My first video shop membership
Back in the day, kids, to watch films you had to rent things called "video cassettes" from shops. When I were a lad, these came in several varieties: there was the flashy shop with all the new films and the enormous posters which you tried to cadge off them; there was the old-style shop which mainly sold electricals and had a rarely-updated stock of old faithfuls to draw in customers; and then, bottom of the heap, there was the dingy, dusty old shop with a few penny arcades and a stock of bad 1970s horrors, dodgy British soft porn and sub-Chuck Norris action films like American Ninja 4 and No Retreat: No Surrender.

Being nine years old is great. I was old enough to walk around the (very small) town and got a whole pound pocket money. Riches. Saturdays I'd spend with my cousin, exploring the town (the harbourside, the river, the areas around the other primary schools with those strange kids and their foreign customs). We discovered the small dingy video shop and were immediately drawn to it: you could take some of the films out for 50p FOR THE WHOLE WEEKEND. And to our mutual amazement, we were allowed to join up. (In retrospect it seems a bit more understandable). We rented and enjoyed crap like The Garbage Pale Kids, Batteries Not Required, Leonard VI, and Rocky III.

My membership number? 1107.
(McChinaman banned, Fri 1 Jul 2011, 14:45, 9 replies)

Batteries Not Included?

(The Empress it seems you CAN polish a turd!, Fri 1 Jul 2011, 15:06, closed)

No
Batteries Not Required was about an male android character made by (I think) a dad and his daughter. It was a schtick to have the guy misunderstand everything. It was adapted from a US series of kids books which I remember reading. Maybe the title is wrong - can't seem to find it on Google.
(McChinaman banned, Fri 1 Jul 2011, 15:10, closed)

Ah, ok!
Never heard of it, thought you might have got the title mixed. Apologies!
(The Empress it seems you CAN polish a turd!, Fri 1 Jul 2011, 15:32, closed)

I felt cool at 16ish renting Driller Killer, and Evil Dead. Classics.

(Bear Pookie The Frankly Challenged. Halloween is coming to town., Fri 1 Jul 2011, 15:11, closed)

No retreat no surrender...
Top Film massively underrated...

Best bit in the whole film..
Punk 1: Who are you?
Punk 2: Someone to fear
*Cut to flock of seaguls*

Legendary...

Well that and the speeded up paint tower climbing...
(_kg_ has finally come out of hiding, and is scared..., Fri 1 Jul 2011, 15:46, closed)

I've got the box set on remastered DVD somewhere
will have to dig it out.
(Kip, Fri 1 Jul 2011, 16:02, closed)

That and..
Van Dammes angry face when he's getting his arse kicked near the end..
(danniekavanagh did nothing constructive on, Sun 3 Jul 2011, 17:58, closed)

Ours used to rent out
Atari games too. It was the best thing ever.
( Herb Alpert's Taxi Driver I have very beautiful lips, Fri 1 Jul 2011, 20:15, closed)

"First Blood" on VHS
My local video shop rented this to my dad in the days before computerised logging of rentals, when everything anyone took out was written up in a book. In this case, a blue exercise book.

I think someone must have spilled coffee or something on one page because I've still got the damned thing. In it's "luxury" rental box (one of the early ones designed to look like a book would if it were made from tatty dark red PVC).

I dread to think what the late fee would be; the only things saving me from remortgaging my house are:
1. the shop is now a chippy
2. they lost all record of the rental
3. I've moved house about six times since
4. I couldn't give a toss
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Mon 4 Jul 2011, 15:33, closed)