Back in the day, before shopping on the internet really took off, there was the thrill of the hunt. Going out to stores hoping to find something. Sometimes you do. Sometimes you don't. We didn't care, though, as the hunt was always more exciting than the find.
Back in February of 1996, after viewing the Jackie Chan film, RUMBLE IN THE BRONX, in the theater, I arrived home wanting more. I really liked what I had seen in the theater and knew that Chan had been around for a long time so I decided to ride my bike up to my local Blockbuster Video to see what I could find. I armed myself with twenty bucks and rode out into the night looking for some martial arts goodness. I found a wealth of titles on VHS of varying degrees of “it looks ok”. I purchased SNAKE IN THE EAGLE'S SHADOW on VHS and rode back home to view my findings. I relay this entire story in my review of the SNAKE IN THE EAGLE'S SHADOW blu-ray that 88 Films released in May of 2021.
Had RUMBLE IN THE BRONX been released today, I probably would have come home from the theater (or hell, even viewed it on a streaming service because I doubt the film would have played in theaters) and I would have opened the Just Watch app (this is not an advertisement for that app but something I actually use on a daily basis) to find every Jackie Chan film I could find and watch them all. There would have been no “hunt”. I would have found something with very little effort on my part and I would have watched everything without doing too much. There would have been no riding my bike in the darkness of night, braving the February elements, and trying to find a film.
The hunt is gone.
Gone are the days of finding a film in your local video store that will change your life forever. Gone are the days when you visit a video store you have never been to only to find that one film you have been spending months trying to find. Gone are the days when, after what seemed like forever, the film you really love has finally made its way to home video. You walk into the video store on release day and you find it sitting on the shelf, waiting just for you to show up to take him away to your house for the evening. Getting the latest Marvel movie on DVD at your local Target two months after it just raped theaters of all your money is not the same as the scenario above. Back in the day, we had to wait upwards of a year for a film to finally make its way to VHS and Laserdisc. Let me tell you, the wait made the first viewing extra special. Now, you don’t have to wait for more than a few weeks to “buy” your digital copy for sometimes more than the eventual DVD and Blu-ray.
There have been times when I am going through a streaming service and I find something that I haven’t seen since the 80s or 90s and I get a feeling of nostalgia for a few seconds and then there is something else instantly taking my attention and destroying the nostalgia. I never have that problem when I find something physically. I have seen old VHS tapes, some of which came from the very same video stores I use to visit during THE VIDEO STORE DAYS and I get that warm, tingling feeling I used to get when I would hold that very same VHS back in the day. I have NEVER gotten that feeling while looking at a digital store mockup of the same VHS cover. It just doesn’t happen.
I was watching old commercials from the 80s and 90s and saw a bunch of old ads for Blockbuster Video and I got that tingle again. I used to love walking into my local Blockbuster and knowing that I was walking out with something I thought would be great. That feeling of looking at the boxes and that glorious video artwork and then reading the back of the box and getting a feel for what this film might be like. Does it tell you that the film was inspired by the INDIANA JONES films? Then you know it’s going to be an adventure in the jungle with the hero spouting of some vaguely racist comments because that shit is always funny. Does it say anything along the lines of “in the same vein of FRIDAY THE 13TH?” Then you got a standard 80s slasher on your hands and it has the real possibility of being awesome OR the worst thing you ever saw.
The point of this whole thing is that we had to hunt and we lost the hunt. The hunt used to add value to a film. Like the above-mentioned reasons, the wait was something that always made your “want” to see a film go up by ten points. You might hear someone telling someone else about a film and now YOU want to see it. Then you have to wait months on end until that one day when the film arrives on store shelves. The wait made it extra special. We lost the hunt because we got lazy. Netflix killed the video store and look what is happening now. They knew what people liked doing more than anything else, even sex: lying on the couch, watching tv. Everyone does it and now you don’t have to leave the comfort of the fart-riddled comfort machine to watch your favorite films. Now, you just turn on any of the hundreds of streaming services we have now and watch “anything” you want at any time. They don’t have the same selection as the video store and they DEFINITELY don’t have that one film you have a craving to watch. Sure, most video stores didn’t have the number of films that Netflix has, but each film in the video store had a better chance of being watched because if you took time out of your day to go to the video store, you might as well look at everything they have.
Well, it’s not all the way gone. I remember going to see the roadshow version of THE HATEFUL EIGHT when it played in theaters for about a week right around Christmas 2015. As we were leaving the theater, I told my wife that I wanted to stop at the nearby Best Buy to see if I could find the soundtrack. She questioned me about this as Best Buy didn’t carry many CDs and what were the chances of them carrying a soundtrack to a western that just opened. I told her it wouldn’t hurt to stop and have a quick look. Color her surprised when I returned to the car with the soundtrack in my hand. I was pretty shocked too. The point I am trying to make is that the hunt IS out there but it’s a much smaller arena.
There are stores out there that sell used movies, books, music, and video games. There are a few of them around where I live and I will travel out farther to find other stores in other towns. I like the hunt. It made what you were looking for better and you got to go to the video store and even if you got something bad, you knew that next time fate was on your side and you would find a real winner. I would do anything to be able to walk into a real video store and just spend hours there going through everything they had.
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