It was Wal-Mart. The big fight between them and BBV occurred in the late 1990’s when DVD’s were announced - WMT wanted them “priced to sell” and BBV wanted them “priced to rent.”
My cites are a bunch of long-remembered Wall Street Journal articles about this at the time.
Hell, 7-10 years ago, before it came out on DVD, a VHS copy of Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams cost $95.
I have a copy of that VHS Let It Be; my mum paid $150 for it in 1981, and it was meant to be a birthday present (September) and since she had to order it through the shop, there was a slight wait. I got it the following January. I still have it 
(I also still have the receipt somewhere, packed in a box my storage area.)
I recall also that she bought (again ordered) Romeo and Juliet, and it was also up around $150, and several months’ wait.
Around the same time, a friend and I drove to a video shop to rent a film, and since neither of us had a credit card (we were only 16 and 17) to guarantee the return of the film, the guy demanded our driving licences as collateral!
THAT REMINDS ME!!!
It’s supposed to have come out two days ago on DVD. I have to check that tonight when I go to work (I work at a place that’s initialled W.M.)
So…we can’t say Wal Mart on the Dope?
I bought a Sanyo Beta VCR (complete with “Sanyo- The Official Electronic Products of the 1984 Olympics” sticker) for ~$600 in early 1984. I was 12 and had a paper route. I had saved up for it for several months, my first ever big purchase.
I then joined a video rental place. There was an initiation fee and a monthly cost too, plus the cost of renting tapes. They had a couple copies of the big name movies, plus a bunch of offbeat titles.
Then, the damn place closed down after about 6 months., and I was out my money.
My VCR had a 3 day 1 event timer. I used it to tape “Saturday Night Live”, since I couldn’t stay up to watch it since I had to be up at 4:30 for my paper route. I still remember the first time I set it. It was bizarely complicated, none of this onscreen “Saturday from 10:30-12” stuff. So you set it and hoped you did it right.
My first Sunday morning after my route, when I cued it up and heard Don Pardo and was able to watch SNL when I wanted (and FF the commercials!), was nothing short of magic though.
Not if you want to be “in” with the cool kids. Dontcha know anything??? Geez! 
This is fascinating to me. I’m not too young that I wasn’t around for this, but I don’t recall the prices of VHS tapes in the 80’s. I’m sure it’s because I was a kid and didn’t concern myself with buying stuff like that. I remember when I was like five or so my parents would rent a VCR so my sister and I could watch Wizard of Oz. Then as we got a little older and got our own VCR, my uncle who had 2 VCR’s (Wow! Rich!) would copy movies for us and send us tapes.
Wow, this brings back memories. I don’t know why, but back in the day, whenever I rented a movie that was put out by Magnetic Video I always experienced a picture rolling problem with the tapes. I don’t know if it was because of the age of tapes themselves, but they were the only distributor I ever had that kind of problem with.
We can- I just want to be cryptic 
Not most of them. IIRC, we looked for it on sale in stores, and it never showed up. I think we finally checked Amazon, or someplace else on line, and found how expensive it was. No wonder the stores didn’t try to sell it.
I remember a friend of mine got a hold of Let it Be somehow, and we got permission from our high school to watch it there. I don’t remember the format it was on, or why we couldn’t watch it at home. It was about 1983, and I’m sure we had a VCR by then, but maybe not, or maybe it was on one of these Selectavision discs, but I can’t believe my school would have had the machine.
In any case, we were VERY excited to watch it, and to this day, it’s the only time I’ve seen the entire film.
Many years ago, before DVD’s, I tried to purchase a video copy of PCU from Suncoast and was informed that due to some kind of glitch, the price had never come down from when it was initially released and if I wanted to buy it I was looking at about $120.00. I decided that while I enjoyed the movie, I did not enjoy it that much.
Lloyd Kaufman has some amusing stories about the early days of video stores in his book Everything I need to know about filmmaking I learned from the Toxic Avenger, and how that’s really the reason that Troma became successful, because the owners were so desperate to filll their stores with anything at all. “Got a documentary about elephants farting? We’ll take it!”
I got my first VCR sometime around 1980 or so, a Quasar unit with a 1-week, 1-event timer that was as difficult to program as described in an earlier post. At the local discount electronics store (was Frisco Electronics a national chain?) it cost $1000. My buddy bought the same model without the timer for $600. No FF or REV, top-loader, and weighs about 30 lbs. Still works, though.
The only place that had blank tapes was the stores that sold the machines, and a decent Maxell blank tape was $16.95.
At first, only the stores selling VCRs had movies for sale. After a while, large music stores (vinyl only at that time) started selling blank tapes and rentals. Soon every little gas station and convenience store had a couple of shelves of tapes for rent. Most people rented their movies at their local supermarket. It wasn’t for some time before video sales and rental stores like BlockBuster started opening up.
I never bought a movie on video tape before the DVD became common - they were too darn expensive. As other have said, $100-$125 was normal for a first release on VHS, even for flops. Guess they tried to make their money back on VHS sales. Big successful movies were often $75-$90.
Interview with the Vampire? The Mask? Speed? Dumb and Dumber? The Santa Clause?
Yeah, there’s several movies that never had the price reduced. Good luck finding a copy of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead on VHS. Almost guaranteed to be a rental copy if you do. Thank god it finally came out on DVD, because my ancient VHS copy (promotional, has a little text scroll all along the bottom telling you not sell it) is about worn out.
Heck, I’ve seen new DVD movies going for that price! I did a search some time back for Salome’s Last Dance and the only place selling them wanted $100 a pop.
[Paul Harvey]
That man’s name was…Phil Blockbuster. And now you know the REST of the story.
[/PH]
Yes. I clearly remember ordering Clint Eastwood’s “The Beguiled” on VHS when I worked at WaldenBooks - $99.00. I was in college in Gainesville, so this would have been somewhere between 1979 & 1982.
VCNJ~
Hell, in the days toward the end of VHS, when DVDs were arriving on the scene, I, working at a video store at the time, often had to pay $75.00 for a new release video. In fact, I’d say MOST new release videos were that expensive, as of 2002. Only kids’ movies were routinely priced at sell-through at first release. I remember a customer melting the movie Crash (David Cronenberg) and having to pay $106.99 for a replacement copy, in about the year 2000. That’s our cost from the video distributor, not a retail price.
Joe