars trilogy. I don’t see any reason to stop going to places that sell movies. Half Price Books, Goodwill, whatever. I buy movies all the time, and I get the same rush I did when I was a kid.
September 20, 2011 at 8:48 pm
Where I live, Staten Island, NY, had a video store very similar to TLA. Same kinda story. Any sort of obscure indie flick was always on hand…. and they still kept their tremendous inventory of VHS tapes long after the DVD and Blu-Ray craze.
They closed up shop about a year ago, after the FBI and NYPD found a multi-million dollar sportsbook operating out of the store.
Oh well.
September 20, 2011 at 9:09 pm
When I was younger, it was a treat for us to go rent a video game or a movie and the one we would always go to was inside of the Lucky’s grocery store. I remember when I would go shopping with my mom, I would always hang out in there and look at stuff while she did the shopping. Good stuff.
September 20, 2011 at 9:11 pm
I think a big problem started when DVDs took over. Older movies are all scratched to shit when you rent ‘em because no one takes care of them. It makes me think twice about even driving to the rental place. VHS’s didn’t have that problem.
We used to have a great video place by campus. It’s still there, but it’s a ghost town now. It was really cool because it was open 24 hours back in the day, had a coffee shop upstairs and an arcade room downstairs.
September 20, 2011 at 9:16 pm
Oh… you’re making my heart ache James.
Thanks for writing this.
September 20, 2011 at 9:33 pm
I still have a Family Video near me where I live. As long as that’s still around, I’m not getting a Netflix.
It’s just an awesome feeling to just go to the store and walk around. And the prices are pretty good too.
September 20, 2011 at 9:39 pm
Most of the obscure movies aren’t on streaming… OR available on DVD (at least at Netflix).
And that sucks.
Because Netflix (or “Qwikster” … ugh…) will never replace any of their scratched/broken/missing DVDs. Once they are gone, they’re gone.
September 20, 2011 at 9:41 pm
I remember every Friday riding my bike several miles to the video store to rent Final Fantasy II/IV on Super Nintendo. This was just before III/VI was released in the US, so by now most people had played it and it was always available. I rerented it for months, some weekends just leveling players with the time I had available, always using the same save file and praying no one rented it during the week and erased the file. It felt like all that work going to and from the video store was worth it when I finally got to sit down and enjoy the game. I finally did get my own copy, but I never went through so much trouble over renting one game and it’s still my favorite game to this day. Maybe it was because of all that extra running around, but there was something so satisfying in getting to the video store and picking that game up each week.
September 20, 2011 at 9:49 pm
Good read. takes me back to my old video store, Carrie’s Video. I remember the first time i rented Link to the Past, and Super Mario RPG…two of my favorite games of all time, huge nostalgia thinking about it. I remember seeing the cover for evil dead, brain dead (dead alive), and texas chainsaw massacre. It’s true that something about browsing in person makes the whole experience more memorable. No one in the future is going to have a fond memory of browsing a netflix queue and finding an interesting movie. I also agree though that I feel too lazy anymore to have to visit rental stores for movies anymore.
September 20, 2011 at 10:04 pm
I live in Canada and there’s still plenty of rental store here since netflix canada is only starting and nobody knows about it yet, it will probably change in 2-3 years from now.
I gave a try to netflix last week and most mainstream movie can be found but for exemple I searched for Godzilla movies and there’s only a few of them, there’s also no Gamera movies…no Hammer Horror movies… so underground stuff is still not there yet.
September 20, 2011 at 10:16 pm
My local Blockbuster is still up and running. BUT! Even that franchise made my childhood choice for movie/videogame rentals “Videocentro” go bankrupt. Ahhhh the memories, I experienced a similar feeling when I saw that one close.
September 20, 2011 at 10:22 pm
Wow, James! I used to go there, too! Sometimes, I wonder if we’ve ever crossed paths before. If you ever shopped at a Microplay, we probably have.
September 20, 2011 at 10:48 pm
I live in a small town that actually still has a video rental store. The other two have closed down, the one that is still open actually did close down but somebody opened it in a different location. I remember when I was in elementary school if you got an A on your report card you would get a ticket for a free video/video game rental! It was awesome! Lol but I remember when we got them around 96-97 it would say “excludes N64 games: ha ha
September 20, 2011 at 10:50 pm
Interestingly, Blockbuster has been able to survive, albeit in a much smaller capacity. They’re even reopening Blockbusters that closed down where I live:
http://articles.ocregister.com/2011-05-04/news/29514366_1_online-rentals-blockbuster-bankruptcy-protection
My memories with video rentals pretty much is limited to the major chains of the 90s such as Blockbuster and Warehouse Video (anyone remember that? Seems not since I can’t find a reference to it online) and one independent chain that was in my local grocery store (which eventually replaced it with a Warehouse Video). And my biggest experiences with video rentals was actually video game rentals, Blockbuster being one of my families favorite locations to rent games and my experience with video rental stores pretty much ending after we stopped renting games (I think most gamers started just buying them after the 90s).
I still rent movies in a sort of way from my public library, which surprisingly has most of the latest films and a big selection of old films for dirt cheap to borrow.
