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Our first Video Rental Store membership was at Video West, because we had chosen poorly in the early days of home video equipment and went with a BETAMAX rather than a VHS Player. My parents had old family friends who owned the local Zenith TV & Radio Repair Shop and they assured us that the BETAMAX was the way to go; better picture quality, smaller tapes, more variety. And when you looked at the prices - $300 for a VHS or $1600 for a BETAMAX, you just KNEW that the BETAMAX was the superior American product and that the VHS was some piece of disposable plastic crap made in some Communist country (this was the beginning of The Reagan Years, kids). Not wanting to seem unpatriotic, we chose the Zenith BETAMAX. Of the two Video Rental Stores in all of my home town, Video West was the most high-brow because they had the largest selection of BETA tapes for rent - nearly A HUNDRED different tapes!
Another reason to go with Video West rather than Suncoast Video (who only had about 50 BETA movies and had chosen instead to focus on the inferior VHS format with over 200 titles) was that when you rented just TWO MOVIES at a time, you would get a FREE KIDS MOVIE RENTAL for NO CHARGE. Let the kids watch The Black Hole, then the whole family gets together to watch Oh God, send the kiddies off to bed so that Mommy and Daddy can snuggle watching Kramer Versus Kramer. ALL FROM THE COMFORT OF YOUR OWN COUCH!!! The "Kids Video" section was almost half of the BETAMAX movies and included a bunch of Anime imports that everyone just assumed must be for kids because it was cartoons, and about 17 different Disney movies (possibly every Disney movie that had ever been released up till that time?) so there was NO WAY we could EVER run out of free kids movies to watch!
Eventually, I started running out of non-threatening movies and was forced to choose between "Something Wicked This Way Comes", "The Watcher In The Woods" or "The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow & Other Scary Tales". Those three movies combined scared me away from horror films for SEVERAL YEARS. It wasn't till Aaron Fowler's 13th Birthday (a good 5 years later) that I was forced to see another horror film, "The Evil Dead". I only watched half of it before pretending to be asleep. But then when I was about 15 and finally "Blooming" a bit later than anyone else, I realized the MOST horror films on video had BOOBS in them and so I became a HUGE fan of horror films. Somewhere along the line it became less about boobies and more about clever writing and special effects. I became familiar with names like Tom Savini and George Romero. Sam Rami and Bruce Campbell were my obsession, and Zombies were my favorite monsters.
I only started writing this entry because I had a nightmare about Zombies and was trying to get to the root of why it had terrified me so much that I couldn't go back to sleep. I used to BEG for Zombie Nightmares! I felt prepared! I felt like I was being cheated! I wanted nightmares where I could plow through crowds of the undead with chainsaws and samurai swords! But now... now they are ALWAYS terrifying. Did I bring this on myself, I wonder? Was it all those years of horror films coming back to haunt me?
I've lost interest in writing my history with Horror now, but figure I'll post this because it was a good exercise in writing :)
Another reason to go with Video West rather than Suncoast Video (who only had about 50 BETA movies and had chosen instead to focus on the inferior VHS format with over 200 titles) was that when you rented just TWO MOVIES at a time, you would get a FREE KIDS MOVIE RENTAL for NO CHARGE. Let the kids watch The Black Hole, then the whole family gets together to watch Oh God, send the kiddies off to bed so that Mommy and Daddy can snuggle watching Kramer Versus Kramer. ALL FROM THE COMFORT OF YOUR OWN COUCH!!! The "Kids Video" section was almost half of the BETAMAX movies and included a bunch of Anime imports that everyone just assumed must be for kids because it was cartoons, and about 17 different Disney movies (possibly every Disney movie that had ever been released up till that time?) so there was NO WAY we could EVER run out of free kids movies to watch!
Eventually, I started running out of non-threatening movies and was forced to choose between "Something Wicked This Way Comes", "The Watcher In The Woods" or "The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow & Other Scary Tales". Those three movies combined scared me away from horror films for SEVERAL YEARS. It wasn't till Aaron Fowler's 13th Birthday (a good 5 years later) that I was forced to see another horror film, "The Evil Dead". I only watched half of it before pretending to be asleep. But then when I was about 15 and finally "Blooming" a bit later than anyone else, I realized the MOST horror films on video had BOOBS in them and so I became a HUGE fan of horror films. Somewhere along the line it became less about boobies and more about clever writing and special effects. I became familiar with names like Tom Savini and George Romero. Sam Rami and Bruce Campbell were my obsession, and Zombies were my favorite monsters.
I only started writing this entry because I had a nightmare about Zombies and was trying to get to the root of why it had terrified me so much that I couldn't go back to sleep. I used to BEG for Zombie Nightmares! I felt prepared! I felt like I was being cheated! I wanted nightmares where I could plow through crowds of the undead with chainsaws and samurai swords! But now... now they are ALWAYS terrifying. Did I bring this on myself, I wonder? Was it all those years of horror films coming back to haunt me?
I've lost interest in writing my history with Horror now, but figure I'll post this because it was a good exercise in writing :)
