Yeti4623

I was watching the first Bill and Ted yesterday, and during the Circle K scene, it has a sign on the window that reads "Video Rentals". It me got thinking back to the early days of renting movies. I don't even know how I remember this, but I remember going to the Circle K, to rent movies as a 4 and 5 year old, circa '86 and '87. I remember if the movie was in, the box would have a smiley face clip type thing, stuck on the front, and if it wasn't, it'd be a frown. I love that I remember that, for some reason. I think they stopped renting movies, in my area, around '88.

Did anyone else rent movies at the Circle K, during that era? Were the boxes the same? Or anymore early movie renting memories, you'd like to share?

Xbox69

There was a Stop N' Go convenient store that rented movies where we used to live. This was early '89. They didn't have much of a selection though.

I remember being able to rent the video players too.

Jay G.

I remember a local video store where they had just the box-art out with little tabs that hung underneath that you took to the counter to get the video. If there were no more tabs you couldn't rent it. I also remember there being two copies of the video right next to each other, Beta and VHS versions.

rw2516

My earliest rental memories is that there were no video rental places. I got a vcr for Christmas '83. The day after Christmas I went to a mall store that sold videos and bought Dawn of the Dead and Hills Have Eyes for about $60 each. I knew that couldn't last and didn't really know what to do with the thing. Started buying $6 blank tapes and recording movies in 6hr mode to get my $6 worth. A lot of people must have gotten vcrs for Christmas that year because within a month or so video rental places were popping up all over right about the time Raiders of the Lost Ark hit video for the first time with the teaser trailer on it for Temple of Doom coming to theaters that summer.
Since nobody else I knew had a vcr yet all my friends would rent movies and bring them over to watch. About twice a week I'd get a phone call, "Hey man, if we rent "such and such" can we bring it over and watch it?"
I loved that old top loader. The remote wasn't even wireless. Had a ten foot cord you plugged into a jack.

TomOpus

I had BetaMax and VHS players. This one mom & pop place rented both so I would frequent them more. But it never failed if I had a few VHS along with one Beta, they would always say "Do you know this one is a Beta?" I knew they were just being nice and, eventually, I would beat them to the punch by saying "Yes, I know it's a Beta."

They also had a small adult section. I remember they were a little slow on the trigger when the Traci Lord vids were pulled. Soon they were gone but I figured maybe they just didn't get the word quick enough.

FantasticVSDoom

The "circle K" in Florida was called "Jiffy Mart" at the time and I remember waking up christmas morning and going to rent Hellraiser to watch on my new VCR for christmas one year.

RichC2

We used to rent Movies and NES games from the local Phar-more (Central Florida), it used to be like 3 games for $4 for 3 nights, the good ol' days.

My folks weren't huge on movies when I was growing up, but we had our share of rentals. I just don't really remember them.

...I wound up getting my parents into movies after the erm.. internet boom.

EdTheRipper

I remember going to a few different video stores on the weekends with my grandfather. We'd always wind up renting 10-12 movies...good times. I miss those days.

Heat

When video stores started in my area in the early '80s, seemingly everyplace had a video rental section. Grocery stores, convenience stores, and of course a handful of stand-alone video stores.

And they all charged $10 to become a "member" which allowed you to pay to rent a movie - the premise was that they used the membership fees to buy new videos. $10 was a lot back then, minimum wage was $3.35 before taxes.

By the late '80s video rentals were gone from all places but stand-alone stores.

starman9000

I lived in a small town with not much to do. My big memory was when our local store, Videoland, started a 5 movies for 5 days for 5$ promotion, I pretty much rented every title in the store during high school.

DRG

When I was 12 or so my mom got a job at a video store that let employees get unlimited free rentals. That was just awesome at that age. We would get 2 or 3 movies a night. Plus, all the new releases came in stock a few days before they were allowed to put them on shelves so we'd get to see them early. I blame this part of my life for my movie/DVD obsession.

Seantn

We had lots of video stores...Gemstone Video, Video Movies to Go, Maxx Video, and of course Blockbuster. We went to all of them on a regular basis, there wasn't one that we used over the other.

Yeti4623

That sounds a little like a store called Curtis Mathis. I don't know if it's the same store, but they also sold and rented out TVs, VCRs, among other things.

Curtis Mathis also had the best "store smell" ever. That's beside the point, but I thought I'd say that. It smelled that good.

Yeti4623

I rented there too, lol. Where I lived, it was first was a store in a mall, and the slection wasn't that huge, but they moved into a much bigger store, a couple or so years later, and the slection was pretty bigger.

Artman

My parents' friend owned a video store down the street - we'd go there (and after it closed, video factory) and then get Dominoes Pizza. I still remember all the posters and displays (return of the jedi, critters, goulies...) I remember renting Dark Crystal more than once, Ghostbusters, Back to the Future... Good times...

Oh and Beetlejuice - my parents absolutely hated it, they nearly turned it off.

Emma311

I have memories of renting at my favorite video store. When I was a kid, they only had the one day rental. So if my sister & I really liked the movie, we'd not only watch it the night we rented it but also the next morning before it had to go back. They closed a couple of years ago because they couldn't keep up with the chains. When they went under, they were renting most of their titles for .25. BTW-Some of our favs to rent were the Bill & ted movies.

IDrinkMolson

During my high school years, I worked in a grocery store at their video rental counter. So, I got most of my videos there. And I could always get new releases first. We used to get the new ones from the home office, and they would fold the boxes flat and laminate them with a hook, so we could hang them on a peg board.
My first VCR was the top loading wired remote from Sears. I can't remember when I got it, it might have been before I started working at the grocery store.