September 20, 2011 at 10:55 pm
I have very fond memories of going to the local video store. Of course, I would almost always opt to rent a video game rather than a movie. There is one problem that would arise from time to time with video game rentals, however. In particular, I personally remember this happening after renting Secret of Mana and Final Fantasy II(IV). After renting and playing a game for seemingly endless hours, the time would eventually come to take it back. With a heavy heart, I would return the game, but have every intention of returning the next weekend to resume my never-ending struggle of good vs evil. However, upon arriving home and immediately rushing to my SNES, I would find that some ***hole had played the game for all of five seconds and taken it upon himself to save his worthless file over every previously existing file – of course including my own. My previous weekends of hard work ruined…
September 20, 2011 at 11:03 pm
Here in the Netherlands, there are movie rental places everywhere. I don’t know anyone who uses Netflix; maybe because it hasn’t caught on in Europe yet. I remember the time you could rent NES/SNES/SEGA games from the movie rental place; I used to rent the Goof Troop game because I couldn’t find it in the stores. Sadly, they don’t rent any games anymore =(
September 20, 2011 at 11:27 pm
It’s not availabe in the Netherlands, that’s why.
September 21, 2011 at 9:01 am
@metalcommand My rental places are gone and I live in the Netherlands :L
September 21, 2011 at 9:07 am
In Nieuwerkerk aan den IJssel we had and still have the Primera. In Lombardijen (Rotterdam) you have the Vidioot and stuff. But Primera is still one of the biggest shops you can rent movies. No VHS tapes anymore alas, but they do rent dvd’s and blu rays.
September 21, 2011 at 11:01 am
@metalcommand Primera? They sell books , pencils?
My video rental store in Sittard is gone. Also the Videopoint in Born.
September 22, 2011 at 6:03 am
@Erwinator Yes, they also sell books etc. But the Primera in Nieuwerkerk also rents movies
September 20, 2011 at 11:05 pm
I worked for Hollywood Video for about 5 years and i loved it. Before dvd took over we had a ton of obscure horror movies on vhs. I used to take 3 home every night because i got free rentals. The only good thing about the switch to dvd is that we had to throw away all of the vhs, which meant that i just boxed them all up and took them home. Its been years and i have yet to finish all of the tapes that i got.
September 20, 2011 at 11:08 pm
I grew in a small town, so there wasn’t much to do. When the weekend rolled around boy oh boy, was the video store a great place. It wasn’t that far from my house, walking distance in fact. I can still remember going there at nighttime with my older brother. I have memories of renting Killer Clowns for Outer Space and loving it, being scared shitless by Return of the Living Dead, and Friday the 13th movies. There was a section in the back with animated movies, Looney Tunes, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, awesome times. Then later they re-modled the place, by this time they had video game rentals. There was nothing better than renting Resident Evil 2, and playing it all night.
September 20, 2011 at 11:13 pm
You should come to Canada we still have Videotron and many other independent videostore ^_^
I remember that my brother and I when we were younger went to Videotron every week end to get our “game for the week-end” we did it for almost ten years … :3
September 20, 2011 at 11:22 pm
We had two video stores (not including the selections at my closest convenience store) back home when I was a kid – Midnight Video and The Video Home. The owners of Video Home also owned the single-screen theater up the road from it. Anyway, I remember when I was deemed old enough to spend the night at home alone, I would walk downtown to Video Home and rent a movie (heh, Nightmare on Elm Street was the first I rented by myself) for 99 cents. The store was no bigger than my first bachelor apartment and the smell still holds a place in my heart. Not quite as musty as an old book store, but still classic.
I’d also go and grab a 2L bottle of Cherry Coke and a bag of Lays Dill Pickle Chips (also both 99 cents each). Good times. The store closed LONG ago (even before Blockbuster made its appearance in my small town).
September 20, 2011 at 11:22 pm
I think its one of the reasons I enjoy “Be Kind, Rewind” so much.
September 20, 2011 at 11:47 pm
we used to have a really awesome local video rental store years ago, until it became bankrupt and a blockbusters took its place… and even both of our blockbusters are gone now
.
September 20, 2011 at 11:47 pm
I’m 32 so I’m from the same generation. I HATE that video stores are gone. There was just something better about heading out to a video store and picking a movie up. There’s just an intangible there that digital doesn’t provide. Plus, you have to remember that all of this has ended up screwing us over. Netflix and Redbox are both in bed with major studios. They don’t let you rent new releases right anyway. Instead, they make you wait a month. This is so Hollywood can make more money on DVD and Blu-Ray sales. Did we have to put with that back in the day? Hell no!! If you were there when the doors opened, you got the movie the second it came out. We had more choices. It was just plain…better.
September 21, 2011 at 1:01 am
Yeah no longer can a group of friends go to a video store and rummage through what’s there. I guess that’s replaced by standing in front of a redbox outside the nearest CVS.
With the death of video stores is also the death of game rentals. As a kid it was awesome to pick through all the games on the wall and trying to find something good. Most of the games were crap, but that excitement of reading the instructions on the way home can not be replaced. That was more fun that most of the games.
September 21, 2011 at 1:08 am
Four Star Video Heaven, Madison, Wisconsin …
http://www.fourstarvideoheaven.com/index.php
… It’s the best video store I’ve ever set foot in. However they announced this past weekend the’re moving (after 25 years) to a new location down the street. Hope they are doing good, it’s a quality store, and I will support them to the end.
Growing up in my home town during the late 80s & 90s I frequented a Video Watch. I loved that place. Those were the glory days when an 8 year old could rent anything…that place meant so much to me I still have the original 20 year old membership card for memorabilia. Around 2000 they were bought-out by a Hollywood Video, and Hollywood Video/Movie Gallery defunct last year. No joke, following hearing that news I contacted them via email requesting my accounts complete rental history. The Video Watch takeover was unique where they merged all accounts, etc so nothing changed for members except selection and store front, i.e. company identity stuff. I thought there might be a chance Hollywood Video had this data somewhere. Any way, my brother and I rented so many obscure, exploitation, b, splatter, trash fests on VHS that I can’t remember many of their titles, just bits of memorable scenes. So I wanted the history to revisit them. I explained the aforementioned in the email, they chose not to respond, hahaha.
