videos from the 80's

i grew up outside chicago in a suburb called calumet city. we had a ma and pa video store in the neighborhood that was so cool i used to go there just to look at video covers and make lists based on the covers of what me and my friends should rent next. the store was broken off into rooms. so the horror stuff was in a small room with all the videos facing out on the walls.in the middle of the room was a cage with a skeleton in it and they played haunted house stuff in the room.the "action" room had a palm plant in it and helicopter and gun sounds.i swear it was so cool.they had an "adult" section i never had the guts to sneak into but it had pink beads in the doorway.

"dont judge a book by its cover" could not be better advice because these video covers would sometimes rule so hard and the movie within would be utter shit.sometimes not even containing the image on the box in the movie! but sometimes you would be surprised (and in my case scared out of my mind) by a great film.phantasm is one such film.

boy this was the movie,right?when me and my friends rented and watched this we were depressed (and sure we were gonna die gory deaths) for days afterward.

this film freaked me out as a kid.i've re-watched it as an adult and yes,its horribly bad(you can see boom mike shadows behind the actors bad)but it still freaked me out.naturally lit horror films are so much scarier than artificial lit stuff which just removes you from any sense that this is or could be real(see texas chainsaw massacre old vs. new for a comparison)

we rented this one based on a preview from another film and this is the "you've seen It all in the preview" kinda film but man, some of the gore is over the top!

it was video covers like this that as a kid drew me back again and again to that video store.i can almost smell that video store "funk" lookin at this picture.ya know i still smell that video store funk every once in awhile at my comic store...