Daytripper

None of my friends or co-workers seem to remember this, but does anyone here remember when Fotomat rented videos? They only had like 10 titles. I believe all were Paramount movies. "Grease", "Saturday Night Fever", "Meatballs", etc. And for like $12.00 you got to keep the movie for 3 days. That's my first memory of rentals.

Jay G.

Mine was called Four Star Video, although I'm sure there were plenty of stores that had that name. It closed within a year of a Blockbuster opening nearby.

When I moved to college, Madison WI had a Four Star Video Heaven downtown, but except for the similar name I don't think it was connected to my old haunt. Four Star Video Heaven actually still rents DVD players, all-region, and sells them too since they have a selection of region-coded import DVDs available for rent.

movieguru

I remember around '84 or so when we got our first VCR. A video membership at the local mom ,n pop rental store MetroVideo was between $30 to $40; quite a lot of money in the mid $80's. They probably had about 1/10 the selection of what Blockbuster has now. The first one i can remember renting when my patrents bought the membership was the Goulies. A horrible movie as I recall. Don't rent anything anymore as it's cheaper to buy then rent and drive to and from the rental store to return the videos; and much more convenient too.

PalmerJoss

I remember there being a small mom & pop video rental that opened down the street from me in the mid-to-late 80's. I recall going there and renting all sorts of movies, from the latest ninja movies to classic comedies.

MasterofDVD

I remember renting Beta movies as a kid. There was a store in the mall that had a tiny little area for Beta and as time went on I recall the movie selection sucking more and more.

I also recall a small little store in my hometown that was the first place to rent Nintendo games. I was always there renting stuff. They also had one night a week where you could rent 5 movies for 5 dollars. It was a small store but on this particular night each week it was like Black Friday in Wal-Mart. The place was packed and the movie selection would suck. Eventually they made it 3 movies for 5 and I guess that was just too much for my shit hole of a town because it helped to thin out the crowd.

I remember when The Crow came out on video my Dad came home with a rental copy and I was amazed he would rent something like that. I guess he heard some of the kids who work for him talking about it and took a chance on it. He ended up hating it but I figured as much. My father wasn't allowed to go rent movies on his own so I always had to go with him. If we let him go alone he would always come back with a copy of Clean and Sober because he could never remember if he had seem it.

The best memory I have was when my mother was headed out one day to rent movies and she asked me if I wanted anything. I had heard about the movie Threesome and being a normal teenager, a a bit of a wise-ass, I asked my mom to rent it for me. I figured that given the name, and the tagline on the cover, I would never get my wish. Amazingly enough she come home later that night with a copy in hand. It was an awful movie but one I keep in my collection to this day just so I am always reminded of how I ended up seeing it that first time.

MBoyd

Threesome is a terrible movie. I saw it in the theater.

I didn't get a VCR until Xmas of 1986. I think the first movie I rented was Back To The Future, probably at a phar-mor as well. I remember renting there in High School if I was sick and having prescriptions filled. Always a good way to miss some school.

However. I think that Xmas of 1986 was notable since thats when Paramount started experimenting with sell thru titles. I picked up Temple Of Doom for about $30 I think. Next up a month or so later was Top Gun for about the same price and some kind of Pepsi coupon. Star Trek IV was another one released sell thur later that fall. I never really collected VHS fortunately.

jefelee

My parents bought our first VCR in 1982. Panasonic monster top-loader with that wired remote that didn't actually have buttons, just a little switch that toggled from 'play' to 'pause' (that VCR lasted 14 years, btw, 3 times longer than any other VCR we ever owned).

I remember visiting our little video store in Bremerton, WA. Place was in a mall, called Video World. They also sold hi-fi stereos and big screen TVs. They had a VHS wall and a Beta wall, and also a smaller rack of laserdiscs (the original, mono, fullscreen LDs...they always seemed to have Wrath Of Khan and American Werewolf in London on LD).

I remember renting the early Warner Bros. tapes, with the black/red covers and the plain text titles. But Star Wars was always what I wanted (hey, I was six!). We rented it so much the store eventually gave me their Star Wars poster!

Someone else mentioned it, but Raiders on VHS was a big deal, very crowded that day. Coincidentally, I remember it came out the same day as 'The Making Of 'Thriller," as that was playing on the TVs in store.

We moved to a small town in CA in 1985, our new store was Video Depot. They too had beta along with VHS, but as beta gradually died, I remember how frustrating it was to go in and find what wanted was only in on beta (I think I had to wait about three months for Back To The Future on VHS...meanwhile it's beta copy was always there!).

i86time

I hear that. My parents (and my) first was a fancy front-loading silver Panny (1983 model I think) that worked like a tank until they tossed it sometime in the late 90's. Only problem it ever had was when we bought later vcr's, those recordings the Panny made in SLP would only ever play properly on the original machine. I remember when we bought it (at The Federated), the first video they rented was Dragonslayer. For some reason that movie was so boring to me, but I watched it because of the novelty of having a machine that played movies whenever we wanted (we had a vcr for about 5 years before cable TV came to our area). To this day, I cannot watch that movie.

Another night I remember was when Terminator came out for rental, my dad came home with it. I was too busy to watch it because I was playing Spy Hunter on my brand new Commodore 128. We used to rent movies from the Wherehouse and Licorice Pizza, and later a local mom & pop called Video Wiz (still around) before the Blockbusters came to town. I remember the store that my old babysitter used to rent from was a mom & pop that also had beta and laserdiscs, and it still rented the LD's and players up until it closed a few years ago.

Some of you guys had Star Wars, but an old friend of mine seemed to ALWAYS rent The Never Ending Story any time I was over.

Another memory was the delay from theater to home video seemed to take ages for some titles. I remember I wanted to see Blue City so bad when it came out, but my parents wouldn't take me. I swear it must have been over a year after it was released before it made it to video. The little newspaper clipping I had of the poster and showtimes was already yellowed before I got to see it.