"B" Movies

My aunt went to the video store over the weekend and rented a couple of movies for $0.50 each. Needless to say, she and my mother did not make it all the way through either movie. They turned them off after half an hour. I chuckled to myself as my mother described the movies because it brought back so many memories from my teen years.

We were one of the first among my friends to buy a VCR. At first, we made careful choices, choosing movies we'd wanted to see but missed at the theatre since rentals were not that cheap when VCRs first came out. I even remember the first movie we rented: Grease. Things seemed to go downhill from there.

We'd often send my father to the video store with specific titles to rent. But somehow, while he was there, he'd be drawn to the shelves of "B" titles; movies no one had ever heard of, and for good reason. For reasons still unknown today, my father always picked movies from that shelf. He'd come home with losers such as Basket Case (a ridiculous horror film) or Fatal Attraction, but NOT the Fatal Attraction starring Glenn Close. No. Instead, we saw the nonsensical plot lines that never made it to the big screen.

We'd beg him not to look at those shelves. We'd question his choices. We'd groan, and threaten, and write our movie choices down. We'd do anything to prevent him from going. But every now and then, he still made his way to the video store and returned home with another gem. It became a running joke. We knew we were watching movies that no other family in their right minds would watch.

I suspect if he were sent there to rent a DVD today, he'd still find that shelf of "specials." And you know who he'd run into? My aunt.