Be Kind, Please Rewind!

Last week I was leaving a store and noticed the Red Box video rental unit outside. I have never used one of these and probably never will, but I know a lot of people who can't resist the $1 per day price. These days you can also get movies on demand, straight from your cable box. You can subscribe to a DVD/Blu Ray service that ships movies from a list you've created, one after another, for a flat fee per month. You can even get movies downloaded straight to your computer now eliminating any wait or drive time you had before. If you still want to go to a "video store", they still exist but for who knows how much longer. Services like "on demand", Red Box, Netflix and Blockbuster Online are eating into the profits of brick and mortar video stores who's days seem to be numbered... and that includes Blockbuster who started their online/mail service to keep up with the Jonses (or rather the Netflixes if you will.) Yes, the movie rental industry has changed a lot since I was a kid.

I remember our family getting our first VCR when I was young. It was a magnificent piece of machinery with it's less than quiet operation, bulky (yet seemingly compact at the time) case, and wired remote. Yes, wired. As in the remote control connected to the VCR via an 8 foot cable. My dad opened this modern marvel on Christmas morning and then unwrapped the movies mom had rented for him and stuck under the tree. Rented movies! This was amazing to both me as a child and the child inside of my dad. Now we didn't have to go to the theater to see every movie that we wanted to see and we didn't have to wait for them to hit broadcast TV, edited for content and ripe with commercials. Yes, our entertainment future was looking up.

Video stores in the mid 80's were a lot different than the big chains you mostly find today. There are still some small, Mom and Pop's around but I couldn't tell you where a single one is. Despite the big difference of DVD/Blu Ray as opposed to the VHS tapes (and yes, sometimes even Beta), there are other things that set the video rental experience apart in the glory days.

When we went to rent movies, you couldn't get the latest releases the day they came out... not unless you were lucky anyway. Most video stores only had one or two copies of the big new releases and were hard to find on the shelves. It was a good thing they had lots of old, really obscure stuff to rent. It really was a gamble sometimes when you rented something you had never seen. Sure there were the classics that you knew you were safe with, but when we saw a title like The Worm Eaters it was hard to pass up. My love for cult and schlock cinema was most definitely developed during these times.

To get a new release in the first few weeks it was out there were really only three options. The easiest way in the beginning was the almighty waiting list. If you became good friends with the owner it was easy to get your name at the top of the list (or as close to the top as possible). If you didn't get it the first day it was out, you were at least guaranteed to see it in the first two weeks it was out. Eventually a lot of stores phased out the waiting list because honestly it wasn't too fair. When that happened your best bet was to be at the store when they opened on the day that new movies arrived. Even then, a lot of the stores didn't get their delivery from UPS until later in the day and you quickly learned about what time that delivery would appear. And finally, you could hang around the video store browsing as long as you could hoping that someone would return something new so you could put down that copy of Frankenhooker and take some quality entertainment home.

In my town, the small Mom and Pop's were the only way to go until a larger store moved into the neighborhood. Technically it was part of a chain, though I think there were only 3 other stores under the same name and it was still regional. Once this store opened most of the others had to shut their doors. While the new store had a bigger and better selection, it was still sad to see the others disappear. I wouldn't realize how much I loved the video renting experience until many years later. The fun was gone and a new age had begun.

These days when I do go rent a movie it's rather methodical. I go with a plan and I stick to it. I still try to browse, but being in a more "sterile" environment it's just not the same. You can't even build a friendship with the people that work at the large chains because they have too many customers to deal with and the turnover is so great.

Video rental has lost it's soul. Actually the whole movie experience, whether in the theater or in your home, has lost it's soul. I still love movies as much as ever, but I will forever miss the simpler days when a copy of Hell Comes to Frogtown, brought home in a thick, vinyl shell was enough to keep me entertained for the night.