Five Great Video Store Scenes in Movies

Movie fans continue to celebrate the video store to this day, and for good reason. Once upon a time if you wanted to watch a movie that you didn’t own, you’d have to get dressed, go out, and peruse aisles upon aisles of movies looking for the right movie to take home for a few days. Although it seems kind of like a chore, there was a sense of community and camaraderie with the very good video stores. You communed with others to find the newest release on video, and always pretended not to sneak a peek in to the Adult movie section.

Movies still have a tendency to pay homage to the video store era, and these are five of my favorite video store scenes from feature films.

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The Ten Best VHS Covers of All Time

I grew up in the Bronx where it was almost impossible to walk down the street without bumping in to a video store. There was one on every single block. They were the Starbucks of the bygone age. And nine times out of ten they were mom and pop stores. Low budget places just looking for a quick buck to make off of the big VHS craze of the eighties and nineties. This was before Blockbuster and Hollywood video began taking over these places and running them out of business. As a kid my parents were always off attending to financial affairs and on many occasions they’d leave me and my brother to spend the day with my cousin at the local video store “JR Video” (No relation). My aunt worked there for almost five years and we’d spend the entire day there running around the big store, watching low budget horror movies on the television mounted on the ceiling and playing in the back closet where they stored all of the VHS tapes and I could still remember looking out the back door in the end of the closet and seeing the poster for “Basket Case” glimmer in the sunlight. This is the place where I was basically exposed to movies of all kind.

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