Movie Rental Store Nostalgia

I think I still owe Hollywood Video a late rental fee

Also....

End of Summer Sleepover at The Last BLOCKBUSTER - Houses for Rent in Bend, Oregon, United States

 

The rental store in my home town was and still is called "The Movie Store."

 

My hometown had 2 places: Classic Family Video and Hometown Video. I would often walk to the latter after middle school - they'd give me free freshly popped popcorn in a classic red and white box and I could rent horror movies for .99. I am VERY nostalgic for video stores and I miss them dearly. You'd take a chance based off of the box art and synopsis - no trailers to watch beforehand nor internet reviews to read.

 

We had one in my hometown called "Village Video" which also had video games to rent. It was great.

 

We had a mom and pop video rental place in my hometown called Video House that I frequented in high school and college in early part of the century. It was at a time where most of their inventory was VHS but expanding with DVD. My first rental there one weekend I got Taxi Driver and American History X and those two movies blew me away.

 

Worked at Blockbuster while it was closing down in canada, AMA.

(Best part time gig i ever had)

 

1) What's the highest amount of overdue fees you saw?
2) Did candy ACTUALLY sell at BB? Every BB I ever went to, no one seemed to touch it.

 

I never knew this until after most BB stores went under... cuz they were started by conservative Christians did they actually self edit movies to take out blasphemous content? When I rented there as a kid I was oblivious to that.

 

We had blockbuster, Hollywood video, and family video. Family video is still around.

my cousin also owned a local rental store where my grandparents live. When I was ima kid I would always ride my bike to the store and he’d let me rent whatever I wanted and gave me the promotional movie posters. That’s how I discovered Child’s Play and Texas Chainsaw Massacre as a kid haha. Fun times.

 

Worked at Blockbuster from 2000-2005, ended up being a store manager by the time I left In late 05. I miss that place so much, it was truly the best job ever

 

Anyone have Erols at one point? VHS cases looked like this, wow — just seeing it again brings back so many memories.



They went under and then it was always Hollywood Video for me.

 

We had 4 in town before Blockbuster showed up. Network Video, Video World, Filmscape, and the 4th I can't remember. That one closed when I was real young. Then Blockbuster showed up and opened 4 doors down from Network Video and put them out. Filmscape closed and that just left Blockbuster and Video World. Video World survived for many years due to being on the opposite site of town. There was a time my gf and I would go into BB and would realize we had seen every movie on the perimeter wall... which was all the newest releases for the last X amount of months. Nothing beat a Friday night in the early 2000's.

 

When I was a youngin I used to go to Showbox Video. I think it was a one-off store, but I remember them being one of the first places to get a Street Fighter 2 Turbo Champion edition arcade and since it wasn't "the arcade", I'd basically have the machine all to myself. It was amazing.

Of course, Blockbuster and Hollywood Video (where I had a Netflix like subscription for a while)

MAJOR SHOUT OUTS to Premiere Video in Dallas. Independently owned video store that unfortunately finally had to close about 2 years ago (R.I.P.) - They were THE SHIT though. TONS of indie/foreign/rare/OOP stuff you couldn't get anywhere else. They'd even give you a region free DVD player with your rentals so you could watch them. Man, I miss this place.

 

Does anyone remember video rental stores selling action figures of movie characters? I always thought that was pretty cool.

Also, how about the smell of rental stores? So comforting haha.

 

Shout out Super Duper Video in Chino California. I remember the last vhs I ever rented was Fellowship of the Ring.