Analog to Analog, Dust to Dust?

For the first few years of the infamous Eighties “format wars,” I lived in a strictly Beta household. Eventually, I undermined the monopoly in 1987 when I used birthday money to purchase a VHS player. Its brethren soon moved in and sent the old top-loading, Sears-bought dinosaur packing. My conspiracy theory on the matter is that we were drugged in moderation every time we unwrapped a new tape, its distinct factory-fresh aroma addicting our senses every time in a co-dependent, “Videodrome lite” sort of way.

Ten years later, DVDs began eroding the market dominance of VHS. Twenty years later, we’re on the brink of yet another upheaval as the entertainment and broadcast industries go full-on digital. While the “standard” DVD is threatened by a high-definition variation of VHS vs. Beta, the original home video champ is finally being pushed to pasture by consumers, businesses, and film purists who have complained about its inferior reproduction quality the entire time. It’s an inevitable step, replacing the old with the new to satisfy the human hunger for invention and improvement.

Not only has the analog exodus most likely resulted in a lot of unnecessary waste buried within the more recent strata of our friendly neighbourhood landfills, but one can only guess how many of the programs contained therein may never surface on DVD, HD-DVD, or whatever future modes of delivery come our way. It is with this underlying fear that many film fans in my town took seriously a massive VHS purge in the summer of 2005.

One locally owned video store remains in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, outlasting more than a dozen other mom-and-pop shops due to its superlative selection and choice location in the heart of the University of Illinois “campus town.” Therefore, when That’s Rentertainment makes a move, the customers take notice. As they had done a few years back with their extensive Laserdisc library, owner Geoff Merritt and staff identified enough re-release action by DVD labels to justify dumping most of their tapes.

The sale commenced on July 22, attracting culture vultures far and wide with the prospect of accumulating titles that would fill out whatever collections they harboured at home. Over the course of the long weekend, prices dove from 3 for $20 US on Day One (“Collector’s Day”) to 3 for $6 US on Day Four (“If you’re going to rent it, you have to keep it” day). Merritt finally dropped the price to $1 US per tape in 2006. Merely a thousand from the 16,000-strong catalog remained by spring 2007, when TR announced that customers could lift the remainders for free. Nine hundred of those found a new home between May 2 and May 3.

I obviously fathomed the significance of clawing through the TR stacks even though I did not have the greatest desire to stock up on videos. (I receive plenty of screeners through my own film magazine, Micro-Film, on top of my regular purchases.) Therefore, I decided at the outset to employ this particular booty as the backbone for a Weblog to be called “The Video Throne,” which would use the films as a springboard for personal writing. Approximately $275 US, 145 tapes, two years, and no blog later, I have failed to launch this project.

Overall, I think the most valuable thing I gleaned from the countless hours spent inside TR was an astute appreciation for the global body of film. The most exciting aspect was certainly the thrill of the hunt, picking through Hollywood history and direct-to-video flotsam in order to rescue the obscure. These plusses certainly outweigh the minuses – craning my neck for long stretches in order to read the same box spines four, five, six times each, aggravating my sinuses as I breathed in the dust stirred up by the increased traffic, and generally messing with my head as I incessantly cross-checked titles via computer to confirm their availability.

For now, the tapes remain in my possession. Many films on those tapes have still not been released on Region 1 DVD (or commercially, for that matter), such as Pull My Daisy (1959), Grendel Grendel Grendel (1981), It Came from Hollywood (1982), House of the Long Shadows (1983), Experienced Movers (1985), Max Mon Amour (1986), The Amazing Mr. Bickford (1987), Dogs in Space (1987), Salvation! (1987), The Girl in a Swing (1989), The Kill-Off (1989), Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989), A Wish for Wings That Work (1991), Love and Human Remains (1993), and Terminal USA (1993). Then again, choices like Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954), Quintet (1979), Born In Flames (1983), and Heavy Metal Parking Lot (1986) have since crossed the digital divide. Whether or not I watch them all, my heart still tells me I did right by adopting these classics and curios.

The same might be said for That’s Rentertainment, which maintains a token wall of VHS cassettes that were spared from the purge. (So, that’s where Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story went! Guess I’ll have to be satisfied with Superstar: The Life And Times Of Andy Warhol…) I notice a tell-tale gap in those shelves every now and then – a hopeful sign that, at least for one evening, someone other than myself considers the format still good enough for exploring cinema. I just hope they don’t forget to rewind.

That’s Rentertainment announcements:

JULY 10, 2005
VHS IS DEAD – LONG LIVE VHS!!!

That’s Rentertainment has officially run out of room and the only solution I can think of is to get rid of the VHS. We’ll be hanging onto a few titles that haven’t been released on DVD yet but otherwise everything must go. You, the faithful reader of this section of the Web site, get this info earlier than anyone else. Here’s the ad that will run in the News-Gazette classifieds:

“HUGE VHS TAPE SALE: Over 16,000 VHS tapes must go”

On Friday, July 22 (10 a.m.), That’s Rentertainment will be making room for more DVDs by selling all VHS tapes: Friday – $8/ea or 3/$20, Saturday – $6/ea or 3/$15, Sunday – $4/ea or 3/$10, next week everything $2.50/ea or 3/$6. 516 E. John Street, Champaign.

JULY 22, 2005
What’s up with selling all the videos?

Some folks are very concerned that since we are selling off all of our VHS titles, tons of great movies will no longer be available at That’s Rentertainment. Believe me, we are worried about that, too. So, here is what we did prior to the sale:

First, we went through all of the International, Independent, and Documentary films to check if we had the title on both VHS and DVD. If we only had a VHS we checked to see if it was available on DVD. If it was, we’ve ordered it. If it isn’t, we set it aside.

Second, we went through all the films that were set aside (from above) and checked their rental history. If they had rented at least once every other month we put it in the basement. These will return after the sale is over. If it hadn’t rented out at least once every other month, it’s on the shelf for sale.

So, we are going to lose a few titles but we have already placed orders for over 500 DVDs that we didn’t have in stock before. Those will start appearing next week. We also have about 300 titles that will be returning as rentals, as soon as the sale is over. Hopefully, we won’t be missing too much.

P.S. As always, if there are any great films you think we need please let me know.

AUGUST 2, 2005
VHS Sale Update #2

As of today, we have sold over 8,500 video tapes (but still have about 5,900 left). They will stay priced at $2.50 each and 3 for $6 from now on. We are going to move them all to the back of the store so that we can start on phase two: re-organizing the store!

MAY 2, 2007
VHS is dead … long live VHS!

Free for the taking: Over 1,000 VHS tapes! Here at That’s Rentertainment, we’ve been selling off our inventory of VHS tapes but now we need the space and just want to get rid of them. There are about 1,000 tapes left and we want them out of here. Stop by and take what you want. Free tapes are at the back of the store (the few up front we are keeping). Please do not call for information on specific titles – we don’t know what we’ve got and we’re not going to look. If you think you’ll want a lot of tapes, bring boxes. We don’t have any. Build up your library or build a dog house out of them – just get them out of my store. See you soon…

MAY 3, 2007
VHS for free update

Yesterday, you folks boxed up, bagged up, and simply loaded up over 900 VHS tapes and got ’em out of here – only 140 more to go. Well done. Thanks!

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Originally published in Vol. #1, Issue #19 (the ever-popular VHS RIP issue).