When I was but a wee lad, an amazing invention came out: the Video Cassette Recorder/Player. We weren't a wealthy family, but my dad (a postman) delivered mail to Sounds Easy, the first video store I remember, and once a month, he would rent a VCR and a movie, bring them both home, and we would all watch something together. Sounds Easy had a printout of all the titles they had available (almost three hundred films!) and as I had just learned to read, I got to go down the list, looking for stuff that sounded good. Suddenly, you could pick movies to watch, and there they were, on your TV screen! The first film I remember Dad renting was The Wizard of Oz, which I chose even though it was shown on television every year (hey, first time I got to see it without commercials!). Soon after, we had rented the James Bond, Pink Panther, and Jimmy Stewart/Hitchcock films.
Eventually, we got our own VCR, a thirty pound top-loading JVC with huge coloured buttons and a remote control attached with a cord. You could tape programs off TV, but you couldn't buy videos in those days. And so it was to the Sounds Easy we went to rent our movies. That's how I first saw Star Wars, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, and Dragonslayer.
Video stores sprouted up everywhere. There were videos at 7-Elevens, in every grocery store, and even pizza places had tapes for rent. It was exciting and fun. I liked going in the stores, checking out the Cartoons and Family aisles, reading the backs of the Horror selections to imagine what the films might be like. The business was booming.
Of course, this was before the dark times. Before Blockbuster.
During the next few years, video stores came and went, some I liked, some I didn't. Some were successful and some went under. Sounds Easy went out of business and a Chinese restaurant is there now. My family started to rent videos from the gas station or from Video Hut, which always had a slightly damp smell. Even the general store in my minuscule home town carried VHS tapes, though not a lot of them.
When I went away to college, tyranist and I finally lived in the same city and found ourselves spending much more time together than we ever had before. We'd go to the movies and rent videos, and I discovered that he had a taste for Horror, something he'd never really expressed to me during our teenage years.
At one point, we made a list of all the horror films we wanted to rent, and went about trying to track them down. It wasn't easy, because in the time between high school and college, the big chains (Hollywood Video and Blockbuster) had moved into town, and they only stocked new tapes, comprised primarily of movies from the last few years. When tyranist and I started reviewing horror films, we abandoned our list and were forced to rent whatever the video stores had in stock.
I was surprised by the difference of these chain stores from the friendly family-run environments I had grown up around. While the woman who ran the Video Hut knew me by name and would save me posters when I asked her to (it was she who convinced my mom to rent me Aliens, back in 1987), the employees of Blockbuster knew nothing about movies, didn't care about the customers, and when asked for help would say, "If it's not on the shelf it must be checked out." The employees at Hollywood Video, which I was so excited about when it opened, cared nothing about their clientele. When I brought to their attention that the case for Night of the Demons actually contained the Italian film Demons, they nodded and put it back on the shelf. Sure, these kids were forced to say "Hello!" to every customer that came in the door, but it was always clear that it WAS forced.
To find films that were out of print, or not huge hits everyone had seen, we had to find a store that had been there more than a couple of years. Eventually, we discovered a couple of sources for old tapes: grocery stores that had been renting tapes since the 80's, and the few Mom & Pop independent video stores left in the town. That's where we could find obscure Eighties Slashers and little-known Seventies Horror.
Tyranist took a stand first. He didn't like the way the big chains did business, and wanted to support the smaller stores. I didn't see a problem with the big guys until I was harassed by the twenty-four year old manager of the local Blockbuster, who called me on a Saturday morning, accusing me of not returning a DVD that was sitting on his shelf. When he discovered the film in question right in front of him, he hung up without an apology. The next time I went to that store, when I was told I had late fees due to a DVD I had out for two weeks, the six year old behind the counter told me he didn't have the authority to remove the fee.
I was now officially on tyranist's side. In the little town we had grown up in, there were three video stores and two supermarkets that rented videos, so it looked like we'd have plenty of options, and plenty of alternatives to the chain stores.
In fact, I rejoiced when a store opened in his hometown that had HUNDREDS of previously-unknown horror videos, some of which still came in those ridiculous oversized boxes from the birth of the medium. It was called Bob's Video, which tyranist remembers as the place where we once rented fifteen tapes in one day. Mere months after I first discovered this store (only renting thirty or so of its selection), a Blockbuster Video opened in town. I moved away, and Bob's closed down.
Between 1998 and 2001, all but one of those sources for Horror closed. Even the grocery stores stopped renting videos. The only Mom & Pop video store left in my college town started renting edited videos, and had to be burned to the ground.
This was no big deal to me, because I had moved to good old polluted Los Angeles. There are still Mom & Pop stores here. I live next to one, in fact. It was there that I discovered such obscurities as The Pit, Bloody Birthday, Fatal Pulse, Eyes of Fire, Midnight, Night Life, Watch Me When I Kill, Ghosthouse, Too Scared To Scream, Anguish, and The Incredible Melting Man. It's a friendly atmosphere, and when the register jockey says "hello," he means it.
There was a store called Dave's Laser Place in Burbank that went out of business last year. It was a cool store that had regular events and signings, and it went under because they couldn't compete with the chain stores. I first met John Landis and John Carpenter in that store, and today, it sits empty.
Another Mom & Pop video store, near my last apartment, had a guy who knew my name when I walked in the door. I asked him why they didn't have Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me and he ordered it for the store.
These are incentives to give them my business. The local Ballbuster is constantly busy; you have to stand in line just to ask if they carry something. They don't need my two or three dollars. They'll be in business a month after the apocalypse.
But I feel its my duty to go to the Pro Videos, the CineFiles, the LaserBlazers, the MovieHoles, the Houses of Video, and the Video Store Named Desires, even if it's a half mile down the road from the Hollywood Video. These places DESERVE my business. They depend on me to stay afloat. Who knows, if I had written a letter to tyranist's hometown newspaper urging people to go to Bob's Express Video due to its excellent selection and non-soulless personnel, it might not have disappeared as fast as it did.
I realize that this essay has a lot less to do with Horror than my usual fare. But hey, it's something I feel strongly about, and something worth mentioning. Horror movies are probably the best example of why a Mom & Pop's video store is a valuable resource, since so many are issued once and then never again.
Not every town has a local, independently-owned rental store anymore. The chains have seen to that. But if you're lucky, and you have the choice between giving your dollar to the RST Video or the Big Choice, I urge you to go to where your dollar can really make a difference. Even if it does smell a bit odd in there.
Rish Longfellow Outfield
March 2004