A Thing of the Past

When Movie Gallery was located where I live in my hometown, there was this really cute blond who noticed I always rented horror movies and would talk with me about them (and rec some to me as well). I thought about this a little while after another rental store (Movietyme, it was called) closed its doors as the Great Recession in 2008 reared its fucking ugly head and roared with a ferocity and rumbled through the country like Godzilla leveling Tokyo--still felt--during the period when I learned I was losing my job at the factory after 12 years (it would actually lead to me getting a college degree and a nice office job, so ultimately I was better off, but that’s a whole other topic altogether). At Movietyme (a mom-and-pop that felt like a holdover from the rental stores that left the town due to various factors), there was a female owner who also noticed I rented a lot of horror movies and admitted she liked them, recommending some to me as well. The cute blond told me about Blackwater Valley Exorcism while the woman at Movietyme told me Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon was a must see. I remember both conversations distinctly (how I felt during them, liking the fact that women were talking horror with me), and I wax nostalgic thinking about them with a fondness that reverberates at this writing.

What’s the point of this? Ahhh, I’m just reminiscing, I guess. Message boards and fan festivals are venues for such discussion, but I just miss the intimacy of that one-on-one conversation that organically happens when I visit that rental store and something magical blossoms. I rented BE—thought it was rather blah—and it isn’t the film itself I recollect, but that the girl and how pleasant our rapport was.

I also recall rainy Saturdays in Hassells. It was an rental appliance store that rented out movies on the side. Clearly, this store wanted to rent stoves or lawnmowers, not movies. But they had aisles of movies. This was my golden age of VHS. They had a really run down copy of Dawn of the Dead. They actually had that “lighting eyes” VHS box of The Pit. I remember passing by Trancers, with the title of Future Cop on the VHS box. Rows of movies, and I remind myself of how time could pass and the passage of said time would amuse me. There was no pressure, and I could just search carefully for a movie that might suit my fancy.

I guess kids today can do that with torrent sites or at Netflix, or even Youtube. The internet superhighway has stolen away the thrill of the old fashioned hunt, or as I like to classify my activity as a “haunt”. Plenty of pacing on those floors, for sure. There was Downs video, with endless shelves of horror. So much horror. We took it for granted. One of the final rentals from Downs for me was Phantasm: Oblivion. About a few months later, that store would close for good. Hassells decided to go completely appliances and sell off their VHS tapes. People converged upon that place as they sold them off dirt cheap. Stripped bare, the store would no longer rent movies and soon after closed its doors for good.

Buildings once holding movies now sell goods of a different kind, sit without occupation, or are completely gone. Like drive-ins, rental stores are a thing of the past…a past I hold fondly.