Hello, my name is Packy and I am still a recovering VHS rental junkie, and also Head Llama on this blog. This is my continuing story:
This is part 2 to of a post from a year ago. Should you want to read the original post, click here: Confessions of a VHS Rental Junkie. In case you suffer from TL;DR – I am old enough to have been around for the VHS rental craze of the 80’s and 90’s… and I loved it. It was a fun discussion of a bygone era that has now been replaced by video streaming services and instant on demand video services. We all use the streaming services, and for the most part they are pretty terrific for watching videos, but they lack the magic of the days of videotape rentals. There was a tactile satisfaction to thumbing through the various aisles of VHS cases to find the perfect flick to watch. Also, it was easier to get a feel for a cheesy movie when you could look at the case. Nowadays you get a screenshot and 1 sentence description of a movie. Back in the day you had 3 or 4 screenshots and a couple of paragraphs describing the movie. You got a better impression of what a flick was all about back then. It was always fun perusing the shelves and reading about bizarre oddities like Head of the Family and Dollman vs. Demonic Toys! But I’m not here to talk about what flicks I’ve rented, I’m here to talk about how I got hooked into Full Moon Features in the first place.
I blame my parents!
BOOM! There I said what we all say… except in this case it’s 100% true. My folks have always had eclectic tastes in movies and music, and one day when I was in the vicinity of ten years of age, they introduced me to a little b-movie named Trancers. For dedicated followers of this blog, you may remember that Trancers was the very first movie that I ever reviewed for Nerfed Llamas. You can read that review by chasing this link: The Best Worst Movies of All Time – Trancers! I’m not sure how my parents knew about Trancers, likely it was on HBO or Cinemax, but they really liked that flick a lot. We found out that they made a sequel at the video store, rented it, and the rest was history. At the end of the film on a Full Moon Features VHS tapes was a special video. This video was a hodge podge of trailers, announcements, interviews with cast & crew, and usually a behind the scenes look at future Full Moon releases. Here’s a classic Full Moon Videozone for Trancers II to help you get all nostalgic about:
Fun, right?!?
Oddly comprehensive as well. These were huge videos that often ran 20+ minutes long. They were great marketing tools, and I never missed them. I was young, impressionable, and these videos permanently etched the brand of Full Moon into my brain. The good news is that my ‘rents dug these movies also, and as such we rented quite a few Full Moon flicks back in the day. Dollman, Robot Jox, and Bad Channels were favorites at our household. My Folks were always pretty hip when it came to TV content. They liked out there movies like Brazil, Tapeheads, Amazon Women on the Moon, and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai. We watched Saturday Night Live together. So it isn’t horribly shocking that they were cool with Full Moon movies also. As we rented more and more Full Moon flicks, it became clear that Charles Band was some kind of evil genius. Band has a furtive imagination that has given us so many crazy and wildly entertaining Full Moon movies. These b-movies were a part of my early teenage years in the same way that many of my contemporaries watched Saved By the Bell. It was a daily/weekly occurrence.
The tradition of the Videozone has been preserved for the modern day, but is now effectively the Full Moon Vidcast. It’s roughly the same thing, but quite a bit shorter for today’s fast paced information consumption crowd. Check out the most recent Vidcast:
Watching movies today versus rental: My biggest gripe about watching movies today is that streaming services are so cold in comparison to how we used to rent VHS tapes. They have zero personality. Many of the descriptions that they have for films are lackadaisical at best, and just plain awful at worst. Gone are the glorious box arts that sold you on a movie, replaced with a thumbnail image and a tiny blurb about the general plot. Also, the social element of having a fellow customer or a sales clerk recommend you a movie is gone now as well. Sure, Netflix will recommend you videos, but it’s not an exact science. Example, recently Netflix told me that based on my interest in Marvel’s Daredevil, I might be interested to watch Anne of Green Gables. I’m not even kidding. That would be like me telling a friend, I see that you like Trancers, might I suggest that you try Disney’s Moana. The technology is getting there, but it’s not quite close at this point. More than anything, the major streaming services are far too impersonal. I miss going to a brick and mortar building and bringing a tangible product home… but I digress. After all, this is just the ramblings of a self confessed VHS rental junkie.
Be sure to check out all of my other Full Moon Features content for this year at:
2nd Annual: May is Officially Full Moon Features Month at Nerfed Llamas!
And if you still have a hankering to read more, check out last year’s Full Moon month content:
First Annual: May is Officially Full Moon Features Month at Nerfed Llamas!
Also, drop by my bloggin’ buddy Bob Johns site for more Full Moon Features reviews and more:
