Lost in Technology

It's Halloween time again. Time for costumes, candy treats, cold-dark evenings, and horror flicks. Last evening I started paging through my cable company's Videos On Demand. As great of an invention as being able to pick and watch a movie without leaving your house is; it does not hold water to old video rental stores. Sure, throughout the month of October I could have watched many horror classics; but, what about the low budget "B movies" that are so entertaining?

When I was in high school I was lucky enough to have a great video store called Video City in a neighboring town. The place originally opened in an old railroad dining car, but quickly outgrew its environment in both members and video selection. To accommodate their customers, Video City not only moved across the street into a double-wide trailer, but also stayed open 24 hours a day - every day.

I have fond memories of late nights searching the "B-movies" for something funny and scary, maybe an old zombie flick or something with the Coreys (Haim or Feldman) in it. New movies came out on Mondays at midnight (Tuesday morning technically). The store would be packed on the nights that a "big" picture was to debut. At exactly midnight an employee would walk out with a box of available rentals and sling them onto the floor...people would dive after the copies like pigs being fed slop. It was always an entertaining sight. If you weren't lucky enough to snag a copy of your own you could speak with the manager and "reserve" a copy for a later date...usually a few days later.

Back then, summer nights were often spent playing hearts or spades with friends as an old movie played in the background. The card games would pause at good scenes or during heated discussions of films (purists would call them movies, but to me...they were films).

I remember one Video City employee never checking ID, allowing anyone with tenacity to go into and rent movies from "the back room." Even better, believe it or not, were all the horror movies that required the renter to be 18 or older. Evening after evening my friends and I would rent movies such as "Chopping Mall", "Dawn of the Dead", "My Bloody Valentine", and "Frankenhooker." Try to find these classics on your cable's Movies On Demand or even at Blockbuster or any other chain rental store.

As a lazy guy I love Movies On Demand, as a guy who loves "B movies" and older, less known films...I hate it. You also can't find a good B-movie at Blockbuster or any other mega-movie rental place; no, if you want this stuff you must go to your local mom-and-pop video store. Maybe even take a trip to Video City (you can find it near Apollo, PA), they'll be open...they always are.

As a final thought, you may be able to get these films from internet based agencies like netflix...however, there is just something special about walking through a store, looking at all the video covers, picking the box up and reading the synopsis, and then arguing with your friends over which film to rent.