VIDEO WORLD: Rewinding back to my childhood haven

Recently, after waking up at around half past noon, I decided to do a little lite cleaning in my bedroom (I had already wasted half of my day, so why not feel as though I've done something productive).  As I wade my way through the pile of clothes I've stacked into piles since February, the quietness of the situation struck me.  The idea of organizing my life to nothing was just too depressing to bear.  I made my way over to my movie shelves to see what would be the ideal background movie when right in front of my eyes was my big box copy of Blood Feast.  Oh what a wonderful world we live in where such a film exist!  Let alone such a video cover!  The image of a young blonde in nothing but her bra with a mouth covered in blood as the hands of some unseen maniac hold her freshly removed tongue...I shed a tear every time I look at it.  As I was about to pop Herschell Gordon Lewis' masterpiece of schlock into my VCR, I paused when I noticed a sticker for Video World on the tape.  If anybody who grew up in Trumbull, Connecticut, does not know what Video World was, you didn't really grow up in Trumbull.  For some, Video World was probably nothing more than an alternative to their weekend festivities or the place to go because Blockbuster had run out of copies of a particular new release.  But to weirdo kids like me who obsessed over Disney villains and endlessly thought about Joan Collins' monolog in the "Hansel and Gretel" episode of Faerie Tale Theatre while the normal kids did whatever it was they did, Video World was much more than a video store...it was pure childhood bliss.

I like to think I resemble the globe in the logo...

The happiest of moment of my early childhood was whenever my parents would tell me that they were going to take me to the "video store".  I would become overwhelmed on the car ride down as I endlessly tried to decide what movie I wanted to rent.  Did I want Ghostbusters or Addams Family Values?  Or did I want to play it safe and just get Big Top Pee-Wee again?  Of course when I actually walked through the door to this little metropolis, everything I planned for myself was gone as I looked over each and every option that was available to me in the small little room in the back of the store that housed the children's videos.  I saw everything from Little Nemo to The Princess and the Goblin (with an orange Nickelodeon video thrown in for a dash of color) and was the happiest anti-social child in all of Trumbull...if not the east coast.

But this was all child's play.  Once I turned four, I got serious and it was Video World that began my education in the realm of horror films.  Like all the aisles dedicated to their own genre, the horror aisle of Video World housed everything one could possibly want and then some.  I would stand there and look up at the endless rows of tapes that stretched from one end of the store to the other.  I came across movies like The Monster Squad and Saturday the 14th and through them I gained a love for haunted houses, monsters, bats, bad girls and bad boys, wolf man's nards, Jeffrey Tambor, Paula Prentiss, lurid VHS cover art, 80's music montages, horrid 70's fashion, and special effects that were mediocre at best.  I would stare at the cover of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark and daydream about being the sultry vamp, and at the same time shudder at what horrific crime scene must have been left by Santa Claus as I fearfully looked at the famous big boxes of Silent Night, Deadly Night and its sequels.  I was too much of a chicken to rent movies like Hell Night or Dolls (nor would I have been able to convince my parents to rent them for me) but the image of those and other amazing covers carried over into my teenage years to the point that once I finally saw these films, I really regretted the fact that they hadn't been apart of my life sooner.  There are some videos that I first saw in Video World that I still think about but I refuse to watch as I know they'll never live up to what I envisioned them to be in my little warped mind (although The Amityville Curse is tempting me these days).

While the horror section was my home, I simply loved Video World as a whole.  The strange but satisfying stench of cardboard, stretched rubber bands, and styrofoam hitting you immediately as you walked through the door was the equivalent to the smell of cookie's baking in grandma's house (or if it were my grandma's house, a scent of Kools and mothballs with a touch of Budweiser).  Behind the counter was an entire wall of VHS tapes labelled numerically in white and silver marker for easy access when Carla, the queen of Video World, pulled them out and rang you up.  Oh Carla...how I miss that woman so.  A beautiful older woman, Carla knew everything she had in that store and got to know my face after I spent so long roaming the aisles.  She and my mother would chat as I pushed my picks of the day onto the counter.  She would tell my mother about how she recently lost a bunch of weight before yelling to one of her employees to order a new copy of Jaws because the store's old copy was on its way out, all the while waving to one of her pervert customers as he walked into the "back room".  She was always so sweet to me and I would assure her that once I was of legal working age, I would get a job at Video World.  As I write this piece, I see an image of Carla standing behind the raised counter with rows of labelled videos behind her and it makes me want to bow down and give thanks to the good woman that made my childhood so pleasant.  I have no idea where Carla is now or what she's doing with her life but I only hope for the best and can wish she is having a positive affect on another damaged child.

It was a tragic day when Video World shut its doors.  Once DVD came onto the scene, nobody gave a shit about the VHS anymore.  Whereas big name retailers like Blockbuster or Hollywood Video were able to cater to the new medium, Video World was just too small to compete.  Not long after the video tape died, so did Video World.  The going out of business sale is still something I regret not taking full advantage of.  Being the dumb, indecisive little shit that I was then (and still am to some degree), I maybe bought three videos out of everything Video World had to offer me.  I was in my angsty stage of puberty where all I did was listen to music.  Movies weren't cool anymore as far as I was concerned, unless they were about Kurt Cobain.  Trust me, if I can go back in time and kick my own ass, I would.

And I will always love yooooouuuuu...

So many great things slipped through my fingers during the length of that sale and I still regret that fact that I did not just bring a shopping cart and pile it with anything I could get my hands on.  It's not a time I like to think about.  Thankfully a friend of mine was not brain damaged and was able to get a good lot before Video World shut down forever, including the big box copy of Blood Feast I spoke of earlier.  When she gave it to me a few Christmas' ago, you would think she was giving me an actual ABBA turd.  Now that it sits nestled between my copies of Dynasty of Fear and Poor White Trash, Blood Feast offers me the comfort in knowing that Video World is still with me.  I'm sure anyone who reads this is probably saying to themselves "This poor bastard needs himself a life or a pistol" and I'm okay with that.  They never got to experience the joy I did as a child in strolling down those long aisles and the excitement I got out of discovering a gem amongst the hundreds of titles that called out to me.  I may have been obsessive, but it's everyone else's loss that never understood the true beauty of Video World.