REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PASSED: VHS covers I will never forget, movies I will never see

I cannot remember the first time I went into a video store. Like church and grandma's house, they were always just there. I would look around the horror section to see if a Godzilla or Frankenstein was lurking among the more salacious titles. Over the years there were certain VHS covers that left an impression. As a child, I was too scared to rent one (plus mom and dad, being sane, would have said no) but now I'm old enough to know that without question the covers are exponentially better than the actual movie.

What prompted these memories was a journey to Richmond's KO Video: a creepy little piece of 1982 preserved in 2009. The carpet was the first thing that got my attention. It's a shade of green that's both dingy and strangely fluorescent at the same time. After, I recovered from the Lovecraftian carpet, I noticed that the place is filled with broken televisions and VCR parts. A dusty display case contains Disney Beta-max and strange electronics with brand names long forgotten. At the horror section, I recognized several childhood cover traumas.

Look at the blurb. "Famous Monster" magazine loved this movie! It was endorsed by Forest Jay Aickerman himself!

I'm sure that this was not a pleasant photo shoot for that actress.

Despite having Vincent Price, I never wanted to check this one out. I thought Elvira was not going to give the material the proper respect it deserved. Seriously.

Screenplay by Gloria Steinem. Who knew?

Rutger Hauer is a future cop fighting a Creature from the Black Lagoon. On second thought, that sounds awesome.

The prequel to Microwave Massacre or Jeff Foxworthy meets Ed Gein?

I heard that the commentary track for the Criterion Collection edition will feature Ned Beatty AND Sheb Wooley.

Fox News is running this as a documentary about Canadian healthcare.

SPECIAL BONUS: A Mickey Rooney Pervtacular Double Feature! With cover art like this, who wouldn't want to rent these cinema treasures:

I got some of these images from here. Whoever keeps the site up is doing God's work.