It was in the early 80's when my fellow teenaged buddies and I would pool our funds on a Friday night, some for beer and the rest to go toward the rental of a VCR (not many people owned one in its early days) and a stack of movies on videotape.
My one pal, John, would always host our late night movie marathons. There were usually five of us in our little group, and maybe occasionally another wannabe would tag along. We were all fans of the sort of movies aimed at teenage boys... Alien, Bladerunner, Apocalypse Now, Escape From New York, Superman, Blazing Saddles and Spaceballs (among other Mel Brooks comedies), Stripes, the later James Bond movies (with Roger Moore), First Blood, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, Terminator, and the Star Wars movies. Just to name a few. A lot of sci-fi and comedies, but rarely horror, since one of the guys had an issue with scary stuff.
In our smallish city (just a notch or two bigger than a "town"), I believe there was just the one rental store that offered VCRs, too. All I remember was my buddy somehow snagging his mom's credit card so we could get the VCR as well... you know, the store needed that information in case anything happened to the player.
Anyway, our crew, or at least a couple of us (I was always there to help with the selections) would pick out a handful of movies to get us through the night, and maybe even the following night, Saturday. Our lives kind of revolved around that guy's house... headquarters for most of the parties and low-key gatherings.
The mid-80's saw me moving away from home and to another city. Here I shacked up with a girlfriend and we set ourselves up with a TV and VCR (plus the very first Nintendo NES game system!). Video rental stores, including the big chain stores, were sprouting up everywhere. Like Jumbo Video and Blockbuster. I'm not sure when Rogers came along, but I did frequent that shop for a long stretch of time, too. And every corner store had a movie rental section. Even better, the tiny convenience shop in the basement of our apartment building offered a selection of the latest video releases. We'd usually venture out to the bigger video spots for more choice, but if we were stuck or bored, we had that little place onsite to satisfy our need for immediate entertainment.
After several years, the old lady and I found ourselves in some new digs at the other side of town. Here, we had more rental shops to choose from, and we really put that VCR through its paces. I seem to recall seeing the Lethal Weapon and Eddie Murphy movies on VHS as the 80's wound down, then the 90's brought us Terminator 2: Judgement Day and a myriad of other Arnold, Stallone and Van Damme action flicks. Jurassic Park. And Pauly Shore, Sean Astin and Brendan Fraser came out with a wacky comedy that I loved at the time.... Encino Man... which I rented more than a couple of times.
There was a certain fun vibe about the video stores. The better ones, like Blockbuster, offered free popcorn while you browsed, and even had several phones around the store so you could call home to see if the family or friends would like such and such a film (aww, you don't wanna see Hellraiser?). The process of exploring the store was an adventure. You might see exactly what you want in the New Releases section and get out of there in record time. But you might have a tough go of it, having seen so many movies already, and need to spend a lot more time pouring over the titles. And this is where those weird and unknown videos jump out at you. Hmm, is it about time I actually saw Rawhead Rex?
I think it was in 1995 or '96 when I bought my very first movie. It was actually a trilogy... take a guess.... the Star Wars saga (as we knew it so far, back then): A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi... all on glorious VHS tape in a neat boxed set. This was before the widescreen versions were made available. Hey, there were no flatscreen TVs back then, so what was the point, eh? I loved finally owning my favourite movies of all time. I watched them often. Until the Special Editions came out. Then I had to fork over even more money to George Lucas. Thanks for that! But the newly remastered picture looked amazing, so I wasn't disappointed.
And that, my friend, was the beginning of my movie collecting. I joined Columbia House for a while, building a small library of favourites, stuff like The Shining, American Werewolf in London, Terminator, some volumes of selected episodes of 60's Star Trek, The Monkees, and Twilight Zone, and even some kids shows, like Flintstones, and H.R. Pufnstuf. I can't remember many of them now, but those were a few favourites.
I still rented videos on a regular basis, always with an eye toward assessing them as future purchase prospects. Into the 2000's, the video stores phased out VHS tapes and loaded up the shelves with DVDs. The "previously viewed" tapes were put on sale, and that's how I amassed an even bigger movie collection. Not only did I find modern mainstream stuff at low, low prices, but by scouring every shop and sale bin in the city, I tripped upon delightful weird oldies, like a copy of one of my fave classic horrors, The Uninvited (1944).
I was still doing the VHS thing, though. I wasn't an early adopter of the DVD format. A good thing, too, since prices of players had dropped significantly by the time I did get one. Plus the rental outlets and used media shops had lots of DVDs for very reasonable prices.
But the rental store experience was losing its lustre. The atmosphere of fun and adventure was dissipating. The exploration of the store shelves became less user friendly as most of the multitudes of DVDs were arranged with only their spines visible. Way to ruin the quick scan! Now you got a kink in your neck, bending sideways to read the spines, and it was increasingly difficult, and even boring and time-consuming, to read every single one of them. So you'd skim them less thoroughly, missing the potentially good ones. Drag!
Those days of video tapes with their cover art facing outward made it more likely that you'd take a chance on an unknown, and enjoy a happy discovery... a hidden gem!
The internet and its availability of free and rental movies spelled the doom of the video stores. A few years back, when the last of my neighbourhood shops held massive "close-out sales", I cleaned up. I came out of one of those stores one day with over a dozen great films, all at amazingly low prices. So my collection grew, but my access to rentals dwindled even further.
The only thing that comes even a little close is online streaming movie rentals. I've done it many times, though there are occasionally technical hiccups, The shopping/browsing experience is nothing like looking at physical shelves where you can pick something up and read the synopsis and think about it. I've used Youtube, the Cineplex site, CinemaNow, and even movie studio sites to rent digital flicks. Their prices can be a little high sometimes, but they'll have to do, because I don't want to buy to own everything I watch.
And sites like Netflix serve a purpose, though even this method can be frustrating. For all the films on Netflix, I can still browse their catalogue for a half hour, then shut it down, infuriated that I could find nothing decent to watch. Either I've already seen them or they are all awful-looking movies. I've contacted Netflix to add more good movies to their site, but I've seen little improvement.
Now that I've cancelled all TV cable services, I have only the internet to serve me. Well, I still buy favourite movies and TV shows on home video, but so far I haven't found a good substitute for the charm of the traditional rental store.
And no free popcorn while I'm browsing!
No comments:
Post a Comment