September 21, 2011 at 1:55 am
I remember weekends in my youth, and going down to “Video Update” in my town and renting there 5 for 5 deal. 5 movies for 5 bucks for 5 nights. Friends and i would stay up all night watching movie after movie. I saw some great modern day classics like Evil Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
We now have a Family Video in our town, and I think they suck. I really hate how they put all their movies in Alphabetical order. It should be by category because 90% of the time when I rent a movie I know I’m in the mood for say a comedy or horror but I don’t know what I want to watch.
Anyways, off to watch my Netfilx.
September 21, 2011 at 2:08 am
When I visit Astoria, Oregon I go to Video Horizons. It specializes in obscure films or at least ones you wouldn’t find in Blockbuster. I remember growing up I’d always go down to the local Blockbuster, later Hollywood Video, and grab horror films I found interesting. It was part of my youth that I will always be glad to have. Years passed and with Netflix those places began closing down. When I began going to the beach I found Video Horizions which I am happy for. I miss actually going to the store and being able to pick up the exact movie I want. It has a strong nostalgic feeling to it. To this day I haven’t paid for Netflix, I’ve been stealing it from friends. I just can’t let go of some things from the past I suppose.
September 21, 2011 at 2:16 am
I remember our video store as well. There was an 18+ section too. I was too young to ever go down there and I was kind of curious but at the same time a bit scared to go near it. Our video store sold consoles too. I remember the time where my brother and I rented a Super Nintendo with a game for a few days. Yes you could rent a console. I don’t remember the name of the game, but it was some kind of space shooter. We played all day and night and our thumbs started to become very sore. almost bleeding even. So we grabbed tape and put it around our fingers so we could continue playing. You only had a few days to play after all. Later on we also rented a playstation and played The Lost World. Of course when I or either of my siblings threw a birthday party, we would go to the video rental store to pick out a movie to watch for that day.
I don’t know if it’s still open. I think last time I saw the building having a different purpose.
Great nostalgia.
September 21, 2011 at 2:22 am
I JUST took a walk in the village in Claremont, California and walked by a store called “Video Paradiso,” which is much like the TLA you describe. It is a movie nerd’s DREAM, you could find anything there. I haven’t been there in years, but I was very happy to see this place still standing, and just might become a regular customer again after seeing it tonight and reading this post.
If you ever find yourself out this way again James (about 20-30 minutes from the Twin Pines Mall,) it’s probably worth a visit.
September 21, 2011 at 3:06 am
Max Alan Zoller
VHS rental stores were awsome here in Italy, with vhs’s COVERING the walls. I still have memories of when I used to live in England when I was very young and was secretly terrified by the cover of Charles Band’s “Dolls”…creepy. Actually here in Versilia (coast of Tuscany) rental stores are really good. Netflix is unknown. We have Videovip that is really well organized and has only one copy per dvd.Blockbuster didn’t stand a chance! (and lasted under a year) Of course if you go off to small hidden towns in the mountains I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find an old vhs rental store. And , well that my two € cents.
September 21, 2011 at 3:38 am
Howard Hughes Video near the University of Idaho. Every single employee was a movie buff. Foreign films had their own section organized by country. Criterion films were one of the largest sections of the store. The cult classics section was nearly 360 degrees of blaxploitation, dated sci-fi and weird horror. The employees would put on Interstella 5555 at the end of the day and just jam out. And the new releases section had virtually every art house, foreign, and sleeper film from the previous year crowding out the latest insipid romantic comedy.
It was heaven.
September 21, 2011 at 3:47 am
Well, I still rent from video stores. Make that A video store. Believe it or not: no Netflix where I lives.
September 21, 2011 at 3:50 am
there are still rental stores here in Mexico, mostly Blockbusters, although there are a few independent ones, I know that this is going to change in the next few years, Netflix just started offering their service here in Mexico, I have been thinking this since I saw the ad for Netflix, there’s something about going to video rentals, even if it is a Blockbuster, that makes it an special experience, I remember actually renting videogames in the 90s I don’t do that anymore… I don’t know what to think for some reason I don’t want them to go away.
September 21, 2011 at 3:53 am
I remember that years ago, I was still quite young, we went (me, my siblings, and my parents) to the video store, but never knowing what to get, and take each time an hour to choose. But the guy that own the place was darn lazy, often he closed at 8pm or something, I remember many times when we went there and it was a disappointement because it was closed.
Today, I’ll admit it, I use piracy a lot because it’s very convenient, not only I can have the movie in good quality within one or two hours, but also I can find old movies I can’t find anywhere else. But don’t think I’m a total thief, for every movies I’ve downloaded and liked, I then buy it for real. The more I pirate, the more I’m using money to pay movies, and it supports good movies, so I don’t really that big of a guilty feeling, a lot of these movies I’d never have paid to risk hating them (and I don’t watch spoilerful trailers which often don’t even reflect the quality of a movie).
September 21, 2011 at 3:54 am
reading this just makes me yearn for the “golden age” of video tape rentals. i remember everything you’ve mentioned, and those experiences have earned a great place in my heart. thank you james for giving us a modern perspective on how we used to be introduced to films (and fuck, video games too). you are truly a voice to those of us nostalgic for the 80′s/90′s era.
you’re right, while there is a cesspool of any movie you could ever want to see online or through netflix, the charm of it all has dissipated. it’s just too easy nowadays. i fear that future generations will be further disconnected from the art of great film simply because there is no “wow factor” anymore to a new film being produced. granted, this works both ways: word-of-mouth is far more commonplace within the past ten years than it might have been in eras before that. in a sense that is positive, but in another i think the overall consensus becomes convoluted in an array of intelligent people, stupid people, people who care about film, and those who don’t. bottom line: you cannot trust the internet.
either way, i trust you. you’re a smart guy and i will continue to watch and follow you, as i’ve done for the past four years. i love you james. you do a great thing for a lot of us.
