Videotape Watching in Bennington

Aug. 7, 1988  (Grandmother abbreviated the month)

Given the larger-than-life appeal of a movie house, why is videotape watching so popular?  For one thing, it is cheap.  A tape can be watched by the whole family for two bucks or less.  In my household of six, the damage for movie-going is $27 for tickets alone.

Secondly, there is the matter of privacy.  You can drink beer, smoke black cigars, eat caviar and toast, cuddle and snuggle, and swear at the screen.  The pause control allows you to answer any type of call while missing nothing.

And you can watch films you'd be ashamed to be seen viewing in public.

And, in two respects, videotape viewing is better than the theater.  You can re-watch favorite or confusing scenes, and , with a HI-FI VCR and a decent stereo system, you can hear superior, more intelligible sound then get at our local theaters.

Best of all, you can watch movies that would otherwise not be available, and you can watch them as often as you like.

The town of Bennington has five rental outlets that are primarily just that, plus several retailers who rent tapes as a sideline.  The newest of the former is Picaflic, which re-opened on July 2.  That day's Banner has an article about its Phoenix-like return from last year's disastrous Main Street fire.  Now located at 215 North Street, owners Joe and Beverly Mancini have some 3,350 titles, all VHS.  Base rate for "club members" is $1.99, with price breaks for quantity and for children's tapes.

The "club memberships," by which a customer, for a yearly or part-yearly fee gets discounts on tape rentals, are the bootstraps by which rental stores get the starting-out capital they need.  Though these "clubs" are being dropped throughout the country, they are still used in three of Bennington's video stores.

Mr. Mancini says one selling point is that he will have lots of duplicate copies of new released, and he has a good selection of non-movie instructional and self-help tapes.  Picaflic also rents and sells equipment.

Bennington Video, owned by Mary Cole, has been around for about four years.  According to employee B.J. Mattison, it has about 3,000 titles, and the base rate is $2 per night, with discounts available and with no membership scheme.  Bennington Video, located in Monument Shopping Plaza on Northside Drive rents VCRs and is one of the two businesses in town that carry Beta and VHS titles.  Mattison says that Bennington Video's tape-buying emphasis is on new releases.

The other Beta-carrying store is Crosstown Video on 209 Northside Drive.  Alan and Ron Higgins have been there since October of 1986, and have some 1,100 titles, about 35%  of which they have in Beta too.  Crosstown's basic rate is $1.25 per night, plus quantity discounts and no "club memberships."  Alan Higgins says that he stocks what moves, and that he is served by a distributor who replaces 150 titles every couple of weeks.  Crosstown Video rents and sells equipment.

The Video Stop owned by Dana and Joan Woods and Managed by Jennifer Pyne, has been in business for four years, has some 3,500 titles, and is located on Route 67A next to Ames.  Pyne says that the store stocks "a little bit of everything," and Dana Woods says his store is especially strong in the children's section and in comedy.  My own perusal of the racks shows that The Video Stop has by far the most awesome selection of low-budget horror, monster, space opera, kungfu, and other drive-in style films in town.  Basic rate is $2 per night for members, with the usual discounts.

The Video Stop sells and rents equipment, and also sells Nintendo video games.

The Record Rack, on 418 Main Street, has rented videotapes for some five years, adding to an existing business that sells photograph records, audiocassette tapes and Compact Discs.  The owner Alden Graves, has some 3,000 titles and, in addition to current releases, has a large collection of foreign and cult films, classics and not-so-classics from the '30's on, silents and musicals.  "I refuse to stock only car-chase movies," he says, and he puts a "Recommend" sticker on his personal favorites.

The Record Rack's basic rate for "members" is $1.50 per night, and it rents VCRs only.

And because older films are my bag, and because it is right across the street from where I work, The Record Rack is where I shop.

Mac Rush works in the Banner composing room.

I can't help but wonder what my dad would have thought of both "Redbox" and "Netflix"