When I was a kid, I used to live about a mile or so from the local video store.  It was one of the mom ‘n pop type places, and a mile or so farther than that was a Blockbuster.  That local mom ‘n pop was a dark little shop in a strip mall anchored by a big chain grocery store.  I don’t remember if there was a porn section, but I was pretty young.  Some of you may recall a post in the B-Action thread about the first time I ever saw tits in a movie.  That was pretty cool, but I’ll leave that story for another post.

Anyway, the video store was eventually replaced by a small restaurant, which failed.  I remember it was an Asian fusion place that didn’t really serve that great food.  I don’t really think that fusion food really works as a concept, or at least I never really found a place that served fusion that was good, but I digress.  My earliest memory of picking movies to watch from that video store were two B-action movies.  They were A.P.E.X. and ROBOT JOX.  This was for one of my birthdays, which was one of those special occasions when I could pick more than one video from the video store.  I remember spending half an hour or so wandering around looking at the box covers and reading the plot descriptions on the backs.  I was a kid, so anything with robots and dudes that look like a live action Duke from GI Joe was an automatic watch.


Note: Both TERMINATOR and TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY were out by this time.  So, I don’t know what “most” there is in terms of “time travel cyborg thrillers“ to be “a cut above.”

Fast forward (ha, I kill me) to middle school and early high school, and the Blockbuster was where it was at.  The selection was much more mainstream, and though they stocked a wall full of the latest releases, there was still stuff to be found in the genre sections.  Never really did rent anything that much, but one of my friends worked there so we browsed and chilled, as the kids used to say.  One time, a friend wanted to rent an M. Night Shyamalan movie, but it was out of stock.  I don’t think that’s so much of a problem anymore.

Then came college, and there was a Blockbuster about a ten minute walk from where I lived.  I remember going there only once to rent a movie.  I actually had to go through the trouble to sign up for a Blockbuster card in order to do this.  I rented L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, and the only reason I rented this, though it has nothing to do with the quality of the film, was because the girl I was dating at the time wanted to watch it.

We never actually got around to watching it.  I had to walk back to the video store a couple of days later in order to return it.  It was a DVD, but even if it was a video tape I wouldn’t have had to rewind it since we never watched it.  So thank heaven for small favors, I guess.

I ended up buying L.A. CONFIDENTIAL on DVD a few years later.  It’s a good movie.

Now, there’s the Internet, and though I don’t have a Netflix account, Amazon.com and other places like CHUD serve to give me a broad variety of opinion on the movies I should check out or try to avoid.

Though, anything with robots and dudes that look like a live action Duke from GI Joe is still an automatic watch.

I have ROBOT JOX on DVD.  I have yet to find a copy of A.P.E.X. on DVD.

The journey continues.