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Editorials

[VIDEO] Blockbuster Who? The Magic of the Mom-and-Pop Video Shop

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I have to credit my discovery of many different horror films to my local Mom and Pop Video Store growing up, Action Video. Under a mile away, it was close enough for me to hop on my bike and undergo one of my favorite journeys to take on a weekend afternoon or anytime during the Summer. It was located in a shopping mall that included a Smiths’, Osco Drugs, Naugles, Pizza Hut, and of course, a McDonald’s. Usually, before a trip to Action Video, we’d pop into Osco for the latest issue of MAD magazine and Fangoria and some snacks for later’s horror marathon festivities. Then a trip to one of the fast food chains located within to get some carbs in for the adrenaline rush to come later; a personal pan Pizza Hut pizza or ye’ old faithful Hamburger Happy Meal from the clown was my regular go-to. And then, off to Action Video for the finale to discover what new and glorious atrocities await to be feasted upon thine eyes.

The VHS cover art alone was all the advertisement we would need to be sold on a horror flick, as we would be standing there gawking at the enticing and illustrious covers of films I had never seen. Hell, if Return of the Living Dead or The Blob didn’t have the cover art they did, it may have very well been a long time before I would have seen those masterpieces. Take for instance here, Dead Pit, with its gimmicky light-up cover case (you’ll catch that in the video down below). I mean, the cover alone is cool as hell, but that extra flair from the art screaming “PICK ME UP AND RENT ME YA’ WALNUT” added that extra incentive to take it home with you.

Blockbuster, as popular as it was, didn’t have this kind of cool shit gracing their shelves, people. As a matter of fact, it was so bland with their mediocre white clamshell casings. Hell, you’d be hard-pressed to find ONE rental copy of, let’s say, MOTEL HELL or CHEERLEADER CAMP. That, in itself, is a travesty. One that a local Mom and Pop Video Shop never seemed to bear onto their consumers. At the very least, when you rented with a smaller venue, you would get a way cooler clamshell that looked like it contained something sinister inside. Oh and hey, with those places usually having those adult-only curtains in the back of the store, sometimes there really was, heh.

The last living relic of Action Video remains in my hands. Grabbed this when bitch-ass Blockbuster put them out of business back in 1997. THE EXORCIST III in rare mom-and-pop video form is a beautiful thing over 25 years later.

Unfortunately, time and many moves through my life took my bright orange Action Video punch hole rental card that I had hung on to long after they closed. I’ve looked far and wide for another one in the wild, but continuously come up empty-handed. So if anyone reading this is local to Las Vegas and happens to have one sitting in a dusty box somewhere, I will gladly take it off your hands and display it like the nostalgic treasure I deem it to be is.

Like Action Video, many of these mom-and-pop stores fell to the corporate giants of Blockbuster and Hollywood Video, unable to compete. I personally, never went to one until there was no other choice as I was rather bitter that they put my favorite rental place out of business. The place where I struck up conversations about horror films with other fans and Nick, the son’s owner behind the counter who would always shoot me some wild recommendations like Basket Case; of which I totally rented upon his imaginative description of Belial. When I finally made my way into Cock-Buster, I found the horror section to be rather dull. It was too bright in there, kids running around unattended… The magic was just, gone for me. And the clerks with their Gap-inspired uniforms didn’t seem to be as knowledgeable as Nick from Action Video. So here I was, biting my lip and bitterly renting Blair Witch from these corporate clowns until Karma finally made its way back to them when Netflix came into the circle.

The City of Irving published a video back in 1988 highlighting all the wonderful things a Mom and Pop shack has to offer, much of what I’ve stated here and uploaded it to YouTube. Probably one of the most wholesome things you’ll see on the internet today, folks.

Maybe I’m being too harsh on Blockbuster, ( I don’t really think I am) but aesthetically and nostalgically speaking, you just can’t compete with the powerful entity that is the small video store.

A clusterfuck of films that beg you to dig in and really do your due diligence in searching for the right film.

While the memory remains solid for myself, we luckily have people on YouTube who prior to the video website ever being a twinkle in Google’s eye, had the good sense to video record trips to their local video store so that we may bask in its glorious nostalgia. People here like HugeMovieFanatics who uploaded this home footage from December 1992 doing what we all did-wander around aimlessly looking at all the mystical things a small venue like that had to offer.

