Yeti4623

[QUOTE=i86time]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.
/QUOTE]

My Star Wars was a movie called Revenge of the Ninja, lol. I remember my cousin's Star Wars, was The Beastmaster.

TheAllPurposeNothing

I can't remember the name of the video store but it was located right next door to the Luskins (local MD electronics store at the time notorius for baiting and switching) where we bought our first VCR.

Our parents took us in and let us pick out our first movie rentals. They got four titles in all. Moscow on the Hudson, Animal Crackers, A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, and Deep Throat.

We saw the first three back to back. We were sent to our rooms before the fourth. But my parents who were always a bit deaf, basically made sure that we heard the fourth as well.

Best memories, though, were my sister's Friday night rentals. She would always rent two movies. Friday night's movie was always some strange cult movie (Liquid Sky, anyone?) and Saturday morning's breakfast flick was always a slasher movie. Weird to remember that while others were sitting down to eat their Lucky Charms with Scooby Doo, I'd have mine with The Hills Have Eyes playing in the next room. Never really cared for the slasher genre myself, but I don't think there was one that didn't play one Saturday morning or another.

However, I loved the Friday night flicks! Saw everything from Eraserhead to Streets of Fire to Eating Raoul to Massacre at Central High. Some of my favorite movie memories there.

Muad'Dib

I remember our first VCR. It was a heavy duty one that my dad got from the cable company. It was great. He came home with that and Star Wars one night, and I was hooked. I think I went out and rented (Max movies, VHS and Betamax) Micheal Jackson's Thriller. Man, that dates me doesn't it?

iggystar

My grandfather had the huge top-loader and my whole family would go spend the night. There was a mom and pop rental place and we would rent anything..old black and whites. But since my mother didn't take me to the movies often, this was the first time I'd seen stuff like "Pretty in Pink", "The Karate Kid Part II". I'd stay up all night watching movies.

Remember when you would get charged for not rewinding the movie?

Geofferson

I was always fond of the padded plastic cases that Warner Bros. movies came in. Perhaps because my dad and I rented Superman I & II constantly at either National Video or The Video Library.

Iron Chef

In the early 80's we used to rent all of our movies at the grocery store. Membership was something like $10/yr, and rentals were around $3 for new releases. There was a tiny beta section, and a large vhs section.

My dad knew one of the clerks of video section of the store (she worked at his favorite hardware store too), and she would save copies of movies for him.

I remember the night that we got Top Gun on the first day it was available to rent. That was the biggest vhs score of my life.


I also remember when they sold off all of their betamax tapes, and when Blockbuster opened up a store on the other side of the Pick-n-Save parking lot.

MBoyd

I saw a few of those at Half Price Books a couple of years ago. They put the genre on the spine under the title. I was surprised to see Barry Lyndon described as a Family Classic.

dadaluholla

Our small town's first video store shared a building with the local pizza place, so it was always fun going down there and seeing friends, renting a movie, and picking up some food. The first rental system that store had was the empty boxes sat on the shelves, with the little plastic tabs hanging underneath. I was probably down there every single day after school, renting the latest horror movie or NES game.

There was also a little closet of a room that had space for like one arcade game, so the kids would all cram into this room to play Double Dragon. Good times.

lordwow

My earliest (though I'm sure it's not my first) rental memory was convincing my Mom to rent Star Wars: Return of the Jedi because my Dad had said Star Wars was really good. I loved it. I ended up seeing Star Wars later that year on cable, and it took me like 3 years to see Empire Strikes Back, so I led a deprived childhood.

CPA-ESQ.

The video Store we went to was Little TOR Video II

It was a mom and pop - We had one of the first Beta's so when the store opened they only had Beta tapes.

It cost $99 to become a "Lifetime Member" with that you could rent tapes for $.99 / if you were not a member it was $10 a month and $1.99 to rent a movie.

They had a popcorn popper there and they would give you a box of popcorn


My mom become good friends with the girls who worked there (she sold Mary Kay) so they would hold the movies for us... I remember one time I was home sick with strep, and my mom came home with a whole bag of movies (I swear there was 15 of them in there) - the gril at the store grabbed a bunch of movies and threw them into a bag because I was home sick for a couple of days.

I still remember the posters

Timber

Most of my early renting memories belong to Star Wars. I remember having to go a town over (didn't have a rental place in my city) to rent Return of the Jedi at Erol's. Of course we had to get the Beta version because my parents got the Beta machine. I remember my father calling the store for me to see if they had any copies available.

MovieMaster11

Back in Tempe,AZ circa 1990 I would go to the Video Power which later turned into Video Update. We would always go there on tuesdays for 2 for 99cents rentals or we used to rent at Fry's grocery store.

Lee Harvey Oswald

My oldest memory of renting was picking up the Survivor Series in which Hogan & Ultimate Warrior won. I was huge into wrestling back then. I was astonished though that guys were getting pinned after clotheslines. But I liked it.

