Some of the posters have mentioned the their first experience with a VCR. What are the first movie or movies you or your parents ever rented.
For me, it was the mid 80’s. I remember my folks bringing home that big red plastic VCR they had rented at the grocery store when the store first got movies. We watched The Incredible Shrinking Woman with Lily Tomlin. They rented some other movie I don’t remember because it was rated R and they wouldn’t let my sister and I watch it.
I had to set it up because my folks couldn’t figure it out.
What was your first rented movie?
If this has been done earlier, sorry, but I couldn’t find it.
For our first video (it was a Betamax), my dad rented Beverly Hills Cop. It was also my first R movie, and, me being only 11 or 12 at the time, mom was none too happy with dad.
The first movie I ever rented by myself was Basic Instinct. I was a young teenage boy, filled with wonder, and access to my parent’s blockbuster card.
It was a sunny winters day and everything was great. My parents let me have a blockbuster card-with no age restrictions, which I abused with joyful glee.
I was fifteen and the blockbuster clerk could do nothing about my flaggarent abuse of renting power. She gave me a stern look, then a smile, and finally she said, “ah, I see mommy and daddy have allowed you to rent such…Adult entertainment.”
I was so joyful and happy that I blurted out, “yeah, and I’m not even going to watch all of it”. At the time I didn’t realize what I had implied. I just meant that my friends and I were going to watch as much of the film as possible, before my friends mother would get home (about 45 minutes).
The lady gave me a strange look, I gave her a smile, and I strode off in an ignorance bathed light…
It has been way to long so I am not entirely positive. I know we got our first VCR more for the purpose of recording stuff off TV than to go out & rent things - there not much of a rental market at the time.
The first rental I can remember was Repo Man. Still one of my favorites.
I can say however, that after that VCR died, the first film I have played on every VCR/DVD since is Casablanca.
Swing Shift and Eddie Macon’s Run in April '85. Two otherwise mediocre movies that will forever mean something to me, 'cause it was the first time I didn’t have to go to the rundown theater to see some cruddy Fast Times at Ridgemont High remake.
I don’t really remember. My older sister was way ahead of her time, and got a VCR when they were just out (and very expensive). I believe she paid $700 - $1,000 for hers, and it was one of those VCRs with the “piano key” buttons. She mostly taped things off of HBO and network TV. I believe this was early '80s or late '70s.
I got a VCR in 1984. I remember it well. I saved up for a long time, and paid $400 for it. I don’t remember which movie I rented first to play on my VCR, but I think it may have been “Fright Night” with Chris Sarandon? I also remember renting “Hoosiers” way early on in my VCR days. It was a loooong time ago.
I cant remember the first one my parents Rented but the first one I ever got when i moved out on my own and paid for my own VCR was a double feature of “The Posideon Adventure” and “Fast Times At Ridgemont High”
We got our first VCR in 1980 or 1981. I don’t really remember the first thing I ever rented, but I remember that my uncle taped me “Star Wars” and “Clash of the Titans” and, being the good four year old that I was, I watched them both on a daily basis.
I also remember repeatedly renting “Raiders of the Lost Ark” in the next couple of years.
On beta, Creator with Peter O’Toole, Mariel Hemmingway and Vincent Spano. This would have been the summer of 84, as my dad picked up the special Olympic edition betamax (which I still have and still works, although with odd diagonal tracking problems). One of the first movies I’d ever seen with male nudity (Spano butt shot), thus leading me toward the connection between video technology and naked man-sex which persists to this day.
FWIW, the first movie I ever got on pay-per-view was Fright Night, which I illegally taped.
I suppose I’ve got a different take on this. I don’t so much remember the first tape I rented, but I have a story about the first tape someone else rented, or at least the first tape she rented from the store I used to work at anyway.
Woman calls up one Wednesday morning, wants to know what’s required for a membership, because she wants to rent something for the romantic weekend she’s planning with her husband. Says “He loves action films.”
Next day, she shows up, gets membership, and shares more details about her plans for the weekend, how they’re getting Grandma to watch the kids, and have a motel room booked. Rents the big action new release for that week, US Marshals, because “Her man just loves those action films.”
Sunday night, I’m bringing in the bin from our outside drop box and notice an odd, somewhat sweet odor, and that the tape boxes seem to be wet with something sticky. Upon closer inspection inside, we find the cause: a copy of US Marshals, absolutely filled with baby oil. Pick up the tape and it’d just pour out.
When we checked to see who’s account that copy had been checked out to, sure enough, it was the only rental on an account that had been newly created that thursday. I’m not sure I want to know just how much her husband loved that action film, and I never got to ask her, because she never came around again.