The Video shop...

[Toump Ass]

I remember going back 15 years I'd hired a bunch of wrestling videos from a local video shop... the shop went **** up days later, and only opened up a few weeks later for a liquidation sale, so I never had to return them.

I went and bought a bunch more wrestling VHS' during the liquidation sale - knowing that they were hot property for geeks like me, I worked out a strategy with with brother when he threw up a block at one end of the aisle while I was bowling campaigners over from the other end...

Then, in the years before streaming services, you could ebay these videos for anywhere between 20 and 50 bucks. I "hired" 10 videos for 10 bucks, I bought about 10 more for 20 bucks, and I reckon I made at least $500 on ebay from selling them (after, of course, I'd hooked up 2 VCRs to record copies for myself... I even still have a handful of them despite not having a VCR. Evidence that I'm a shocking hoarder!)

I've been hanging around VHS forums for a little while now and I've seen WWF tapes go for $100+, there were a few rare ones.

I've still got a copy of Wrestlemania 12 with the on hour match between Bret Hart and Sean Michaels, I'd never sell it.

 

[Fwoy]

Isn’t it all available on WWE network now?

 

[Bomberboyokay]

Pretty much exactly the same, my local would sometimes give away these cards that would give you 20 free weeklies.

Reckon I went through just about every single 'In Your House' PPV they used to have back in the day. Pretty much entirely responsible for my wrestling knowledge.

Like you they showed a trimmed down version of Survivor Series 1998 and then Superstars which is what got me into it. Late 80's to 90's certainly was the golden era of pro wrestling.

After getting through the Attitude Era PPVs I rented some stuff from the mid and early 90s. Remember thinking "This is a bit lame". Little did I know years later they'd return to that style

Isn’t it all available on WWE network now?

It sure is. Couple years ago began at Survivor Series 1997 (Montreal Screwjob) to watch all the PPVs, Raws and SmackDowns. Up to June 2000 now.

 

[Cleavy]

Isn’t it all available on WWE network now?

yes, but original music is dubbed over in numerous instances due to licensing.

 

[Roobs321]

We didn't have any tech in the house really until we got a Teac TV with built-in VCR in late '93, just before I started school. In a previous job I worked a lot with diverse AV media formats. Digital betacam/SX was still a favoured format in a lot of television broadcasting until the mid 2000s I think.

 

[Toump Ass]

Isn’t it all available on WWE network now?

Not to derail the thread too much but I've recently started buying and selling VHS tapes. As with every other piece of old junk- vinyl, star wars figures, footy cards etc. there's a bit of cult following, some of the collections I've seen (not just WWE but VHS in general) are amazing, I've seen rooms dedicated to VHS collections with shelves nabbed from old Blockbusters and literally hundreds of tapes. Most of the collectable stuff is cult/horror/art-house things that never made it to streaming services or DVD, but there's also people who just collect every wrestling tape the can get, or guest episodes of Rage taped off the television.

It sure is. Couple years ago began at Survivor Series 1997 (Montreal Screwjob) to watch all the PPVs, Raws and SmackDowns. Up to June 2000 now.

Do you get the Christ Benoit stuff yet?

 

[Bomberboyokay]

Yeah he's in it. They don't put him on the episode stills and descriptions though.

 

[Richard Pryor]

I remember my local video guy up in rural QLD charged everyone late fees because the whole area was flooded and nobody could physically get to the video store, so at the very least that guy got karma'd by the death of video stores.

Ambience of the wide carpeted aisles and the promo reel on the box tvs was amazing though.

 

[RAPPA]

Loved the video shop smell anencephaly could spend hour browsing and reading the backs of covers. Plus they had games so looking at the gameboy and NES range too was grouse.

 

[Xtreme]

Ah yes, the eternal struggle of trying to balance out a tenner......get the $7 new release and a bag of popcorn vs 3 x 2 nighters or 10 weeklies....and usually the 8th - 10th choices were utter garbage and you didnt finish watching them anyway.

Pretty sure usually took 6-12 months from cinema release to VHS rental? Whereas now its about 3 months until it's out on Bluray or a streaming service?

Ah memories.

There were so many Movieland, Civic Video and other random named video shops near me while I grew up. I even worked for one store that I always went in when I was really little , fun times!

