“ Our local video shop man had great troubles’
After a film was at the cinema, but before a film is generally on sale (also called “home release”), there would be a window of perhaps a few months when the retail price of a single VHS band would be around £ 100 ($ 133). In a world of digital media that now feels crazy, but it was obviously profitable for rental stores to buy recordings at this price.
Our local video shop man had great problems to make copies. You only needed two VHS machines and a color photocopier for the box cover and you were in business. Mchevette
‘Just in time for my birthday’
My daughter passed the video store on the way back to school. She knew that I loved the great Lebowski, and she returned home from the school and harassed them – Canihavethepostercanihavethepostercanihavethoster – until they finally gave her, just in time for my birthday. Beaver
‘Laugh like drains every week’
Friday in Blocsbuster was one thing with us in the 90s. Fill up on beer, then remove the most stupid horror films that we could find. We laughed like drains every week. Good times.
‘Best work I have ever had’
I worked in a video rental store on weekends in college, 2004-2008. And it was not a franchise either, it was a little “mom and pop” store. Best work I have ever had, paste a film on television hangs up in the corner of the ceiling, organize the shelves according to my own whims and fantasies, browse the cinema magazines that I have brought, bring back the best posters.
I loved adapting a recommendation for a customer. Given what they were in mood, actors they loved / did not like, what they had seen lately. I loved giving a film to a client during the quarter Friday evening, then hearing their criticism on Saturday afternoon when they returned it. Marysays
‘She laughed so strong’
I worked in video stores for years; I remember, one evening, these two guys and a woman came to the store in which I worked in a resolutely rural part of Arizona. They watched around him a little and chose action films, it was a slow evening, and my colleague and I had looked at a lot of TB about nothing on the video instructor of the store. While the only guy checked the videos, the woman and the other guy went to the instructor and started watching the film. After finishing checking, the first guy joined the others in front of the instructor. They stood there watching a good time. Finally, the first guy turned to his companions and exclaimed: “I do not understand the Ad * MNED thing they say.”
My colleague had to withdraw to the back of the store because she laughed so hard. Dwgrasse
‘I forgot to take it back’
Remember that we hired the defense of the kingdom of our local batteries (a surprisingly good selection!) And then I forgot to take it back. We only made a thick end of a year later and we remember very well about my mother’s collapse – she thought that payment delays were going to put us bankrupt (imagine if they had insisted on a late daily rate, we could have paid the film. Like the realization of the film). Fortunately, it was so late that they could not find our card in the battery and had no idea that we had so long. UPSHOT – We did not go bankrupt. Big film, however. Johnnysmooth
“I started the video cassette!”
Worked in a video store in the suburbs of Dublin, in the summer of 1996, I suppose. A gentleman entered and asked me for a “cowboy photo” to rent, adding that he had seen them all since the 1950s. Wayne, Eastwood, Cooper. You call it, son! So I recommended his death from his jarmusch.
He returned it the next day or should I say threw the video cassette and just said “Kerrr-Ap!”
So I asked him what his favorite Western was and I could perhaps find something similar.
City Slickers 2, it was impassive. Fterical
“The Redneck antagonist bit the head of a living chicken”
When we obtained our first VHS player, probably around 1987 or 88, my family used to rent films from our local Garage Mobil. He had a small but decent selection, although in the late 1980s, we had moved to a larger independent rental shop a few kilometers away, which was still well in the 2000s.
My parents naively praised / with pleasure for me and my friends to look after school on Friday, generally 15 or 18 certificates when we were really too young for part of the content. I remember that they were quite surprised by Robocop in particular, but they always continued to rent everything I asked, but inappropriate, it was for a young teenager. During a projection of the Dismal Horror Film Geek (also known as “ Backwoods ”), my mom entered the living room with a set of sandwiches and drinks for me and my friends, just like the antagonist Redneck bit the head of a live chicken, and to date, I remember his exclamation: “ Oh no, not, not very nice, not very nice, not very nice, not very nice, not very nice, not very nice. Get out of the room and let us watch the film. Profyleneim
‘We looked in an amazed silence’
I was 14 when my older brother returned home, bringing a video recorder with him – a game changer at the time. Our local record store had just started renting tapes, and one in particular caught my attention: the Terminator. In one way or another, despite being a minor, I managed to rent it.
That night, a group of friends came, and we looked in an amazed silence while Arnold Schwarzenegger came out of the sphere of time moving and started its relentless robotic hunt for Sarah Connor. We were completely breathtaking.
Since that night, I have owned the Terminator in almost all the formats it has been published – VHS, DVD, Blu -ray and now 4K UHD. Almost 40 years later, he is still my favorite film of all time. Dotcom1970
“Excitement crash”
My first video rental store was on Elliot St in downtown Liverpool. It was £ 30 to become a member, thinking it was scandalous at the time, and still to date, at 40. The good films were difficult to obtain, constantly in and out of the store, letting you hire the lie of what was left, mainly nicknamed graphic horror films B, which had to be made at a cost of a few dollars with a free donut thrown to make a good measure (the massacre of the Texas chainsaw). But when one of these elusive films on which you had the heart was on the shelf, for example Midnight Express or flamboyant stools, just remember excitement, and that I could not wait to go home, and insert and press the game. Aubrey26
‘I can still feel the moldy carpet’
Crossing the Pokey videos store with my father in the middle of the week and bringing together the courage to set up the dark staircase in the horror section upstairs where, by the raw lighting of a single bulb, my young eyes have widened to the lurid case of generic rental that customers can bring home. One of my happiest memories and an experience that has largely contributed both to my adult love of the kind of extreme horror and physical media in general. I can always feel the moldy carpet to date. Rod
‘I miss these days terribly’
As a child in the 80s, my mom took us to this Back Street video store at Blandford Forum, which was essentially someone’s house with the store in the cellar. I used to covet LURID illustrations on Clamshell’s videos in the horror and sci-fi section with titles such as Hell Come to Frogtown, The Burning Case, Island of Death, etc. My mother once rented us wrongly the parents who featured Randy Quaid instead of parenting which is a completely different proposal …
The woman who directed the shop made me shine and held me (with hindsight, really inappropriate!) Promotional posters for me because she knew how much I loved art. As a tweenager, the wall of my room had huge headlines of brain damage, a nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
I miss these days terribly: doom-scrolling through an endless path on Amazon Prime does not cut it … TeedUBYABEE
“A deep black adult world to which I did not have access”
Growing up, I had a video rental shop five minutes from my house called Videotronic. A Friday evening, my brothers and sisters and I, as well as the children who lived next to it, we found ourselves there to rent something like a short circuit, a labyrinth or the bride of the princess.
A strong memory that I have is the covers of horror films – things like Troll, Shocker, Fright Night, House, Hellraiser – They felt like a deep adult world I had not access and I did not know if I wanted. I am sure that some of them are not as frightening as the cover suggested to me at the time.
The other thing was the street hunting cabin they had in the back. I’m talking about the original Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, not subsequent revisions. We were completely obsessed with this, but my parents were quite strict with money and it was a rare joy to have a book to put in it. Sam_jenks
