PatD

So, for those who are old enough to have frequented video rental stores, was there a couple or a bundle of movies that you rented that stood out to you? Was there an experience of marathoning a few movies that you had never seen before that stuck with you as an enriching, fun experience?

For me, my favorite batch of movies that I rented was in 1995 from the gone-but-not-forgotten Video Depot. (It was such an old school mom and pop video rental store that they had a cordoned off porn section behind saloon doors) I rented the following titles:

Clerks
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Blade Runner
Cherry 2000

I had never seen any of those movies before. I was 17, so I could finally rent R rated movies with impunity and I LOVED it! I had never laughed so hard in my life when watching Clerks and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Holy Grail was my first exposure to the Pythons and I found it brilliantly, cleverly insane and Clerks was so raw that my it blew my sheltered little mind. My belly was literally hurting. What I'd give to laugh like that again.

Blade Runner grabbed me with the first note of Vangelis' score. I watched it a well worn, staticky, pan and scan VHS on a 8' tv/vcr combo. (It was the 1982 theatrical cut I think because it had the voice over) I was totally transported to another world and that experience has stuck with me for the last 25 years. Even finally getting to see it on the big screen didn't match the first time watching it on that little screen.

Cherry 2000 was just a hoot. A wild, funny game of a sci fi movie that *better* be mentioned in the In Search of Tomorrow documentary, dammit!

No video rental experience ever stuck with me like that one November back in '95.

Do you have any favorite movie rental bundle memories like mine?

urrutiap

mosly renting the weird crap youd only see at Blockbuster or Mr Movies video rental shop

that weird alien sci fi flick starring WWE's Chyna
also obscure crap i found at the time back in 2002-2003 such as Godzilla 2000, Donnie Darko, Dog Soldiers, rental tapes of Jackass show

E Unit

Not in a batch, but back when my town had just one video store, that's where I found my love for 70's movies, mostly sci-fi and horror, as well as a ton of drive-in movies.

John Galt

I used to love doing the 5/5/5 deals on a Friday evening when I was in middle school. Usually just a bunch of cheap horror or stupid comedies though. Nothing that really stands out.

Crocker Jarmen

Starting around the time I was 10, my parents would leave me home alone on the weekends when they went across the border on a work trip. I think I was left behind because I had scouts on Friday night. It was great having the house to myself, and I used to bike down to Bandito Video to rent movies that my already permissive parents would never have let me rent. I'll never forget the weekend I got Dawn of the Dead, and had my mind blown not just by the graphic bloody violence the likes of which I'd never seen, but by how exciting and adventurous the movie was. To this day one of my top favourite movies.

They didn't keep the tapes behind the counter at Bandio, they were inside the display cases they had on the shelves, so sometimes as a joke browsers would switch the tapes in two boxes. One time I went to rent Glengarry Glen Ross or something, and when the clerk scanned the tape he realized Last of the Mohicans was in the box. So he goes over to the action section to grab the Mohicans box, expecting Glengarry to be in there, but instead it's Cool World. I think he went four or five tapes before he found Glengarry.

devilshalo

Porn. But then I was working at a music/video store, so I'd seen everything else.

Toddarino

When I was a kid my mom, younger brother and I would spend a lot of time at video stores. Often waiting by the dropbox for a particular title to get released. One evening we were waiting for Mel Brooks’ Life Stinks to get returned. The employee asked which one we were after and my mom told her. The lady got all flustered and said “you know what they should have called that movie? This Movie Stinks”.
Needless to say we waited it out and watched it. I still enjoy it today.

orangerunner

I remember my older brother's 12th birthday party in 1983 we rented a VHS deck and four horror movies; Graduation Day, My Bloody Valentine, The Thing and Halloween II. It was a small ma & pa video store that had one copy of each film and you usually had to reserve them a week or two in advance.

Mondo Kane

One of the more unforgettable weekends I had (At about age 11) was when I rented A Clockwork Orange & Toxic Avenger. Thankfully, I had my own TV & VCR in my room to watch them (Something that wasn't too common for many other 80's kids I knew) Otherwise, watching those with the parents in the living room would have been...Interesting.

Another (Oddly) memorable time was when I was home alone for for the weekend and our neighbor, who knew of my parents being away, showed up at my doorstep with some videos for me that she had rented for me ahead of time. What she think I would've liked:

I didn't like either, but I thank her for broadening my weird tastes when it comes to films! And no, New York's Finest wasn't a porno, but it's director was no stranger to it.

And then, of course, there was the FACES OF DEATH series. My friend had his mom rent all of them for us (I think there were 3 sequels at that point) We only did 1 every two days though. I'm so glad we didn't binge them.

Norm de Plume

I must have spent hundreds of late-night hours in the '90s inside video stores browsing for lost treasures, but I can't think of any specific films that stand out. There were just too many. I used to rent, say, a dozen movies at once and spend the next two days and nights recording them in SLP to blank VHSes. Then I could watch them at my leisure. Macrovision was my bête noire. How much easier it is nowadays, but those were special times.

Vipper II

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