I remember different shops having different deals 2 new release/over night movies for $5.50, other random deals for two nighters, weeklies etc. New release overnight Nintendo games were $4.10 at one store, or a few weekly Nintendo games were $5.

I used to get 5 weekly movies every Friday night. Over the years I'd smash through them. Even when they upped the movie limit (7 weekly, 10 weekly) I still did it, although towards the end when I stopped using video shops I just lost motivation to watch every single one.

It seemed forever when a movie would take yonks to go from cinema to vhs to commercial tv. It's pretty fast these days!

Wat about when you turned up for the New Release and there weren’t enough copies?

Wat about the tape that jammed or the scratched DVD?

Ahh the scratched dvd, this gave me the shits as a video store worker AND as a customer. I take great care of my dvds - I've got titles from 18-19 years ago that are dust/fingerprint/scratch free today . I hated getting a new release title (in some instances within 2-3 days of release) and the disc was already unwatchable due to having so many scratches on it! I remember there being many vhs copies of some new releases (mostly the big blockbuster movies) while 2-6 copies of other titles. Things got a bit crazy on dvd - there were at times TOO many copies of new release titles (talking 20-30 copies per movie!!). Of course after a few weeks, the copies would reduce in number as most of them would be put up for sale as "ex rentals" thus leaving 10-5 copies or less of each title.

The TV series rentals were fairly steep though (and unreliable, often scratched heavily). Even towards the end it was like $15 for a season, weekly return.

Some of them like Blockbuster had a really deep selection, a lot of which is unlikely to appear on various online services. Netflix by comparison is pathetic, and iTunes is fairly limited. The Australian/Foreign/Classics sections were strong.

As a kid in the 90s before DVD, I could easily spend an hour or two just perusing the shelves.

The videoshops I went to in the late 80's - early 90's had arcade machines (a few even had the skill testers haha). It was quite common to see the "game of the moment" in a videoshop. For a time it was TMNT The Arcade Game, Simpsons: The Arcade Game, Street Fighter II/SF II CE etc, Final Fight, Chase HQ, Terminator 2: Pinball.

I was very impressed with some of the videoshops that were still around in the mid 2000's - late 2000's. Especially when they fully got rid of vhs titles and ALL of the shop space was devoted to 90% dvd and 10% console games. I just couldn't believe seeing it go from one mini shelf of dvds (maybe 20-30 at the start) to having the entire store stocked full of them. Likewise in the early stages of blu-ray it went from 2 small shelves (8 titles) to getting their own section that was two walkways full of them. Kind of like seeing the progress of JB Hifi and their dvds in the last 19 years.

I remember Movieland had its internal magazine and I saw an ad for Wrestlemania X. Hadn’t watched wrestling in 5 or so years, and I thought I’ll give that a crack. Didn’t know who half the wrestlers were, and saw the first ladder match (or first I’d seen) between Shawn Michaels (who was just a shitty tag teamer as far as I knew, and a guy I’d never heard of, called Razor Ramon). Blew my mind. And yes, I know it’s fake and blah blah blah.

I used to go to JB Hifi religiously. I used to buy Blu-Ray 10 at a time off Amazon. I have shelves of CDs...all are merely wall decorations now. I don’t even have a CD player connected. Half my Blu-Rays are still shrink wrapped. Stuff we paid $30-$40 a poo can’t be given away.

WrestleMania IV was my first WrestleMania thanks to my local video shop. Of course it was a two part event, had to get the second part of it some time later. Rented many of the 80's and early 90's titles (before the new WWF era). Went a few years without watching any wrestling at all, got back into the WWF after hiring WWF: War Zone on the Playstation (fun game!!) and then proceeded to rent out the 97-98 titles.

I also went to JB Hifi religiously, every Friday I'd come out with at least 1 dvd. Usually anywhere from 5-15. I don't buy them as obsessively as I used to (in part because I've collected EVERY movie, tv series etc) I've ever watched and love in my life time . Thus I've gone from buying 5-15 per week..... to 5-10 a year if I'm lucky.

To a degree yes they are coasters for me as well, but I'm ok with this. Whatever dvds I buy, I rip them onto my computer and convert them (lossless quality btw ). I watch them on an external hard drive, I used to use a WDTV Media Player.... now I use the NVidia Shield. I still keep the dvds in case I ever need to re-copy/re-convert them again.