September 21, 2011 at 4:06 am
I can relate. I didn’t have too many friends when I was a kid, so I used a lot of time just watching VHS-tapes. Back then, I was the kid in school who knew too much about movies and it was hard to find a person to talk about the awesome films i’d seen. While other kids watched the latest blockbuster movies, thanks to video rental stores, i’d seen classics like Nosferatu, Bad Taste, The Shining, Straw Dogs, Apocalypse Now, Army Of Darkness, Tremors, Die Hard, Rocky, Goodfellas and so on.
I loved the feeling of going in to my local videostore. There was this smell of stale candy, which they sold as well, but nobody never seemed to buy any. Neither did I for that matter, but I liked the smell. I can’t really explain the feeling, but thanks to that smell and the majestic sight of tall shelves full of cool looking VHS-covers, the videostore just seemed like a different dimension or something.
Choosing the right movies was almost as fun as eventually watching them. I sometimes browsed around for an hour trying to figure out what kind of film I would like to watch. Usually it was something in the horrorsection. Every movie I picked was because of the cover. Sure, sometimes i’d wind up watching awful movies but I didn’t really mind, ’cause those movies taught me the wonders of camp humor. Boy, they made same fucked up shitty movies in the eighties.
I wasn’t all good, though. Sometimes you’d rent a movie that was rented too many times and the picture was jumping all over the place. Luckily you got a refund when that happened. I also hated rewinding tapes. It was so annoying when you rented a movie and some asshole hadn’t rewound it.
Nowadays, I don’t rent movies anymore. DVD’s are pretty cheap, so if I want to see a classic, I just buy it.
September 21, 2011 at 5:43 am
Nice.
September 21, 2011 at 6:33 am
For me (i live in finland) there are just as much video stores as there always has been cos here we don’t have netflix. We have some other streaming services such as CDON, but thats way more expensive. It’s like 10 dollars a movie and the payment isn’t monthly. You have to pay every time you rent. Now for me discovering movies started with James’s videos, when I was almost 12 I used to own about 20 movies. First off I started watching AVGN and when I got that cleared i started watching monster madness. Now when i’m 13 I have about 200+ dvds and they are mostly classic stuff (Hammer films, halloween, the terminator) They are mostly horror movies and thrillers. James also got me making movies, so James if you’re reading this I owe it all to you.
September 21, 2011 at 6:43 am
I had a video store like TLA. It was called Randy’s M&Ms. They had every strange and cult horror movie that you could think of, as well as niche games that the mainstream stores didn’t carry. It was perfect for me. I have fond memories of being in high school and walking there with my best friend to pick up strange horror titles to watch/riff. It closed a few years ago. I was really depressed. By the time it closed, I hadn’t been in years, but it was a part of a good time in my life and I was really sad to see it go.
I do love Netflix, but so many movies that I want to watch are not instantly available, and I’m not going to pay them another eight bucks a month to wait for a movie to come in the mail. When I want to watch a movie, I want to watch it -now- and not have to wait for it to come in the mail. I do miss the video stores for the same reason you do. Sometimes I just didn’t know which horror I wanted to watch until I picked up the case and said “This one.” Other times, I would have never heard of the movie until I found the case in the store.
I do know of a few video rental stores left. I think we still have some Blockbusters struggling, and one huge video and game place called Vintage Stock. Every movie and game in the store is available for rent and to buy. It’s not y our traditional movie store, though. They have cards, and old toys, and music, and all kinds of strange things. Still, I love that they have the option to rent if you’re not sure about shelling out $60 for a new game (Although I think they also have rent available for the older games they sell, but I can’t be sure).
Man, this really took me back. Thanks for the memories, James.
Meru-Sama
September 21, 2011 at 6:49 am
I worked at one of these places when I was a teenager for almost a year. Movie Magic was the name of the place. It was the kind of small-town place where, at most, you needed two staff members on hand; but rarely even that. I still remember being able to put in random movies on Sundays (we were always dead and I’d open and close by myself) and just sit and veg after everything else was done. I also got to take home as many movies as I wanted provided I returned them the next day. My boss’ theory being that it would make it easier for me to recommend films to the customers that they’d be interested in. It really was a great job, and I got a lot of exposure to a lot of films that I wouldn’t have batted an eye at otherwise.
I still remember that while I was working there DVD’s were just beginning to become available and I was the one that had to push my boss to make the changeover. At first, he was very reluctant, but the last time I was at his store (roughly eight years ago) you couldn’t find a single VHS tape. In a way it made me feel like I had personally erased a part of history and I seem to recall that I felt bad about it at the time. I did buy quite a few of the rare VHS tapes he had on hand before they were all gone. I remember getting Robot Carnival, Lensman II, and the original (Streamline Dub) Akira VHS tape and I still have them to this day.
My wife and I live in Japan now, where there are still quite a few rental chains around, but they’re not the mom and pop stores I grew up with. I’ll always remember being 17 years old and working in that store. I’ll always remember looking on excitedly while my boss un-boxed new posters and packages of VHS tapes. I’ll always remember the long evenings spent talking with people from so many different walks of life about a medium I loved. To think that you may never get to have that kind of experience in a place like that again or that my kids will never have that opportunity just… Well, there really aren’t any words for it.
