By 
Kevlin video shop was the place to go on a weekend.
For a mere £1.50 you could rent three movies for three nights.
That’s Friday, Saturday, and Sunday’s viewing sorted.
But let’s be honest, you watched all three movies on the first night while feasting on the bag of munchies acquired from the shop next door.
I found it was good to mix genres.
Usually an old kung-fu movie, a good horror, and the third would differ from week-to-week, depending on mood… Perhaps an action packer, something like ‘Robocop’ or ‘Commando’ to tie it all together.
Or maybe something a bit more light-hearted, like ‘Weekend At Bernies’.
‘Three Fugitives’ springs to mind as an example of a bit of action with some comedy thrown in for good measure.
Then there are movies like ‘They Live’. Is it a horror? Is it a sci-fi? It has humorous moments but it’s not exactly a comedy. And it stars Rowdy Roddy Piper, the famous WWF wrestling star. Truly a one-of-a-kind movie. It’s like all three of your Kevlin video rentals rolled into one.
I often got out the same movie from week-to-week. ‘Slaughter High’ was one such one. I rented it so much that Brian behind the counter just let me keep the tape. I still have it. Half the joy was walking in there and just looking at all the fantastic cover art on the video boxes. Wall-to-wall, youd spend a good hour in there just looking at it all.
And when you got home, another big part of it was watching the trailers at the start of the tape. And that boring guy who you’d fast forward that came on to tell you what cert the film is. This was all just as much part of the fun as the movie was.
I recall when ‘Robocop 2’ came out. It was a big deal.
Kevlin Video Shop must have had 20 copies of it, I remember seeing them all along the top few shelves the weekend it was released, all with the ‘out on loan’ tag on them. There was a waiting list to get a copy.
But there were still plenty more movies to choose from among the new releases. Stephen King’s ‘IT’ was released the same year. As was ‘Total Recall’, ‘Darkman’, ‘Exorcist 3’ and ‘Goodfellas’… ‘Arachnophobia’, ‘Gremlins 2’, ‘Misery’ or ‘Edward Scissorhands’… ‘Ghost’, ‘Home Alone’, ‘Back to the Future 3’, ‘Tremors’ or ‘Teenage Mutant Nina Turtles’… You weren’t going home empty-handed.
You were going home with gold in your hands.
And you’d watch every second of the tape, not missing a beat, because you paid your £1.50 – and you made damn sure you were gonna get your money’s worth.
