This is the start of a new series of blog posts. Why? Why the hell not. Anyway, this is THE NEWFOUNDLAND SECRETS. Secrets about NEWFOUNDLAND the MOST MYSTERIOUS PLACE IN THE WORLD. at least to the people in my discord. I live in Newfoundland and uh it's not very mysterious honestly. It's quite uh typical to me. I've lived here for forty years and it just seems like any old place. However to the DISCORD FANS OF CLAWX, Newfoudland is a MYSTERIOUS AND SPOOKY AND WEIRD PLACE. This came up because I mentioned someone should make a VIDEO STORE SIMULATOR video game. Like you get a trading card store simulator and who gives a shit about MAGIC THE GATHERING unless you are like a giant NERD. Video stores were cooler. Uh, I think I will try not to use SO MANY CAPS in the rest of this post. Anyway I mentioned how I should do a post about the Video Stores and one person agreed. That's all it takes to get me ot write about something, just say yes. You don't even need to read it afterwards, just be like yo mang write that shit. So that's why you are getting this look back at the video stores I remember going to when I was a child.
Our first video store is the one I remember fondly from my early years. I remember going here a LOT to rent like The Care Bears Movie 2 or The Good The Bad and the Huckleberry Hound. You know only the most respectable and amazing of cinema. It felt like it was a store that went on forever, but you also got to remember I was somewhere between 3 and 8 years old when I would go to this place. I'm pretty sure this was where I started my love affair with Horror. My parents would tell me to stay in the kids section but you can only look at the same Transformers tape (you know those huge ass ones. Totally cool. wish I could own one but they want more money than God for one) before you get bored and go to look at other places. I would get to the Horror section and be amazed by all of the insane box art. There's a reason most people who collect VHS go for Horror because man they wanted to sell you on movies like Icebox Murders and they knew the movie was terrible (and it is. I saw it) and you needed a killer box art to get people to rent it. Anyway another great thing about this store was the fact it was RIGHT NEXT DOOR to a toy store called Romar's. I don't know who Romar is but good gosh darn he made a good toy store. That place was awesome. I don't remember getting many things from this place but holy shit it was a good place to go to as a kid. I remember a Scrooge McDuck stuffed toy that I still want because I refuse to grow up. I also remember getting our VHS copy of Homeward Bound from here. Which was weird because I do not believe they sold movies before or after this but this was a movie my sister and I watched so many fucking times. If you don't cry at the ending then you are a cruel creature. Sadly sometime after 1994, both of these places went out of business but Kelly's still exists as something else that I don't really give a shit about and you can go their website here.
I don't remember the name of this second store, and this is just a image from DINOSAUR DRACULA and when they would find random VHS stores in New Jersey. I TRIED to get a CERTAIN SOMEONE to go to these places but he was like NO I JUST WANT TO STAY HOME AND KISS MY METROID CART. He missed out on the last VHS stores! HE COULD HAVE MADE HIS VHS COLLECTION LEGENDARY. anyway I know I promised that I wouldn't use caps lock after the first paragraph but I had to. I have to get the point home!!!! Anyway this was in a small mini mall, right next door to a convenience store (that also rented VHS and NES games everyone did that shit in the late 80s/early 90s). I remember this place pretty fondly. I remember getting into trouble with my mom because I went there with Terry Hiscock to rent BEETLEJUICE. I got in trouble because I didn't tell her where I was going. I also remember BUYING the NES game DuckTales here. I remember it being for not much money and they would probably have gotten more money if they kept renting it out. I mean DuckTales is still something talked about. It's weird. I also remember my sister stealing the box to the movie Chasers. a obscure comedy film from the 1990s that no one else remembers except me. We brought it back and I don't think anyone other than I have seen this film in my family. I just remember it mostly for that. I don't even remember anything about the movie. I don't remember much else about this place except they had one hell of a NES section. They had Pac-Man with the weird Tengen cover that will always be seared into my mind's eye. Poor Pac-Man looks so worried. GET THAT BIG BALL PAC-MAN! I BELIEVE IN YOU!