September 21, 2011 at 6:50 am
I worked at a video store for about 9 years. The store had to close because the lease was up and the property owner did not want to renew it, instead opting to increase the size of the next door CVS location. The owner decided to sell all the inventory and move on; the end. But I still saw potential in the place and after talking to several banks, was approved for a loan at an amount the owner agreed to. I showed up with a check and the store closing signs were pulled. I was ready to move the store to a new location that I had scouted when the next day, the owner changed his mind and decided he did not want to sell the store and instead move it on his own. Soul Crushing. He saw my inspiration and got greedy. It’s like the kid who doesn’t play with an old toy then the minute you pick it up, he wants to pull it out of your hands. Since then, I have not stepped foot in an indy video store. All my rentals are online.
September 21, 2011 at 6:55 am
I worked at one of these places when I was a teenager for almost a year. Movie Magic was the name of the place. It was the kind of small-town place where, at most, you needed two staff members on hand; but rarely even that. I still remember being able to put in random movies on Sundays (we were always dead and I’d open and close by myself) and just sit and veg after everything else was done. I also got to take home as many movies as I wanted provided I returned them the next day. My boss’ theory being that it would make it easier for me to recommend films to the customers that they’d be interested in. It really was a great job, and I got a lot of exposure to a lot of films that I wouldn’t have batted an eye at otherwise.
I still remember that while I was working there DVD’s were just beginning to become available and I was the one that had to push my boss to make the changeover. At first, he was very reluctant, but the last time I was at his store (roughly eight years ago) you couldn’t find a single VHS tape. In a way it made me feel like I had personally erased a part of history and I seem to recall that I felt bad about it at the time. I did buy quite a few of the rare VHS tapes he had on hand before they were all gone. I remember getting Robot Carnival, Lensman II, and the original (Streamline Dub) Akira VHS tape and I still have them to this day.
My wife and I live in Japan now, where there are still quite a few rental chains around, but they’re not the mom and pop stores I grew up with. I’ll always remember being 17 years old and working in that store. I’ll always remember looking on excitedly while my boss un-boxed new posters and packages of VHS tapes. I’ll always remember the long evenings spent talking with people from so many different walks of life about a medium I loved. To think that you may never get to have that kind of experience in a place like that again or that my kids will never have that opportunity just… Well, there really aren’t any words for it.
September 21, 2011 at 7:06 am
Used to work at a video store, me and a co-worker had a tradition of watching Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail every night. Good times.
September 21, 2011 at 7:10 am
I remember growing up my Dad was the GM at a local video store. He was in charge of buying all the movies and getting them inventoried and getting them to the floor…etc…etc. He brought me to work many of times (I was 8 or 9 years old) and he would let me pick whatever movie I wanted to watch off the floor and watch there in the store. The sound was awesome! He would always bring home the new releases where we could watch them first. And I remember helping him shrink wrap the boxes and typing all the movies into the computer for inventory. It was a wonderful experience that helped me build my love for movies to what it is today and to help me and my father get closer.
September 21, 2011 at 7:16 am
We had several local video stores in my area that went under, and Hollywood video as well. That’s how I got my VHS collection was going into those stores during the clearance sales and picking up movies for a buck or two apiece. I have some pretty obscure stuff thanks to those sales. It’s sad, but at least it’s better to have these movies than to see them get scrapped.
September 21, 2011 at 7:19 am
The TLA in Chestnut Hill (NW Philly) closed earlier this year, sad to hear the one on 15th closed. I definitely liked that one more.
September 21, 2011 at 7:21 am
I agree with James that the digital age isn’t there yet, working in IT for over 16 years now, I, like most can safely assume where it’ll be in years to come. Socially we’re constantly moving to instantaneous results, and before we know it we’ll all be playing holodeck
There is however a flip side to convenience. Perusing through the NES isle of videomagic while mom is grocery shopping is a sensation my kids will never know of. Or feeling curious at the content of a game (or movie) without having trailers or internet to spoil the surprise.
Many things over the years can be related to this, remember record stores? Remember Empire Records? Remember that wall of black and white that was the cassette-tape section of the music store, and those new-fangled, overpriced, big boxed ‘CD’s’ that inhabited a small section up front?
I see people with their kindles and i-pad’s on the beach reading a “book” and am happy I had the childhood I had, falling in love not just with the characters and story in the books I read, but enjoying the smell of the crisp new hard covered novel’s pages.
One of my favorite things to do to this day is head up the coast in the fall and hit up those old ass antique stores, and dig through old 19th century literature, the smell of old print is wonderfully unique.
One day I will certainly be one of those old men that do not envy the technology of my grand-kids’ generation, but happily enjoying the nostalgia in the lack therein of my own.
September 21, 2011 at 7:23 am
I remember here is Green Bay we had a small one called Rooster video. They had alot of those obscure titles to rent including an adult section that showcased obscure B adult movies. Not much for the mainstream even in adult section. Of course they had the new releases and popular stuff but we would go there on the weekends. My friends and I would rent stuff that looked bad just to sit and smoke and MST3000 the movies. Good times. They also rented video games but they had a huge selection of unlicensed tittles for the NES. That store and Family Video introduced me to one of my favorite direct to video companies ever, Full Moon Entertainment. I still love their movies like Puppet Master, Dollman, Demonic Toys, and Trancers. I’m happy they have finally been releasing them on DVD. Before it cost a fortune on Ebay to purchase a VHS of Dollman or Puppet Master. Family video is still going strong around here for right now. When they cleared out their VHS completely I bought alot of them including some Full Moon titles.
