[Thursday Nostalgia] My Very First Video Store Haul

Adorning the shelves of many film enthusiasts are titles acquired from a video store closeout sale. Some may be old favourites that they were glad to have. Others just may be something they took a chance on during the last few days of the sale, and it only cost a few bucks!

Closeout sales were usually patterned the same way, either in the heyday of video rentals, or during the recent spate of store closures in the city. Video store owners would sell off their movies by staggering the prices over several weeks. With each coming week, the prices would drop slightly, until the final seven days, when the remainder of stock could be had just for a few bucks each. Usually, the scavengers came out then, trying to find the gold that others overlooked. Back in the VHS era, it was common for videos to sell for fifty dollars in the first week, even if they were ex-rentals, as it was still expensive to buy videotapes new. So if prestige titles had no problem selling for fifty, you could just imagine the table scraps that remained for five!

I began attending closeout sales in those pre-DVD years, during my "swinging Bohemian" days. Rarely did I buy VHS pre-records back then, unless they were reasonably cheap, or unless I knew that I'd watch them again and again. (The first pre-record I ever purchased was Night Of The Living Dead on the Interglobal label, at our local K-Mart. This remains one of the titles I've watched the most, so that was a no-brainer.) Still, the treasure hunter inside me could never resist checking out these sales, even when I was a student on a budget. I'd usually wait until the final week, to see what was still available for five bucks. But you quickly learned how these "final weeks" worked. There seemed to be an unwritten law: the majority of stuff left over for the last seven days would be an entire wall of Canadian films, and a section of Henry Jaglom movies. 

The first closeout sale I ever attended was Budget Videos, formerly on Toronto's St. Nicholas Street. The ad you see in this article was published in the August 24, 1995 issue of Now Magazine. One presumes this store was a big deal, to warrant purchasing a half-page advertisement, for a liquidation that went for about six weeks. Still, I waited until mid-September to peek into the sale. This was when I had just started doing my college field placement at the CFC. One afternoon after work, I popped by when everything was down to $7.95 a tape. Even then, there was a lot of empty shelf space. And there was still one more, final week to go after this, when all remaining stock was a measly $4.95!!!

My intent that afternoon was to merely scope out what was left, and maybe hide a few boxes, in the hopes that they would still be there the following week. However, I did pick up the Republic two-tape set of the complete serial, Daredevils Of The Red Circle, surmising that it would be gone before then. That day, I also hemmed and hawed about picking up the Claudia Jennings classic, Group Marriage, and foolishly decided to take my chances and leave it for next week. Another unwritten law, as sure as the "Canadian films-Henry Jaglom movies" clause: there will always be "one that gets away". I knew I'd regret leaving it. Just to save three bucks? I could have forgone another chicken patty. But, we can't buy everything.

As expected, when I popped in after work the following Monday, when  "$4.95 week" had begun, the store was a feeding frenzy! No Surprise #2: Group Marriage was gone. By then, all the remaining stock was squeezed into one or two aisles. Most of my half hour there was spent on my knees, ducking people fastidiously grabbing unknown boxes from the shelves. At the end of the aisle, there were a few of those big Videohound reference books provided by the store. So if a customer scanned a video box, and wasn't sure if the movie "was for them", they could find a review for it. I remember one guy with round glasses, a blue trenchcoat and a well-guarded stack of titles, thumbing through these books to see what he had. I don't think he put anything back. 

That afternoon, I left with some old favourites for five bucks a pop: Key Video's edition of the spaghetti western A Minute To Pray, A Second To Die; Rob Nilsson's independent film Signal 7, a tremendous influence on making my own movies (and sadly appeared in every video closeout's "final week"); and the New Zealand horror film Strange Behaviour, which impressed me upon viewing it years ago on (pause- sigh) WGRZ's all-night show, The Cat's Pajamas. This haul included some previously unseen titles that I had rolled the dice on: Railroaded (Anthony Mann's supercool B-noir) and Tracks (you guessed it- a Henry Jaglom movie).

Sometimes the stuff in our collections matter more for what they represent than for what they are. Even today, when I look at these video boxes, I don't think of them as film noir, horror, "that Henry Jaglom movie", etc. Instead I think of them as "Budget Video" movies- as a whole. I also think of them as a group because all but the serial were viewed under the same conditions in the following months: late at night, when I had the apartment to myself. Watching movies is generally a lonely vocation. That isolation especially crept in from these misunderstood orphans whose subtle, understated qualities were manifest in the dead of night. By default, I also associate them with that crucial point in my life, as they were viewed during the final semester of school. As I sat alone in that lazy boy, across from my little 13 inch colour TV, I knew soon I would make a bittersweet departure from that groovy bohemian apartment into an uncertain future. Much like the video store these movies came from, it was the end of an era.

That Henry Jaglom movie.