We're not talking about Blockbuster, Family Video, or Hollywood Video here- we are hailing the dingy and cluttered neighborhood video rental stores of the 80's and 90's. Where the family enslaved their kid to work behind the counter; where the rentals for video games were always around 2 years old and the snacks around the same age. Posters peeling off the walls. This was the age of the Five-Day Rental.
What exactly is a Five-Day Rental, and what would constitute a Five-Day Rental movie? Well, I'm glad you asked. In my neck of the woods it was typically limited to Horror, Sword and Sandal, and cheesy martial arts or Sci-Fi. Admittedly, some of the movies in this section would not deserve to be there, but that was half the fun. Scooping up 6-7 movies on the cheap, and lucking out on a few, or discovering an actor or series you didn't know you liked. To qualify I think there has to be the following things: violence, nudity, camp/jank, and sometimes a low budget. Below would 5 good examples of movies I had in rotation, and would be an easy pick up for my brother and I.
If my brother or friend sleeping over had some level of disagreement on what to rent, these were always a certified hit. Top class nudity, comedy, extreme levels of camp and terrible acting, and gritty death scenes. I would call this genre "Guts and Sluts", which of course my step-mom did not like. Like the movie Conan but $3.50 is too much to rent it? Get all four of these and enjoy over the top sex scenes and shitty special effects for a quarter of the price. Sure, they have recycled scenes, special effects, and sets.. but that's what makes it special. I think. I would include all the other shitty italian Sword and Sandal movies of the day in this as well: Barbarians, Sorceress, Beastmaster (one of the better ones), Hawk The Slayer, Krull.. the list goes on.
For whatever reason, all the horror movies outside of the newly released were always in the $1 bin. Chopping mall was about a Johnny-5 style robot that goes around killing the teenagers that thought it would be cool to spend the night in the mall. These bots slice and dice all the way to the end and it's worth every bit of that $1 to watch it at last twice. Good levels of nudity, terrible acting, and a premise that seems more like fact than fiction these days, this movie is like Mallrats and Valley Girl meet Friday the 13th. Bargain bin horror was never hit or miss. Troma movies were bottom of the barrel, but they don't suffer any kind of identity crisis and you know what you were getting into.
I'm a huge sci-fi nerd, so not to be outclassed by Arena, Robot Jox and it's sequel were always a go-to for me. In that same section you could find the first two Cyborg movies, both of which have A-class nudity and a story you can barley follow, on a shoestring budget as well as a smattering of Billy Blanks movies where he is a black terminator. I'm really surprised at what studios pulled off for the time with the budget available; it seemed like an episode of Babylon 5 sometimes with the sets and acting.. sometimes even the same actors looking exactly the same. Looking at you Arena!
No comments:
Post a Comment