Bless these guys. Bless the Mom and Pop Video Shop. And Fuck the Blockbuster. I hope you read that in the Iron Shiek’s voice.

Editorials

Nostalgic Trauma 101: The Garbage Pails Kids Movie!

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I was lucky enough to be a kid throughout the 80s and have a first-hand experience with what is now, the glory days of nostalgia. One thing from my childhood that I was completely obsessed with was The Garbage Pail Kids, even at a ridiculously young age. I was three years old when GPK first hit the scene and was a bit of an oddball at that age loving both the insanely popular Cabbage Patch Kids while being immensely intrigued by all things horror, I remember being absolutely enthralled with the cards to the point where anytime we were at the store, I would beg the parents for a pack or two.

Actual pic of my room in 1986 so you know I ain’t bullshitting you.

The Garbage Pail Kids were TOPPS middle finger to Xavier Roberts and his CPK line as the infamous trading card company had initially wanted the license to put out some wax packs like pretty much every other pop culture entity had in the 80s and 90s. However, Roberts scoffed at the idea and turned the company down, in turn launching a series of cards in 1985 from artists at TOPPS poking fun of the toy line by making them even uglier than they already were with a gross-out factor. And thus was born the Garbage Pail Kids and a phenomenon of the 80s that is carried on to this very day with collectors catching new packs faster than your parents attempting to nab a CPK doll in 1983.

The line was so popular in fact that in 1987, a movie came along that (I think) was meant for kids… but hey it’s the 80s, and all kids’ movies were pretty damn dark anyway. It was almost like a rite of passage to help put some hair on our balls and The Garbage Pail Kids Movie was in no way short of providing plenty of trauma to kids who watched it. Add in a tiny person with an alligator face who loves to eat fingers and we got ourselves a tried and true, 80s kids’ movie folks!

In all honesty, this movie is one of the worst films ever made, and as much as I love GPK and I actually did get a kick out of this movie as a kid, watching it as an adult even with those nostalgia goggles, it’s just one of the most fuck-awful films I’ve ever seen.  It’s a trash spectacle of Z-grade 80s cinema. But you know what? In all the mess that it is, I believe that also might be its saving grace. A movie, so terrible, so awful that most that have seen it, have wiped it from their memory or shrugged it off as some sort of fever dream could be the very reason that when people talk about it today, they just laugh their hardy asses off. No one actually gets MAD at how bad it is; just at that, it’s just so damn weird and wild that no one would ever take this shit seriously.

If you’re someone that hasn’t witnessed this chaotic shitshow, the plot is basically the “kids” are mutant alien children that live in a trash can and befriend a bullied kid named Dodger along with his only friend, an antique shop owner who somehow knows everything about these gross ass kids from outer space. And by kids, I mean piss-poor animatronics and puppetry that would scare the shit out of the likes of Freddy Krueger. These “kids” are fucking goddamn terrifying to look at and I don’t know if that was the intention or not, but I had nightmares for weeks about Ali Gator and even more so, Messy Tessie- the booger snot-faced kid with a face that just scared the ever-loving shit out of me by her just standing still- staring. Like the monster she rightfully is.

SHUDDERS.

Makeup f/x artist John Carl Buechler (director of TROLL and FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VII: THE NEW BLOOD) who was initially slated to direct wanted the GPK movie, originally pitched it to be a horror film, with people being turned into hideous Cabbage Patch-like monstrosities that terrorized a small town. Although I think that probably would have worked better for older audiences and would maybe stand the test of time for 80s kids of today, it obviously wouldn’t have worked at all for kids in 1987. And yet without even trying they made a horror movie anyway with those giant prosthetic heads. I want to believe Buechler did that on purpose to scare the shit out of the kiddies. Bravo, it worked.

The Garbage Pail Kids Movie goes balls to the wall on every single level, but I can’t help but find some sick and twisted charm in it. This is a movie nobody should ever willingly watch, but one that everyone needs to see at least once. It’s horrifying, stupid, gross, offensive and so mesmerizing that you’ll feel comatose from horrifically bad 80s cheese that would never get green-lit today.

Or hey if you really hate someone, make sure to recommend this movie to them to ensure they’re out of your life forever.

