Saturday, September 20, 2008

VHS Cover Nostalgia

I'm far from the first blogger to talk about his love for the local video store. I'm not talking about Hollywood or Blockbuster. The real special moments always come from the small, independently owned VHS dungeons of yesteryear. As a kid, my eyes would always wander when my family walked through the movie store. The horror section was filled with disgusting movie covers for forbidden R-rated films. Some covers have stuck with me, even after a decade past by. So here's how this is going to work. I'm going to post three covers that really made an impression on me when I was young.

Then here's where you come in. I want to know what you movie covers refuse to leave your brain. Which ones made you laugh the hardest? Scared you the most? Scarred you the most? Which cover left you utterly unsatisfied until you eventually were allowed to watch the movie? Nostalgia is huge for me so I want everyone to reply to these questions. Post links to the covers if you can, if you can't, I'll try to find them for you. Then, after all of you have answered, I'm going to post again with all the awesome covers in some sort of giant reminiscent collage.


Here are my three, what are yours?




6 comments:

Adam Ross said...

I had to give this one a lot of thought. Even though I was adamantly against watching horror movies until at least high school, I was always tempted to browse through the scary section at the video store because of the cover art. Here's my picks:

Fright Night: Our video store had a big cardboard display of this poster, and the first time I saw it I could literally not turn away I was so scared.

Creepers (aka "Phenomena"): Same video store had this poster in the back corner, telling you exactly where to find the horror movies.

Parents: I'll never forget this one because my dad rented it thinking it was a kids comedy, but turned out to be a black comedy/horror movie about cannibal parents. My brother and I would later use this incident against my dad as a reason why he should let us rent rated R movies.

TALKING MOVIEzzz said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
whitney said...

Event Horizon. I wanted to see that one so bad. Still haven't, actually.

And I remember this one dentist horror movie that it seems has scarred me a little. In that I fucking hate the dentist.

elgringo said...

Was it Dr. Giggles?
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/loyd0008/villain/images/dr_giggles.jpg

Or The Dentist?
http://bp2.blogger.com/_OSgZ56VuTw4/RsaxUDB6IWI/AAAAAAAAA5o/BRjEu9IpgOc/s1600-h/The_dentist_dvd_cover.jpg

Either way, pretty terrifying.

Adam, that Creepers poster is fantastic! Also, I had an obsession with Parents for years before I saw it. That cover art is so creepy but still a little funny.

Glenn said...

Needful Things and Dead & Buries especially. I wrote about the VHS nostalgia factor earlier this year.

Also, Dead Presidents is one that strangely stuck with me.

I must point out that I have never seen any of these movies that I mentioned, which is perhaps why they have stuck with me (I don't have a bad movie to tarnish the memory).

Ross Williams said...

Great idea for a post! The Ghoulies one really stuck with me when I was a kid too. I really miss walking through our old video store... all these fascinating movies that I couldn't watch. Horror movie covers stuck with me much better than anything else.

Street Trash - Always stuck with me. It's been a long time since I've seen the film, but I remembered it actually lived up to the poster fairly well.

Night of the Demons - This chick freaked me out... I just had to see it.

Nightmare on Elm St. - The older neighbor kid had this on his wall, it frightened me for years before I could ever watch the movie.

I used to ask the video clerks if they had any free posters, and I'd take just about anything home. I had a cheesy My Chauffeur poster on my wall for years, just because it was a movie poster.

-Ross
What I Watched Last Night