September 21, 2011 at 7:31 am
I remember renting NES games just based on the cover art… There were more video stores than fast food places in Upstate NY. Now all the empty video kings, blockbusters, ho video, independents are pharmacies with Red Box. Most grocery stores had video rentals too. Red Box still has some newer weird indie horror movies though. I’m over Netflix, they don’t have the streaming content, and I’ll just buy a .01 dvd/vhs used from amazon if I want to see something.
September 21, 2011 at 7:34 am
My brother and I always reminisce about the old video stores (and not the ones that were chain stores). I remember when we didn’t own a VCR and actually rented one from the store. Our favorite part however was going to the horror section and looking at all the boxes. Now that most movies are on DVD you may have noticed that some artwork has changed on the boxes and for the worse. Netflix has also done this online for some as well. The best store we had though was a place called “Captain’s Video”. It’s theme was like a pirate ship of sorts and even had a talking parrot in a cage! The best part was that they had a room just for horror movies and it was done up like an old house, like in Evil Dead. I also remember as a kid that they had the NES games Bubble Bath Babes and Peek – a -Boo Poker in a glass case, if I was 18 then I would have definitely bought those, and I know James doesn’t own those as well. However, I was able to score Action 52 there for TEN DOLLARS! Full box and instructions to boot. I still have that game as it’s my most prized possession from video game history ( I came awfully close to getting Cheetahmen 2 for $80 once, guy sold it on ebay though).
Anyways, I really think it’s the experience you had at these stores that really means so much to those growing up in that time. I really miss those stores, and I understand how technology improves service and everything (I myself have not gone to a store in years), but you (or your future kids) will never get that feeling when you walk into the store and look at everything there is to be had. This truly was a staple of my childhood and I dearly miss it, and unfortunately it is a thing of the past.
September 21, 2011 at 8:16 am
There’s one local video store still open in my hometown. It’s been there for as long as I can remember, and I’m glad they haven’t shut their doors yet. Yeah, their selection’s nowhere near what it used to be, but I agree with James that it reminds me of a time when life was simpler. It’s where I caught up on my Friday the 13th knowledge as a kid, and Scooby Doo Meets the Boo Brothers was a constant checkout item.
There’s also a wooden castle in the center of the store that I remember fondly. It has 2 windows and a door on the “ground floor” and a ramp inside it leading to the “roof” (about 5 feet off the ground). I’d rush through the horror and cartoon sections, pick the movies I wanted to watch, and then spend the rest of the trip off on a medievil adventure while my parents made up their minds. I actually met one of my best childhood friends in that castle, as we hunkered down beneath the ramp in the castle, discussing our strategy for dealing with the ghost dragons wandering the land (the other customers).
It’s been a few years since I’ve been in there, and I doubt I’ll ever go back for myself. But I did on occassion make the 30 minute trip with my oldest daughter, until the castle stopped being fun (how is that even possible?). I’m glad she got to experience at least one of my fondest childhood memories. My youngest daughter is only 9 months old, and I hope the store stays open long enough for her to get at least one of those memories before it’s too late.
September 21, 2011 at 8:33 am
I gotta ask, James: Have you ever seen or heard of an old horror film called The Granny? The story was about this old, rich grandma whose family wanted her dead for her fortune, but she ends up coming back and killing them all off one-by-one with some of the worst writing and special effects ever.In the mid-90′s I happened to catch it one night on HBO, just by chance. Ever since then I’ve tried to find a VHS or DVD copy of the film but no one ever had it — from Blockbuster to Hollywood Video, even checking more “underground” places similar to TLA. Heck, most of the clerks working there had never even heard of it, but it exists. It’s even listed on IMDB:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113210/Any chance you’ve seen this one, or could find it to include in a future horror review? It definitely fits into the “It’s so bad, it’s good” category. I would almost say it was a made-for-TV film if not for the gratuitous violence and random out-of-place nudity.
September 21, 2011 at 8:34 am
I gotta ask, James: Have you ever seen or heard of an old horror film called The Granny? The story was about this old, rich grandma whose family wanted her dead for her fortune, but she ends up coming back and killing them all off one-by-one with some of the worst writing and special effects ever.
In the mid-90′s I happened to catch it one night on HBO, just by chance. Ever since then I’ve tried to find a VHS or DVD copy of the film but no one ever had it — from Blockbuster to Hollywood Video, even checking more “underground” places similar to TLA. Heck, most of the clerks working there had never even heard of it, but it exists. It’s even listed on IMDB:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113210/
Any chance you’ve seen this one, or could find it to include in a future horror review? It definitely fits into the “It’s so bad, it’s good” category. I would almost say it was a made-for-TV film if not for the gratuitous violence and random out-of-place nudity.
September 21, 2011 at 8:51 am
i was born in 91, but i still remember that same feeling. Loved looking at the VHS covers
September 21, 2011 at 8:56 am
Plenty of them left in Sweden. Good thing Netflix hasn’t come here yet and even if it did, it still sucks so bad.
September 21, 2011 at 8:58 am
My Video Rental stores are gone too.
I loved it to search of hours.
September 21, 2011 at 9:16 am
i remember renting from a store called The Video Connection in Quakertown, PA that was where i would rent all the movies i watched on cable. where i rented my super nintendo games and where i became educated in the WWF, they had every Summerslam, Royal Rumble Wrestlemania video, the store was great. All the VHS tapes were by the spines, so more could be fit on the shelf. I had to settle for West Coast Video after it shut. Some chain stores werent that bad. At a place like Blockbuster they would only carry so many Jason and Michael Myers movies and seeing some could be a pain. I never went to a Hollywood Video or West Coast that didnt carry all
September 22, 2011 at 10:08 am
@BilliamWalterHoare I remember that place! It was sad to see them go out of business. They even rented PC games. I remember raiding their store when they were going under. So many awesome SNES games for dirt cheap.
