Do you think this is actually going to deliver on the title?
VHS
We’ve found the Birthday Party tape!
Amazing news! Last night we found the missing Video Store Birthday Party tape that we sadly didn’t get to see at our last night. For anyone who wasn’t there we’d got hold of a huge haul of trailer and demo tapes from a closed down video store, which we all explored on the night. Out closing highlight though was going to be watching a tape that the store owners had used to record someone having their birthday party in the shop.
Sadly it turned out we had the wrong tape on the night so we didn’t get to watch it. But over the last few nights I’ve been checking through all the tapes we got from the store and I’ve now found it.
We’ve only watched the first 10-seconds of it but it starts right in the video store itself, so we’ll all finally get to see what happens. You’ll have to come along to our March night it though to see it, who knows what happens on the rest of the tape?!?!
Video Store Night
January 2016 was Video Store Night at The Duke, everything we played on the evening had physically come from an actual video store from one time or another. We’d been putting the night together for so long and it was so much fun to share it with everyone there.
If you couldn’t join us on the night then now, thanks to to power of YouTube, you can experience Video Store Night in your own home! We’ve transferred and uploaded a selection of the highlights from the night just for you, take a look below to see what sort of oddities we revealed on the night…
The night started with a super rare Umatic trailer tape that we’d had transferred just for the night, the tape had originated from the Houston, Texas video store Audio/Video Plus.
Next up was this super rare Betmax demonstration tape that again we’d had transferred just for the evening, it’s great weird watch, but of all the things why did they start the tape with bullfighting?
This was a real highlight from the night, a CBS FOX Video Store training tape, giving you ideas on now to run your shop. Our good friend and industry inside The Raygun managed to track down the people involved in this video and gives us the inside story behind it right here.
We sampled a collection of trailer tapes as well through the night, above are 3 of the highlights, doesn’t the one for New York Nights make it look incredible?
Here’s another two dealer only tapes unseen for decades, neither as much fun as the CBS FOX one but both were still great to see. We played a bunch of other stuff on the night, but these were the most interesting ones, unless you include the accidental home made porn we found on two of the older tapes…
Alan’s Alley Video Store
It’s Video STore Night this month at The Duke so it’s all video store action this month on the blog. Starting with this great documentary looking at the New York video store Alan’s Alley, this in-depth doc does a great job of giving us a flavour of the place. Sadly it turns out the store closed down last summer, but at least e have this fun film to show us what a great place it was!
The Duke Mitchell Film Club 