Now we get to what might be my favorite video store from my youth. Or at least the one I went to the most. Allan's Video was a chain store. We had one in Highland Drive. One in Elizabeth Ave. One in Mount Pearl and I think another one somewhere else. I remember you had to drive up a hill. This could be a dream. I don't know. Memory is a weird bitch that I kinda hate. They used silent film comedians Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy as their mascots. I never knew who they were until I was an adult. They had an amazing horror section and that's what I mostly remember renting there. That and SNES games. You see they had a deal for 7 dollars and 77 cents you could rent 7 movies for a week. Older ones of course. The new shit you had to pay that 5 dollars. In fact you had to pay $5 for a regular rental so I'm sure a lot of people just said fuck it and picked up 7 movies in hopes they'd watch like two ro three of them. Me I watched or played all seven. I would always make sure to pick up Chrono Trigger and Inspector Gadget for the SNES until they got rid of those games. We would go shopping at Sobeys around there and I would go to K-Mart (when it was open), Blockbuster and then Allan's. Allan's Video on Elizabeth Ave was the second to last Video store to go. It was in 2014 when they finally closed down. I wasn't even renting movies any more. I would uh TOTALLY LEGALLY OBTAIN THEM OTHERWISE. Yeah, get used to it I'm using the damn caps lock!!! EAT MY SHIT! Anyway I've still never seen a Laurel and Hardy movie but I still have a fondness for them and their weirdly drawn cartoon versions.
This was Jumbo Video. I think they were #1 in Canada. I do not know for sure. They had locations all over Canada and they started in Ontario. I remember Jumbo Video because you could rent $3 for like $12 or so? I mean with taxes. We started going ot Jumbo Video when one opened up like 10 minutes from our house. We would go to a different video store. I mean I would usually stay home at that point but still. Jumbo Video had three locations in St. John's. One right near my house. One in Ropewalk Lane. and another in Mount Pearl. Which is just basically a part of St. John's. We just let them think they are different. It's cute. They also bought the Allan's Video on Highland Drive when that closed. That was the last place to go. If Allan's Video had a good starter horror selection then Jumbo Video was where you went to rent the weird obscure shit. I remember renting Slumber Party Massacre and Pieces here. They would sell movies but at way too much of a price. I could get my mom to buy a movie from Allans Video at $5 but I wasn't getting Octaman for $15. It was a good move on her part because that movie is uh, not worth $15. It's funny what sticks in your mind huh? You could also get free popcorn to eat while you browsed and that was cool as hell. Apparently the Ropewalk Lane place would go all out in October and make their Horror Section look scary and spooky but I never got to see it. Sometimes life just sucks you know. Anyway this was a great video store and I miss it.
Another random image stolen from Google because this store did not have a really cool logo. It was called Capitol Video and it was AMAZING. They packed so many fucking movies into this store it was insane. The only time I ever saw TROMA RELEASED VIDEOS was in this place. If Jumbo Video was where you went to rent the weird obscure horror movies then this was the place where you went to rent the weird obscure everything else. They were amazing. I loved it. They were ran by a husband and wife team and also a random guy. Maybe related to them. I don't remember ever seeing the wife just the husband who seemed to be bored working there. I guess the SHEER BEAUTY all around him got boring. I wish never to be bored by weird obscure cinema. You could also get the popular stuff too. They had a great selection of just about everything and I really enjoyed the atmosphere. It was one of those weirdly cheap looking Video Stores where everything was shoved in a wall. I also liked that they PROUDLY put porn out in the open. I mean it was mostly soft core stuff and not NICELY SHAVED BEAVERS GET FUCKED BY BIG DICKS vol. 12 but it's the thought that counts. Sadly sometime after 2010 they got flooded and pretty much threw out all of their videos. All those VHS lost like tears in rain. You see what happens when I get sad I start talking like Rutger Hauer!