I have a pretty solid blu-ray collection, I purchased some individually..... but the majority came from when movie companies bundled the dvd/blu-ray/digital copy together. I barely watch them though. I find the format to be overrated actually.

I'm not into streaming websites - I find the quality to be not as good as watching proper media (regardless of internet connection quality)

 

[Herne Hill Hammer]

I know some of those a-hole video stores would use debt collectors. Mind you thats when fines were like in the hundreds of dollars.

My wife ran a video store in Canberra when I was posted there in the Navy. I used to help her out a bit including driving around to people's home and retrieving overdues. I was the last step before the debt collectors were called in.

A new release cost something like $130 to buy. If some little prick hired it and didn't return it for 3 weeks, people had moved on to the next latest releases that overdue one, of which there were 10 copies purchased, now sits in the weekly section for $2 a night along with the other 9 copies. It now takes another 60 hires to recoup the costs, which will never happen.

It ends up on the for sale table for $10 or $15. They've done their dough and lost about $100 on that 1 tape. So * the shitbags who couldn't return on time

They ended up with a blacklist going around Canberra to all the video stores. People coming in squealing when they couldn't hire a movie or game anywhere in town. We'd put them on payment plans or they could just piss off.

 

[SugarShane]

Everything is so much more convenient now, but I really do miss the video store vibes. It's pretty much all been covered but it was such a great feeling as a kid to have the parents say on Saturday morning, "Let's go down to the video shop." Figuring out which 2 new releases and 5 weeklies to get. Every week we'd have the 2 new and 4 weeklies sorted and would just traipse the aisles looking for that elusive 5th weekly that wasn't shithouse. And waiting until mum and dad and the sister were on the other side of the shop before sneaking into the little R18 area. "I was just looking at the war movies! Promise!"

So many of my favourite movies were gold nuggets from video store browsing and going "That looks cool."

Even in my early courtship with my now wife, the video store was a Friday night tradition after a long week or uni/work.

We didn't have Foxtel/Austar either in the late 90s so video shops were our only way of keeping up with the WWF PPVs. Every week I'd be in there after school checking to see if a new one was out yet. 2 months late but in the era before social media and the internet it didn't matter. Such great times.

 

[Bomberboyokay]

WrestleMania IV was my first WrestleMania thanks to my local video shop. Of course it was a two part event, had to get the second part of it some time later.

First I've heard of it. Whole event happened on March 27 1988 and WWE Network has a run time of 3:33:22. Maybe the Australian distributor decided they could get people to pay twice.

 

[Bomberboyokay]

My wife ran a video store in Canberra when I was posted there in the Navy. I used to help her out a bit including driving around to people's home and retrieving overdoes. I was the last step before the debt collectors were called in.

A new release cost something like $130 to buy. If some little prick hired it and didn't return it for 3 weeks, people had moved on to the next latest releases that overdue one, of which there were 10 copies purchased, now sits in the weekly section for $2 a night along with the other 9 copies. It now takes another 60 hires to recoup the costs, which will never happen.

It ends up on the for sale table for $10 or $15. They've done their dough and lost about $100 on that 1 tape. So **** the shitbags who couldn't return on time

They ended up with a blacklist going around Canberra to all the video stores. People coming in squealing when they couldn't hire a movie or game anywhere in town. We'd put them on payment plans or they could just piss off.

While it never got this extreme my brother, when he was about 18 and I was 14, would return s**t he rented late often. His solution, given there were multiple stores around, was to not go back. Then me or my parents would go to rent something and be told there's X fees to pay first He really was a campaigner.

 

[Xtreme]

First I've heard of it. Whole event happened on March 27 1998 and WWE Network has a run time of 3:33:22. Maybe the Australian distributor decided they could get people to pay twice.

It's true, it was a two part vhs.

That's the only image of it that I could find showing two vhs tapes, there are other images around showing the thicker vhs covers indicating 2 vhs tapes inside.

Going off topic slightly but I hate how the WWE splits the WrestleMania event over multiple dvds (17-onward). Back in the day I used to edit them back on to 1 disc . With today's technology it's a lot easier to merge and play them seamlessly on the hard drive .