September 22, 2011 at 11:07 am
@Rad_Galaxy haha very cool man, its so cool knowing someone else on here shares a memory like that, the only flaw with these kind of stores was the fact they only rented for one night so i could never get far in a game and my parents wouldnt rent too often due to that.
September 21, 2011 at 9:22 am
I remember going to Pahr-Mor (a now defuct discount store in Ohio) with my mom and going straight to their video rental section… I first experienced Mega Man 2 on the NES from that store. It seemed like every store had a rental section back then…. Even Giant Eagle (a huge supermarket chain) had a very nice rental section that was phased out a couple years ago. And around every corner was another video rental store…. From MooVees to Hollywood Video… We still have Family Video though, which is the only rental store chain around here anymore and the only one that seems to be able to stay alive because while every other major rental chain was raising prices to stay afloat, Family Video had super cheap new and old rentals and awesome service (also they still have backroom porn sections)… They will often send you coupons in the mail to totally wipe out any late charged you have just to get you to come back… They are striving, but every other indie and major chain rental store around here has gone under… I never thought about how my kids and beyond will never get to experience these stores (unless Family Video is still around here)… But it is pretty sad to realize a once booming business has fallen because of a few (one?) online establishment and those damn Red Box things. But saying that, I love Netflix and barely, if ever, go to Family Video anymore. Hell, I barely watch cable anymore with having Netlfix on my AppleTV is better than most anything on TV now a days. But to the days of wandering around movie rental stores on Friday nights, searching the VHS and NES games for that perfect stay up all night title… I salute thee.
September 21, 2011 at 9:33 am
Love this post…hell yeah do I have some good memories of rental stories. And I remember those 2 day return times…especially as a kid in the late 80s during the NES era. Somehow those dirty bastards always had that one game that was impossible to find…like Zelda II when it was first released. I called every store in a hundred mile radius, every catalog I could get my hands on…but I could not find it anywhere! Coupled with the fact that I had seen a teaser both in the Nintendo Fun Club News (anyone remember that?) and the Official Nintendo Player’s Guide…I was salivating like a rabid dog to play that game. Turns out, the mom and pop rental store just a few miles from my house had it…and how they managed to get their grubby hands on a copy I will never know. I got the game on a Friday evening and finished it by Sunday afternoon…hardly sleeping or eating as I recall. I really think part of the reason I became so good at finishing games so quickly, even some of the next to impossible ones was due to those rental return times. But then I’d have to take it back…and in the case of Zelda II…it would be almost another year before I finally found my own copy. Thank you, and fuck you, Nintendo! ^_^
But regarding video rental stores…some of my best memories of them are actually from college in the late 90s. I used to love the social aspect….going there alone or with some buds…we had a local one where they always hired girls to make balloon animals…and usually we knew one of the girls working there so it made for some good times and a lot of inappropriate dick jokes. Walking around the store, looking at movies…it was a great place to kill an hour or so and find that movie you’d always wanted to see.
I think one of my best memories was a time I was at a party with some friends who got shit-faced drunk…and me being the only sober person there was volunteered to drive everyone to the local rental store sometime near midnight. My stupid friends were stumbling around and decided they wanted to rent anime porn…so I went off to look at the regular movies and bumped into this really cute girl I’d been wanting to ask out. We start talking and I’m about to ask her for her number when one of my friends walks up with some nasty hentai movie in his hand and says in a loud voice “hey man, check this out! Strong sexual conten….oh…ummm…hi there…(finally noticing the girl)…then he stumbled away and the girl kind of looked at me strangely and walked away. At least now I can laugh about it, but at the time I was pretty pissed off but yes indeed, certainly a bygone era and one that I will remember well.
September 21, 2011 at 9:41 am
Oh James : / I know that feeling
Video stores were fantastic!
September 21, 2011 at 9:47 am
Here in Knoxville, TN there was a Blockbuster that was still open as of March this year, but it shut down because the chain itself went under. What’s sad is, this Blockbuster was always full of people and seemed to be doing well (probably because it’s near a college campus) and I actually went there and rented a bunch of movies and games for a New Year’s party I had at the end of last year. I was sad when I drove by one day and it was shut down. I didn’t even see a ‘Going Out of Business’ sign in their window during the penultimate week. My fondest video store memory was seeing the ‘pilot’ for the Real Ghostbusters cartoon on the TV in the Kid’s Corner (or whatever it was called) section of a different Blockbuster back in the late 80s. It’s included on the DVD special features of the series collection now, but seeing this as a Ghostbusters fanatic kid was a surprising experience. The GBs are in their tan movie suits and a full version of John Smith’s RGB theme song plays as all sorts of wonderfully animated things are going on. (Here it is for those who are interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqcwocNLH00).
Another great video store memory was preordering the VHS of Jurassic Park with my dad at Gemstone Video in 1993. My dad ordered the widescreen VHS and it was when he explained to me that widescreen was better than full screen and I haven’t looked back since.
There’s a new mom and pop video store that opened about 20 minutes from my apartment that I’m gonna have to go check out… might even do it today thanks to this post!
September 21, 2011 at 9:50 am
In the next town over from mine there is still a video rental store, which has almost as many VHS tapes as it does DVD’s. The VHS Tapes are only to be purchased though, but I find myself in there searching for obscure movies you have referenced or reviewed.
