Sunday, October 4, 2015

Updates Revenge (Part 4, Based On A True Story).




Previous chapters.
Saga of the (failed) original topic.
Addendum to the lost memories saga.
The first two parts of my video collector's trilogy.
And now, part three.

Nicely's Video.


From here.

Anyway, up the road a piece, ya got Nicely's Video.

Ahhhh, you served me well over the years, Nicely's, but your time is passed.

So many memories, Toxic Avenger, Evil Dead trilogy, countless Nintendo games, countless shitty cult movies given the MST3K treatment by me & Hyla & Spencer.

So damned many memories.

And it's all fading away.

They became a half & half video and tanning place some years ago, and the tanning part has slowly been gobbling up real estate, and now I hear they're adding a beauty parlor.

It ain't a geek place anymore, it's a bimbo place.
I don't go there anymore.

Okay, so I don't always like half & halfs. :P
Not when one of the halfs becomes malignant.

Anyway, these days, it's easier to Redbox.
Think everyone's discovering that.

And even then, there hasn't been very much the past 5 years or so I was super-compelled to see.
Think I can count on two hands the new movies I've seen in the past 2 years.

So yeah, the Nicely's age is over for me.
*Sigh*

From here (re: "Manhunter")

Watched this with my grandfather when it was fresh to HBO.

I was desperately trying to keep up with it to show I wasn't a dumb little kid, and I remember saying "so...he thinks he's turning into this Red Dragon? Like, some kind of werewolf or something?".

Gramp looked at me like I had lobsters coming out my nose.
I get that look a lot.

Anyway, after seeing Red Dragon, yeah, I fuckin' nailed it.
Neener.

Also, this was the last tape I bought when Nicely's liquidated their VHS stock.
*Sigh*

From here (re: "The Incredibles")

Watched every single little bonus feature on this baby before giving it back.
Think it might have been one of my last Nicely's rentals.

From here (re: "12 Monkeys", and "Serenity")

Nicely's rental.

One of the very last Nicely's rentals.

From here (re: Galaxy Quest")

Nicely's rental.
Wish now I'd seen it at the theater.

From here (re: "Xtro")

Always saw that box at Nicely's for years, but that image always creeped me out, and I could never work up the nerve to rent it.
Bought it from them when they emptied out their VHSes.
The above review reflects my reaction.
Put it out to the curb for the garbage man last year when I needed more DVD shelf space.
Couldn't find anyone that wanted it.
You literally can't give VHS away anymore, it's sad.

From here (re: "Robot Ninja")

Nicely's always had this sitting on the shelf, but...there was always something better to see...always dodged this bullet.

Didn't dodge XTRO though...put both barrels of that one right in my face....I shouldn't be alive...

From here (re: "Hologram Man")

Nicely's rental.
Couldn't tell ya why.
Looking for the next Toxie, I dunno.
Don't know 'til ya try.
Although, by that logic, I shoulda rented "Robot Ninja".
I don't know...I don't know what I was going through....

From here (re: "The Wizard Of Speed And Time")

Nicely's had this, and I passed up both renting, and buying it when they went out of business (as a rental place).
What a fool I was.
Well...what can I say, I was oblivious.
Still, I pile it on my mountain of regrets. :(

Well, it has a happy ending though, Youtube churns out Mike Jittlovs all over the place.
So, here's your forebearer/mentor, kiddies.
Now you know.

From here (re: "Revenge of the Radioactive Reporter")

Nicely's had it, but I watched it off scrambled Cinemax.

My memories are foggy, but the chorus to the party theme to this is trapped in my head forever.

Oh, shit! Youtube has it!
Oh, I love you, Youtube!

Link. 

From here (re: "Waxwork")

Nicely's.

From here (re: "Billy The Kid vs. Dracula")

TNT's Monstervision played this, back-to-back with "Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter".
Man, I miss Monstervision.
Like, almost as much as Nicely's.

From here (re: "Frankenstein And The Monster From Hell")

In the earliest days of Nicely's, they accidentally gave me this one, instead of what I tried to rent...which completely escapes me.
We watched this one, and had a good time anyway.

From here (re: "Howling II: Your Sister Is A Werewolf", and "Howling III: The Marsupials")

Always saw all these sequels spread out on Nicely's shelves.
Never worked up the will to rent them.
I'm pretty much going by Wikipedia factoids here, and winging it.

Hey, was I the only one who'd obsessive-compulsively have to put all the horror sequels in proper order on the wall racks?
Like, even if it took a half hour?
...I bet the employees hated to see me coming.

From here (re: "Project: Metalbeast")

Nicely's had this, and either Hyla, or Spencer, always wanted to see it.
Could never tell if it was sincere interest, or post-modern snark.
I was always like "um..yeah....um...no".

I dunno, maybe I just can't turn my brain off for "dumb fun"...maybe I'm a stick in the mud...I dunno.
Yeah, probably...

From here (re: "The Fly II")

Nicely's rental, and purchase.

From here (re: everything in "Slacker-age Slashers Shindig! The second!")

And, this list, is the stuff I didn't get to do last year, cuz...I didn't plan ahead.
That simple.
Half the month was gone before I even thought of it.

So, I already got all the big popular ones, here, is the second tier.

