The Last Video Store
Her father James having recently died, Nyla is stoically taking care of the outstanding obligations of his life, among them returning the last remaining rented videotapes he had in his possession, venturing into the dark, neon-tinted oubliette of Blaster Video, boasting over four thousand titles in stock and seemingly trapped in another age when such outlets were “beacons of the people, gateways to other worlds,” the age before the Format Wars destroyed first the independents then the VHS format itself.
Carrying with her three tapes, the underground classics of Warpgate, The Preystalker and Beaverlake Massacre Part 4 – Overtime Kills, owner Kevin extolls her on the virtues of each with an enthusiastic synopsis as he waives the overdue fees and the surcharge for tapes which haven’t been rewound, but she also offers a fourth tape he doesn’t recognise, a black, distorted cassette which he places inside the deck, swiftly realising as it takes over and refuses to be ejected that it may be the mythical Videonomicon, a cursed film of strange and devastating powers.
Directed by Cody Kennedy and Tim Rutherford from a script by Joshua Roach and Rutherford, a trip to The Last Video Store is a message from the past mediated in degrading magnetic tape, basking in the glow of static and seeking patterns and meaning in the distortions of snowy white noise, a time when word of mouth recommendations were of equal weight to those by named critics, when store owners knew their clients by name and understood their particular tastes, and of course the joy of low-budget horror and science fiction so bad it was good.
Starring Yaayaa Adams and Kevin Martin as Nyla and Kevin, associations with the bad boys of Astron-6 are apparent from the outset, posters for The Editor and Chowboys displayed on the walls of Blaster Video, Matthew Kennedy appearing as a character pulled from the massacre at Beaverlake to a similarly dire situation in the “real world,” still chased by Jason Voorhees-alike Castor Creely (Leland Tilden) and with the walls splattered with practical effects courtesy of Steven Kostanski.
A wild ride somewhere between Stay Tuned and Ringu with the manic energy of Evil Dead, even at only an hour and twenty minutes The Last Video Store runs marginally too long, emotional scenes of revelations and bonding seemingly spliced in from a different film and slowing the pace, but as a knowing nod to the golden age of the Friday night video marathon where excess and explosions were of more merit than intellectual substance it succeeds in its aim to entertain.
Released on Blu-ray by Arrow, the comprehensive edition of The Last Video Store contains a commentary, two video essays, The Videonomicon Unleashed and Nostalgia Fuel, and a quartet of earlier short films by Kennedy and Rutherford, ‘Twas the Night of the Tree Beast, M is for Magnetic Tape, and the original short version and a commercial which grew into the feature itself.
The Last Video Store will be released on Blu-ray by Arrow FIlms and available on the Arrow platform from Monday 9th December