At least the opening credits were a banger, eh?

Editorials

Trypanophobia in Horror Movies: The Anatomy of the Needle Kill

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Horror movies love to play on our real-life fears, because hey what’s the point then, am I right? Coulrophobia, the fear of clowns is a great example. Then there’s Gerontophobia, where you know as well as I do that the elderly can make Pennywise look like preschool nursery rhymes. But today, we’re gonna talk about good old-fashioned Trypanophobia, ya’ know the fear of needles, which seems to be more rampant among society now than in years prior and no one seems to know why. It’s estimated that a quarter of adults today have some sort of needle fear ranging from mild to extreme and the horror genre takes no prisoners in capitalizing on that phobia with viewers whether it’s intentional or not. As the saying goes, or at least I always throw it out there, “Horror is what you make of it,” and personally speaking here, I am goddamn terrified of medical needles so whenever I see a syringe being used as a weapon of death, much like how I view them now even though I realize it’s totally irrational, I cringe like a mother fucker.

The irony in all of this is that I’m a trained Phlebotomist and never had an issue with needles up until a few years ago- right around pandemic happenings. As someone with a bonified anxiety/panic disorder and also a person who loves to analyze everything to death, I concluded that all the fear, uncertainty, and various images of needles shown across the media board may have certainly contributed to it. Tattoo needles? No problem, and seeing as how my husband is a tattoo artist and we own our own shop, that would be a disastrous situation. However, you come at me with a medical syringe, I better be dying or you might just end up being crucified with those needles like this crooked-ass cop from Tales From The Hood who rightfully had this shit coming.

Anyway, the use of needles as an instrument of woe and murder in the horror genre is quite ironic as for the most part, this tool is used to save lives while in the horror world, they love to utilize it as a symbol of death. For people with needle phobias, these scenes can be both traumatizing and even more horrific than intended. Or for some, it can be a path of healing if they’re trying to conquer their fear. In any case, deaths by a syringe in horror films are some of the most terrifying and brutal unique kinds of deaths in horror history and I’m not just saying that because I myself, have a needle phobia, but because before I developed this fucked up fear, I would still agree with this statement. The art of the horror scare loves to exploit real-life fears and no one gets a pass.

One of the most obvious traumatizing examples of needles in horror is, of course, the needle pit in Saw II where ex-drug addict Amanda is thrashing about in a sea of hypodermic needles. No death here BUT this scene is just about as uncomfortable and painful to watch as it gets, with, or without a needle phobia. Even worse, is if you’re someone in recovery.

“SHUDDERS“

Speaking of hypodermic needles, arguably a more recognizable prick of death is that of Taryn’s in Dream Warriors where Freddy plunges not one, but eight syringes of lawd knows what into the recovering teen junkie. I don’t care who you are, if you didn’t cringe in the slightest upon seeing this, you might be a sociopath.

Then of course there’s Friday The 13th: Jason Takes Manhattan where Homes not only rapes Rennie of her virgin sobriety but also attempts the physical act. But not before Jason takes the druggie thug’s own needle and stabs his right through the chest before consummating the despicable act. Imagine being such a piece of shit you make Jason look like the good guy? That’s one needle death I gleefully enjoyed.

As cringy as those are, the ones seen in actual medical settings are the ones that make me squirm the most. Perhaps the biggest one for me that makes me want to literally get into a fetal position is Regan’s Arteriogram procedure in The Exorcist. This movie, with some that would consider containing some of the most fucked up scenes in horror history, doesn’t phase me a bit. As a matter of fact, I laugh every time Pazuzu Regan says vile and filthy things to the priests, much like Beetlejuice would.

But this, no thank you a million times.

As messed up as they all are, the very first needle death I ever saw was at the hand of Michael Myers taking down Candy Striper Alice and Dr. Mixter in Halloween II. Set in again, a hospital, this one is just all kinds of fucked up. Everytime I think of the use of needles in horror, Alice stumbling upon a dead Dr. Mixter in his chair with a syringe stuck in his eyeball while meeting the same fate as Myers plunges a squirt full of air into her skull is an image that stays tried and true inside my newly formed needle phobia brain.

The things I blog about because of my love for you nostalgic nuggets. Now that I’m stressed, you’ll have to excuse me as I go pop an Ativan for my anxiety.