 

[the_big_sav]

our local had a deal $5 for 5 weeklies but you could swap them as many times as you like for the week. my mate and i had competitions to see who could watch the most in a week, espicially during school holidays

 

[worbod]

Browsing through a video store was a great way to discover movies that you were willing to take a chance on because there was a particular person in the cast, or the genre of movie interested you. I remember happily stumbling upon A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square, The Stunt Man, Carny, Allegro Non Troppo, The Last of Sheila, The Sensuous Nurse, Deep Red, The Thief Who Came to Dinner, Carnival of Souls, The Monterey Pop Festival, Barbarella, and The Rutles to name a few at random.
Also you could find great compilation videos such as The Best of Q (Spike Milligan), Kenny Everett's Best Bits, Highlights of the careers of Ian Botham/Richard Hadlee, etc, The Best of Ready, Steady, Go from the 1960s, selected episodes from The Twilight Zone or Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Gunston Tapes, as well as assorted VFL grand finals.
It was also interesting to see well-known movies in their video packaging carrying their original X rating, such as Midnight Cowboy, The Godfather (I and II), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Deer Hunter.
Altogether I had memberships to 20 separate video outlets in the Bendigo region since 1987. Today, with our Video Ezy store having closed last year I only borrow from a local milk bar 3 kms away or at the regional library for free.

 

[The Flying Belgian]

I worked in a couple of stores. Was a great job while at uni and while I’m a bit of an introvert, I loved talking with customers and making recommendations. Met my wife there too!

Shittest job was rewinding tapes ( then having to tell customers next time they got stung $14 because they didn’t rewind any of their weeklies). Also cleaning the cases inside and outside the plastic sucked big time.

Besides free movies, it was always good getting the screener tapes a couple of months before they came out. Watching the pervs loiter around the adult section awkwardly for 20 minutes before chickening out was always amusing too.

 

[Bomberboyokay]

Someone said Netflix's movie selections are s**t and that may be true (not a subscriber) but you can now torrent more movies than video shops ever had.

I've downloaded lower profile and indie movies from ages ago that I suspect were never sitting on shelves in suburban Australia. Mumford (1999) and Drugstore Cowboy (1989) come to mind. Only so many films could get Oscar nominations and the publicity that comes with them each year.

You could torrent a movie every day for a year and that would get you about halfway through everything a video shop would've had, probably?

 

[Richard Pryor]

Someone said Netflix's movie selections are s**t and that may be true (not a subscriber) but you can now torrent more movies than video shops ever had.

I've downloaded lower profile and indie movies from ages ago that I suspect were never sitting on shelves in suburban Australia. Mumford (1999) and Drugstore Cowboy (1989) come to mind. Only so many films could get Oscar nominations and the publicity that comes with them each year.

You could torrent a movie every day for a year and that would get you about halfway through everything a video shop would've had, probably?

It doesn't feel as special though!

 

[Fwoy]

Besides free movies, it was always good getting the screener tapes a couple of months before they came out. Watching the pervs loiter around the adult section awkwardly for 20 minutes before chickening out was always amusing too.

I worked in a hotel as night/graveyard manager whilst in Uni, and we had in house movies (videos played on request from reception), which from memorry were pre-general release. The monthly shipment of around 20 movies would arrive 3-4 days before they were made available in room, so I would take the most exciting ones home early. Then in the off peak season, where I was basically there for presence only, I would head to a function room and work my way thru the rest, whilst on duty. Good times...

 

[worbod]

Some of the stores where I had membership.

 

[SugarShane]

One of the video shops in our town had a phone number nearly identical to ours. So say ours was 12345678, theirs was 12354678. We used to get all sorts of calls for them, and every now and then we'd be out and get home to messages on our answering machine saying stuff like "I can't get the movie back on time today, let me know if that's a problem," or wanting call backs. Every now and then we'd get calls like "Do you have *movie*?" I'd just say "Yeah we do, come down and grab it."

 

[rumply]

In hindsight they were bloody expensive. They had their glory days.

Thank God for torrents.

& why I had no issue with downloading anything I might want to watch for a good decade or more, hate to think how much I spent on late fees alone. Reckon I'm about square now so happy to cough up for Netflix etc.

 

[Macca19]

Hiring videos was always a favourite growing up. Hearing those words "should we go get some videos?" always ended in a fist pump as a 8-9 year old. Wandering off and having a quick squizz at the soft pr0n section for 30 seconds whilst the old man was occupied.

We had a Focus Video which turned into Blockbuster a 5 minute walk from our house growing up. Loved it.