I thought I would enjoy this more than I am...

As a kid of the 1980's- being able to actually rent videos at a legitimate mom & pop video store- you'd think seeing all of the Blockbusters going out ob business would give me more happiness. I can say that those video rental stores were my Grindhouses, and Hwy 41 in High Springs, Fl (which had my rental store of my choice) was my 42nd Street.

When Blockbuster started to infiltrate the small towns (after it had taken over the cities) pretty much every independent video rental store went out of business. Thankfully, very select few independently owned ones did stay and survive, but those are few and far between. I can never express how much I hated Blockbuster for doing that to the video rental industry.




When Blockbuster pretty much took over by either putting everyone out of business or buying out small chains, they ended up being the only place to go to for a lot of us. Quickly we realized that this new entity focused more on newer commercial releases than old, cult classic and the obscure which a lot of the mom & pop stores did. Instead of movies like Faces Of Death we instead got 20 rental copies of Die Hard 3.

So, fast forward now to 2009 and we have all witnessed some Blockbusters going out of business in our neck of the woods after their reported bankruptcy. So now, why am I not elated over this? I can only come to one conclusion and that's the fact that I do not like the direction the rental industry is going. The new trend is video files and through-the-mail rental and it may be cheap and very cost efficient, but shortly the era where we can actually walk into a video rental store and rent a tangible copy of a movie may be over. In it's place will be NetFlicks video streaming and getting DVDs in a Kevlar envelope with no box art, no liner notes-- nothing. Man, I really am not looking forward to that.

I hate Blockbuster as much as any horror fan or movie fan alike- they killed the industry. But, at the same time I am surely going to miss walking in to a store with wall to wall movies for rent. This is another example how capitalism destroys entire industries.