Hmm, can't even really call it a "b-string", or "c-string", thing...this was a new paradigm.
Almost all of that last list were hits in the multiplexes first, but...these, these gained popularity almost exclusively through home video.

Yep, these are the classics of the VHS age.

Given that...screw the "history", sections.
They're all gonna be Nicely's rentals.

From here (re: "The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation Of Toxie")

Getting the VHS copy of this back in the day was a bitch.
Even Movies Unlimited wouldn't get the thing.

What I ultimately had to do, was beg the lady at Nicely's video to buy an extra copy for the store, and sell it to me, and I was willing to pay double price for it.

Amazingly, she did it.
I guess my family were good customers at the time...
It came with a poster of the above image.
I still have it kicking around somewhere.

I really have to upgrade all of that to DVD already....

From here (re: "Blood Diner", "Parents", "Sundown", and "Earth Girls Are Easy")

(Blood Diner)
Always saw this on the shelves at Nicely's and I always passed it by.
Tch...well, that's fixed now.

Yeah, these 2,4,6,8,10 packs take me back to the good old days of the bargain bins at Shady Dave's flea market.
This is the next incarnation of that.
I'm loving it.

Anyway "Blood Diner", best one of the set, hands down.
Consider the rest bonus features.

(Parents)
Like "Blood Diner", I always saw this at Nicely's too.
Always wanted to see it, and was always prevented somehow, and I just gave up.

Plus, Ebert said it sucked, and back then, he still held sway with me.

(Sundown)
Actually, looking at the old box-art from 1990, this was on the Nicely's shelves too, and my eyes always passed over it.
Never even picked it up.
Whelp, now I got it whether I want it or not...

Only watch this if you're an obsessive Bruce Campbell completist.
...or, you buy this set, and want your money's worth.

(Earth Girls Are Easy)
Anyway, with the 80's/90's flicks on this, and the Puppetmasters, and the Freddys, and the Chuckys, and "Return Of The Living Dead", I've fairly well re-created the horror section of Nicely's.
There's a handful more to fill in, but I'm about there now.

From here (re: "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things")

Okay, this one, I always saw on either the Nicelys shelves, or the Home Vision Video shelves, or at Shady Dave's, and...I never worked up the nerve to just grab the damned thing.

So, this was the last one I was curious about from the VHS days.

Consider it a retroactive "Flicks that really messed me up as a kid", cuz just the box spooked me for some fucking reason.

I've seen it now, and it's pretty schlocky.
Effects wise, anyway.

From here (re: "Dolls")

One of the ones I always saw the box for at Nicely's, and never nutted up and rented.

From everything I can gather, it's Puppetmaster if it was actually good.
Yes, someone made that movie.

Then Puppetmaster ripped it off top to bottom just two years later.
Bastids.

From here (re: "The Curse")

Adapted from "The Colour Out of Space".
Yeah, that one again.
Toldja.

This is another one of those ones I always saw on the shelves at Nicely's, and never rented.

I've seen it recently for this, and...wow, it's utter shit.
"Troll 2", level bad, but without the funny.
Ho-ly shit.

From here.

Taped to my file cabinet, and this was there all along, but I forgot it last time...

Nicely's!
See herehere, and here.
*Sigh* yep, my file cabinets, and my blog memories are all that's left of 'er.

From here.

Nicely's Video?
No longer a video store.
Totally a tanning/salon/beauty place.
They got a new purple sign up, and everything.
The bimbos won.

Well, that, and Redbox and Netflix have made the video store of old obsolete.

Which brings me to.....

....the video place by Plummers.

Gone.
Gone-y, gone, gone.
Empty hole.

Video rentals are extinct.

Except for Blockbusters.

And they only stay afloat because they sell more movies than they rent, and they have an online thing that's a ripoff of Netflix.

*Sigh* bye, video, byyeee.

From here.


A sequel to location blog #15.

Meant to get pics of the changes to Nicely's & Hanson's, but, y'know, waylaid by gout in the summer, then in winter, RL shit got in the way...and then, just didn't think of dragging the mini-cam along.

So, here's Nicely's no longer a video store.
Goodbye, my darling.


All right, so that's all the old stuff.

It's not a sad ending though.
Things don't really die, they just change venue.

80's MTV turned into VH1 Classic.
90's MTV turned into MTV2.
All of their videos came to Youtube.

VHS gave way to DVD, gave way to Blu-ray.

So, my new movie hang-out is Bull Moose.


The adventure continues. ;-D

And, on that note, here's some more links.

My review of "Rewind This".
My review of "Adjust Your Tracking".

And for more VHS nostalgia than can fit in your head, here's...

Red Letter Media.

The Projection Booth.


And Projection Booth has done long-ass episodes on "Rewind This", and "Adjust Your Tracking", and Jay from "Red Letter Media", has been on a couple of their episodes.

So, how to wrap this up?

I guess don't get mopey and blue for the past, cuz things come back around.
Look forward, kiddies.
But every now and then, take time to rewind. ;-)


Tomorrow, Revenge Of Odds N' Ends.

1 comment:

Diacanu said...


Just hopped over to Bull Moose, and got "Avengers: Age Of Ultron", and "Mad Max: Fury Road".

:-D

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