Another photo stolen from Dinosaur Dracula. I did this because I don't like to see images above a paragraph and then no images. It does not look good. This was not the video store I was talking about. Anyway from whenever I can remember to like I believe 2001 My family and I would visit a small town called Lewisporte, where my Aunt, Uncle and cousins lived. It was always a fun time. We of course would still end up finding our selves at the video store there. I remember they had clip ons to put on the movies that were rented or not rented but they had funny faces on them. Like a sad face if it was rented or something. Anyway this place ruled. My sister and I would save up like two dollars and buy as much of this penny candy as we could. Chocolate with sprinkles on it. So good. Like manna from heaven. This video store also had games for sale. Or maybe rent. It was like the smallest rental section of games ever. It was Double Dragon for the NES. Some other NES game that I can't remember and fucking Earthbound. With the giant box. It might still be there. They were there for years. I don't know why I didn't try to buy them. It was vacation and I was given money but my parents would usually end up giving us more. Oh well. The weirdest thing I ever rented was from this place. It was the movie Junior, not the Arnie/Danny Devito movie, but a horror film. However it was not a horror film but someone had taped uh over it. With porn. I think gay porn. It was not very well filmed porn so I really couldn't tell. It was also spliced in with scenes from a sitcom that I do not know the name of and I know way too much about sitcoms. It was very strange and I didn't like it. Anyway this video store was in a weird random spot where all the houses were facing away from it. That's all I remember about this nameless video store, except that I loved it. I still want to eat those chocolate sprinkle candies. Those were the best.
Finally we get to the store everyone talks about. Everyone goes on and on about how they rented from Blockbuster Video. All Day and Every Night. If you were to believe them it must be the best video store ever and I must have rented so much stuff from there. Well, that's not true. Blockbuster came to Newfoundland in 1996. It was on the same stretch of stores and fast food locations that K-Mart used to be in and Wendy's is still in. It was a pretty great place to kill time while waiting for your mother and father to finish buying the groceries. I am here to poop on the parade of everyone who blithers and blathers about Blockbuster. I never really cared that much about them. I think I got to rent three whole movies from them because they were 5.99 so almost 10 bucks with tax. I'm sure those 7 movies from Allans for 7 days for 7.77 would end up costing more but my parents would get me out of their hair for quite a bit more time. My mom would never really let me rent from there or rent from there. The other reason I never cared about Blockbuster is that INCREDIBLY COOL HORROR SECTION got dwindled down to shit because they needed to buy 405 copies of the newest movie out so they could be like ITS NEW AND WE HAVE IT YOU'LL GET IT or whatever they did in the 1990s with new movies. My parents did not grow up in the lap of luxury and would try for the best deal and well Allan's won that deal. Still Blockbuster got several locations right next to Jumbo Video on Ropewalk Lane and also in Mount Pearl. St. John's was a wild place to rent movies. Seriously if you couldn't find it in this town it probably did not get released on video or laserdisc. Laserdiscs blew my mind when I saw them first. They didn't last long as rentals though but man they were wild.
I could go on. We had a LOT of video stores. We had a store that rental porn and just porn. My friend tricked me into calling them wondering if they had any Super Nintendo games for sale. Ha ha. Jerk. We had another one that was on my uncle's street and another one in quidi vidi. Not to mention all of the stores in the smaller cities. It was a great place to be a movie fan. We had a lot of weird looking places that actually turn out to be houses. You could have to the top half be your house and the bottom be a video store because why the hell not. It was the 1990s and somehow the population of Newfoundland was enough for like at least 25 damn Video stores! some right next to others! The 1990s was the last cool decade we will ever live. It had style and all decades since have been boring horseshit garbage. I hate the future. I miss video stores.
Growing up, there was a "Four Seasons Video" near where my mom would go to the grocery. I remember them having a decent selection of SNES and Genesis, no NES by the time I was running around there. I think there was a Little Caesar's next door. Thirty-some years on, I think about that video store whenever I come across the garlicky, yeasty smell of that pizza chain. That wasn't a very good story, but there ya go clawzie.
ReplyDeleteI want Little Ceaser's now...
ReplyDeleteI'll be honest, my knowledge of Newfieville is pretty much non existent. It's a series of Canada jokes but more extreme. Learning more about growing up there is actually geniunely interesting and will allow me make my claw gags more accurate. I bet you are thrilled about this.
ReplyDeleteIn an effort to SHARE MEMORIES and IMPROVE THIS CRAPPY BLOG, I would mention my similar video store memories, but I won't in this case as I have alluded to them in my replies to your NES posts so it's redundant. However in writing this reply, if I have similar experiences that I can share FOR NES SCENE COMRADIRIE then I will mention them.
One thing I will mention is I did not rent movies/tapes that much as a kid, at least not myself. We had HBO which I think was my parents' substitute for doing that. I don't think I missed much not renting tapes, as I have quite a few movies with heavy nostalgia that grew from endless viewings on HBO, and one of my closest friends also grew up on HBO and we grew closer by laughing about some of those movies, like Troll 2.
Those oversized boxes were magic. I don't even know why they were but it's probably the same reason why CDs were in long 3D0 boxes at first.
lol Terry Hiscock.
Remember when people could use anything they wanted as their mascot and they wouldn't get sued to oblivion? Yeah, that was the 80s alright. Now that video chain would be obliterated by THE ESTATE OF LAUREL AND HARDY.
Holy shit, 2014. That's impressive. Blockbuster aside, I don't think a single mom and pop that was born in the 80s/90s made it past 2004. At least up by me, Damien can comment otherwise. The real question is what were you able to get from them when you started collecting.
I am guessing Jumbo Video was Canada's Blockbuster... or at least until Blockbuster came around and killed the chain. The popcorn thing is pretty cool and I swear you dislodged a memory of a similar store doing it in NJ, but my mom being a nurse and a germaphobe would not let me ever have any. On that topic, there was the time I rented ORB 3-D and we were like the second person to rent it (because of course back in the day, all the games had a card that recorded when it was rented... for reasons) and because ANOTHER HUMAN HAD TOUCHED IT, she proceeded to lysol the 3-D glasses and that wiped away the coloring on the glasses and ruined them. Lol oops. I don't remember if my mom paid for the glasses or the store, AFOREMENTIONED AWESOME VIDEO II, just shrugged their shoulders. This is why I have a sealed copy of Orb 3-D now, to make sure I got the 3-D glasses in my collection lol.
Also the woman who ran Awesome Video II is firmly burnt into my brain as looking like Abby Hagyard (the female adult) from You Can't Do That On Television. She probably doesn't, but that's what my crazy brain has decided.
Putting porn out in the open is pretty bold. But you also lived in Canada instead of NANCY REAGAN'S AMERICA so that's probably why they were able to get away with it.
I know today there is nostalgia for Blockbuster (LOL THE LAST BLOCKBUSTER ON EARFFFFFF) but honestly I didn't really care for it back in the day. It killed all of the video stores I loved especially the VIDEO DEN close to my house which was on the other side of the plaza where Blockbuster moved into. By the time they came in, it was firmly late stage SNES/Genesis time which wasn't as good as the NES days in mom and pops but I think I rented a NES game or two there. Ultimately I was happy when that Blockbuster itself died and a pizza place moved into it. Like, a BIG one because that was a big store. I think it's gone now, I don't really remember.
I am with you, I missed the mom and pop era of rental stores. Everyone was trying to get into the game because apparently it was profitable? There was no shortage and I am sure there were places locally that I never even found because I was at the mercy of my parents driving me there so I never saw it. The 90s were kind of lame but yes, I agree it was the last cool decade even saying that.