Video Store Horrors.

Behold, the Ghoulies videocassette box. How it frightened and flustered me, yet filled me with so much wonder.

As a wee little kid in our neighborhood’s first video score, I’d spy that toilet monster on a weekly basis, afraid to look at him but always looking at him.

I was there for Disney tapes and nothing but Disney tapes, so even if my mother would’ve let me rent a horror movie at that age, it was the furthest thing from my mind. Still, the boxes always intrigued me, because back in an era when so many horror video releases saw little-to-no time in theaters, the box art needed to be intriguing. Often enough, that was how they made their first impressions.

Since I only had the box art to go on, I assumed that horror movies were so much “worse” (gory, violent, etc.) than they actually were. In the case of Ghoulies, I’ve since seen the movie more than a dozen times, and while it certainly wouldn’t have been suitable for the four-year-old version of me, it’s far from the two straight hours of absolute mental torture that Kid Matt imagined.

So, tonight’s questions for you:

1) Did any VHS boxes put serious fear in your heart as a kid? (Bonus points if that fear was unwarranted.)

2) Did spying horror movies at video stores leave you with any screwy opinions about the genre, or the people who loved it?

3) Last night we talked about the first horror movies we remembered seeing. But do you remember the first one you ever rented?