September 21, 2011 at 10:03 am
Well in Finland Europe we still have plenty of those. But one in particular i remember… It had a HUGE collection of old vhs movies… Action, horror, comedy you name it. Now if you want to rent older movies there is probably only small corners of them in the rentals. Majority of the shelfs are filled with modern crap films like all these Adam Sandler comedies which are already getting VERY old…
September 21, 2011 at 10:15 am
Hey there,
There are several of us that are still going strong. We will be celebrating Video Story Day this coming October 15th to remind people about those of us that still exist. http://www.videostoreday.com/content/
Besides us, there are still quite a few “cult” or niche stores around. Scarecrow in Seattle (several other indie stores still going there), Le Video in San Francisco, Orbit/TV Eye in Asheville, Black Lodge in Memphis, and I’m sure there are more I’m forgetting. There are also quite a few in Canada, as Netflix isn’t as ingrained there.
Thanks,Todd/Owner
Wild and Woolly Video
Louisville, KY
wandwvideo.com
September 21, 2011 at 6:20 pm
@wildandwoolly I love Scarecrow! I had the thought to mention it while reading, but you beat me to it!
September 21, 2011 at 10:32 am
We still have a TON of video stores in India
September 21, 2011 at 10:50 am
Wow I miss the video rental stores in a way.. Me and friends used to go there almost every weekend and rent one or several movies and watch and then force someone’s parent to return them… Of course now it’s easier to get movies, you don’t even have to move outside the house, but it was sort of a special feeling to go and rent a movie.
September 21, 2011 at 11:02 am
I have a lot of fond memories of going to local video stores as a kid. Having said that, knowing that those scum bags at Blockbuster have gone out of business makes me very happy. They’re the ones responsible for running most of the mom and pop stores out of businesses in the first place.
September 21, 2011 at 11:11 am
There used to be a small store called Video Attractions nearby. They even had an adult section but I was much too young for that at the time.But Blockbuster but them out of business too.
September 21, 2011 at 11:56 am
I remember browsing the horror section of the old Hollywood Video store when I was in elementary school. I was too young to watch any of those movies (my mom wouldn’t rent them for me), but I studied all the covers and tried to get a feel of what kind of movie they’d be just from the artwork. The cover I remember the most is The Silence of the Lambs. The one with the close-up of Jodie Foster’s face and the death’s head moth covering her mouth. I had NO IDEA what the movie could possibly be about, or why it was in the horror section. The title did sound frightening, though.
I finally saw the movie when I was in high school and it instantly became one of my favorite movies of all time. From there, I read the book it was based on, and then all the other books in the Hannibal series by Thomas Harris. If it hadn’t been for that video store, I wouldn’t have discovered one of my favorite authors.
September 21, 2011 at 12:16 pm
it still blows my mind that the whole walk in video rental concept is deader than shit.
if you were to tell me in the 90′s that a company that mails you DVD’s, a few days after you decide to go rent a movie, is going to kill Blockbuster. id laugh in your face
i dont use Netflix but my friends do. and litterally this passed weekend as we were looking at a ‘going out of buisness sale’ for a Blockbuster, i asked them (because i still dont understand Netflix err Quickster). So what do you do if you want to get off your ass for 30m and go rent a movie? Wheres the market for that?
Appearently there isnt any!
i was hoping the maw and paw shops would start re opening again after the Blockbuster beast was slain, but i guess people dont just go rent movies when they feel like watching one. they rent them when they feel like watching one, in 2 days?
i still dont get it
September 21, 2011 at 12:20 pm
There was a Blockbuster not far from my house that was one of the last holdouts. For whatever reason, even as Netflix took over and Blockbuster was all over the news on account of its bombing stock prices, that one store just remained open. It closed about two years ago.
Recently, I have encountered two survivors of the fallout. One of them is a local business that’s been around for at least 20 years. Their neon signage advertises “cheap rentals of movies for families and adults.” This store is also in a very bad part of town and I’ve never been in there. The other survivor I actually stumbled over in a beach town. It was a “general store” type deal and they actually had an entire room devoted to DVDs for rent. They don’t really have to deal with Netflix since nobody wants to change their delivery address for a few days of vacation. Toss in the fact that the only other place within 50 miles to see a movie is a single screen movie theatre and you’ve got a niche where movie rental can survive. Finding this place while I was weathering Tropical Storm Lee in a vacation condo and had finished all of my DVDs was like Logan finding the Old Man in “Logan’s Run.”
September 21, 2011 at 12:22 pm
Renting movies was a weekly ritual for my brother and me when we were kids in the mid-’80s to mid-’90s. We had this local video store we would go to and sometimes one that was further away if I wanted to rent a Nintendo game. The one closest to us was run a husband and wife. A real mom and pop video store. They were nice too. There were three movies that my brother rented so often that the owner eventually gave him the videotapes. It really was fun to go in there and look all of the different VHS movie covers.
September 21, 2011 at 12:26 pm
Damn that should be the first of a new series of episodes: the nostalgia nerd!
I feel the same way about renting videos from an ‘underground’ videostore, there used to be one around the corner from where my parents lived. I spend a ton of money watching the most ridiculous movies u can think of… When the place closed down i bought a big box filled with obscure VHS tapes, its still in my garage somewhere.
Reading this gave me the same nostalgic feeling i got from watching be kind rewind, thx for sharing that James. I almost love your written content as much as your vids.
September 21, 2011 at 12:52 pm
Im not from Northamerica, Im from Sweden. Also over here in Europe video game rental was common. Usually you could rent video games from same stores where you could rent movies. Just some years ago retro video game stores were starting to pop up. In my city of Gothenburg there is 2-3 good retro game stores, so I guess they now have taken the place of the former video game rental stores.In these retro game stores you can buy, sell or exchange games, so its kind of a renting thing. For a fee you can change a game you bring for another, or buy games or sell games you didnt play for a while. If there is any game you miss or wanna play you can just come back later and buy it or exchange it for some other games!