Video Store Memories

Another cool VHS box. I never saw this one. I assume it’s terrible.

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Got it. Now I’m happy again. :wink:

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I get the Mappy music stuck in my head all the time.

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MST3K actually did a lot to expand my moviewatching tastes. Because of some riffs in a few MST3K episodes, I made it a point to check out our foreign film selection at Blockbuster (as woefully understocked as it was) for some Bergman and Kurosawa films.

I made it a point to catch some other selections, too, and I’m not sure I would’ve gotten there without that push from MST3K.

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Oh, for real… that lobby got that music FIRMLY LODGED in your mind and made it refuse to leave.

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We were lucky when it came to indie, foreign, classic and rare films in my town, because an art house style video store opened up. Then a video store that stocked mostly psychotronic movies showed up and I saw several MST3K movies pre-riffed. They had a special Ed Wood section.

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YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS :smiley:

I remember being inordinately jazzed over our video store carrying Half a Loaf of Kung Fu.

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MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD LUCKY

I always hoped for an arthouse-style video store to open up in my neck of the woods, but… [considers his neck of the woods] … yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.

I was too young to appreciate/notice what kind of offerings our mom-and-pop store in the neighborhood would have had before it closed down. I remember mostly mainstream stuff of the tapes that I do remember, so I guess I couldn’t have held out much hope for the place to carry the out-of-the-way finds.

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The first video store I remember being in was a Betamax store. It had way more space than it needed because there weren’t that many titles available yet. It was like a car display room, with stuff spaced out and a few titles propped up on easels on top of tables. I remember they had a movie called If You Don’t Stop It, You’ll Go Blind. I think that’s the only title I remember.

Video stores always had a separate room for porn, and for some reason they always had those swinging old-west saloon doors on that room. I have no idea why. Probably so it could function as a visible barrier while also allowing the staff to keep an eye on people in there.

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We were a pretty tame group in high school. Our idea of a good time was to hit the Blockbuster (or that other place, whatever it was called), find two or three of the worst looking rentals we could, go back to a friend’s house, order a couple of pizzas and spend the evening trying to make each other laugh by making fun of the movies. Couldn’t tell you what any of those movies were … I know there was an evil possessed tree killing oblivious teenagers at some point because that became a running joke for a while, but they were all terrible.

Within a few years my friends and I had all gone off to college and the group never hung out together again, but hey, look! A new show on Comedy Central where they make fun of terrible movies!

And here we are.

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My wife worked in a video store. Believe me, it didn’t stop them. Thankfully, she was never required to do clean-up duty. The owner did that.

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Both have been remastered and released on Blu Ray by 88-Films. My little store in the OP didn’t stock anything like that though. Some of the other ones did though and a few of my Jackie Chan DVDs are ex-rentals. I did get a boxset of 3 VHS JC films from a newsagent though. They were Half a Loaf, Dragon Fist and Spiritual Kung Fu.

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It didn’t have a dirty film section either from what I recall although there may have been some films for mummies and daddies along the top shelf in discreet cases.

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Where I grew up, I remember the very early days of home video rentals, before the Blockbuster/Hollywood Video model came to the fore, when mom-and-pop stores often had only one or two copies of even the big new releases, and you had to put your name on a waitlist to get them. Eventually they figured out they could buy up multiple copies and sell the excess when interest waned.

We had a great place called Picture Show Video. The actual VHS tapes were all in a room behind the counter; you’d pick up a round sales tag hanging on a nail below the art box on the shelf and take it up to the clerk, who’d go fetch your tape. There were so many movies I would never have watched there as a kid — even if my parents had let me — but man, I loved looking at the box art.

Here’s a gem I was fascinated by and actually did watch numerous times.

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! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

OH SNAP, ARE YOU KIDDING ME :smiley:

I -heart- Dr. Otto and the Riddle of the Gloom Beam! Yeeeeeears ago, my folks randomly got me that for Christmas because they knew how much I liked Ernest P. Worrell and the series Hey Vern, It’s Ernest!

Also, because video stores and all, Ernest rentals would come up quite a bit here and there.

John Candy, too. Loved anything John Candy did, and I was always on the lookout for his stuff at the video store. Hell, I ended up seeing Spaceballs this way, and seeing that well before I ever saw any of the Star Wars movies.

By the time I actually got to Star Wars, I ended up thinking, “Wait… this is like Spaceballs, but not anywhere near as funny.”

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Let me chime in as another Dr. Otto lover who discovered it in a video store. What a fun movie!

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This is really good to know, and I wouldn’t mind snapping those up.

NICE :smiley:

Yeah, our Blockbuster didn’t have an extensive collection along those lines (quelle surprise), but if there was anything involving Jackie Chan, yeah, that got rented with the quickness.

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In the early days rentals were everything… actually buying videos could be expensive as hell. I remember asking about buying one of those Rankin-Bass Christmas specials and it was something like $120… and this was in early 80’s money.

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As a child I was less about the movies and more about that wonderful video game section. It was a great way to find out whether or not something was worth using a birthday or Christmas present. There was one down the street from us I could walk to on my own, and I remember taking off extra early one day because Super Mario 3 was available to rent and showing up just as the store opened to make sure I got to rent a copy.

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We’ve been really lucky in the UK as over the past 5 years or so the boutique labels Eureka and 88 have been releasing a lot of Hong Kong classics from the 70s and 80s (and occasionally beyond). Pretty much every notable pre-90s Jackie Chan is available now here on Blu Ray with all sorts of different cuts and audio options available. You can even get the Police Story Trilogy in 4K HDR with Dragons Forever getting a 4K release in a few weeks. 88 are operating in the US now so maybe they’ll re-release some of those that were originally only released in the UK.

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