The other thing I remember was the guy behind the counter was watching a movie that had a filthy sex scene. I was about 10 and was hoping my dad didn't notice. He probably would have yelled at the guy.

Neeb

San Diego Residents- Do you remember any of the locales I mention?
I can't remember when my family got a VCR but I can remember how we got it- a trip to the Federated and we picked up this gigantic thing called a Fisher. (Anyone remember Fisher or Federated?) I loved the hell out of it because Federated had a small alcove for renting movies. We also hit the Video Library on Morena Blvd, before it moved to a different location down the street (and opened a branch in Point Loma). Big, bulky, dark brown plastic cases. It made the tapes inside seem... sanctified somehow.
My parents also managed to acquire a large movie collection (1983-85 timeframe here) through... well, they were some of the original illegal downloaders so to speak. Of course, they never bothered to tell me that this was, you know, a crime.
I can't remember all the titles but I know we had the Star Wars movies, Raiders, a bunch of old Universal monster pictures, Goonies, Ghostbusters, Karate Kid, Dark Crystal... and a bunch more (including a bunch of stupid grown-up movies my parents liked).
So, thanks, Mom and Dad. I owe my early adopting of DVD and library building to you!

Mabuse

Neeb:

I remember Federated. Their television ads featured a guy "smashing prices" by smashing products (TV's, stereos, VCR's, etc.) with a sledgehammer. They were awsome.

I also remember Video Library in La Jolla. In 1988 they became what must have been one of the first Blockbusters. It always seems that new companies and products are test marketed in San Diego. Anyway, I remember one day they sent a notice in the mail welcomeing all the old Video Library members to Blockbuster, and that our membership would be honored. I pride myself on being one of the first people to shop at Blockbuster and being one of the first people to hate Blockbuster. I remember not being able to find Planes, Trains, and Automobiles: It wasn't in "Comedy", it wasn't in "Drama", it wasn't in "The Steve Martin Section"...it turned out it was in the "Holiday" section. I was ready to burn the store to the fucking ground.

Mondo Kane

Me too. Never had one near me, but always saw the commercials. I tripped out when I found out that Shadoe Stevens was the Federated guy!

As for my renting memories, my dad bought a big,clunky RCA VCR from (I think) Sears in about '83. Bought it just in time before "Video Village" (First video store in the neighborhood) was about to open up. My mom even got a job there! Among the first rentals I remember were Tex (Matt Dillon movie) and The Thing.

kantonburg

I don't remember our first VCR but I do remember my dad's second. It was a Quasar from the local Value Mart. That thing is still working. It's at least 15 years old. I don't remember renting much other than Inspector Gadget.

Emma311

Yep, at the video store I mentioned they'd charge you .25. Odd since in the end that's how much it cost to rent them.

My parents first vcr also lasted a very long time as some others mentioned.

Tracer Bullet

My parents bought a Betamax player. The only memory I have of renting movies for it was going with them to Wall to Wall Sound & Video (later just "The Wall") to rent a movie, and asking for VHS movies over and over. Each time the answer was "we can't play that" and I remember not understanding why. This must have been when I was six or so (1987) and the VHS section was easily ten times the size of the Betamax section by this point.

AndyCleveland

our local video store, Falls Video, was really a magical place- i LOVED riding my bike up there with friends, renting a horror movie (Halloween series & Sleepaway Camp were the best), then stashing it away until the parents were sleeping. I could have spent days in the video game section reading all the boxes if my parents let me.

Brent L

Haha, I agree with all of that. We had a CM that we would go to as well.

When I was little, I'd walk through the horror section and the covers would all freak me out big time.

printerati

Our first VCR was a Quasar, bought for us by my dad's brothers for Christmas 1985, I think. Man, I hated that thing. Pressing the Record button would force it to record a specific length of time that you were supposed to set beforehand, and it wouldn't let you pause in the middle of recording to "remove" the commercials...you needed to press Record and Play simultaneously to put it in "manual" recording mode. It was also a 3 head VCR, and all of our friends who had 4 head VCR's could never watch the tapes they borrowed from us because they would get a "line" through the content.

As for rentals, we used to rent from Sound Warehouse and Major Video (before Blockbuster devoured them) in Fort Lauderdale. We always rented pretty innocuous fare since my mom wouldn't allow any "trash" in the house. I do remember renting the "Misfits Of Science" pilot after the show had been cancelled. Later, when Blockbuster took over Major Video, they would sell excess rental copies of NES games for $20 each.

NoirFan

"Be kind, please rewind".

Jadow

girlnextdoor

I remember the 1st movie I watched on a VCR - The Legend of Billy Jean. It was at my friends house. They had Beta. My family was a few years getting one and I don't remember what we rented first.