Working on DukeFest for this year and I found this video tour I’d shot but forgotten about, here’s my look around the Slashback Video Rental store in Los Angeles, California from September 2017.
Video
The Video Store Birthday Party!
It was third time lucky last night when we finally all go the experience the incredible events of The Video Store Birthday Party! Now you can join in the 1980s sleazy UK video store party at home as we’ve uploaded it in all it’s low-fi slightly ‘Not Safe For Work’ glory right here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVzTpSI5Vrk
PLUS here’s the fake-out video store footage that we originally thought was the party, but turned out to me a man who hates trailer tapes simply checking his video camera in a rental store.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dhpx2aN8o0E
The Video Store Birthday Party Tape

We’ll be closing our 100th Night with the now legendary Video Store Birthday Party tape, it’s only really legendary because I keep talking about it, but that’s a fair enough reason. So what’s the story behind this particular tape then?
Back in January we had Video Store Night at The Duke where we watched an evening made up of old promotional tapes that we’d acquired from a closed down video store, the tapes had been sitting behind the counter for decades until we were able to get our hands on them. So we dedicated a night to finding out what was on them, the highlight of which was going to be watching this tape, which according to the seller had been used to film someone having their birthday party in the store. Sadly he told me the wrong tape which meant that when we went to watch it there was no birthday party, which was a shame. But I’ve now gone through all the tapes and found the right now, so we’re going to close the 100th Duke by finding out together what happens at the birthday party in the store.
Remember we haven’t watched this tape, I’ve just watched the first 5-seconds to check it’s the correct one now. The one thing that makes me slightly nervous about playing this tape though is that fact that two of the other tapes we got from the store had been recorded over with home made porn! Which we only found out when we played them for the audience, let’s just say they didn’t stay on screen very long, but did make everyone laugh. So who makes porn films and then just leaves them behind the counter for decades? Also if they made porn films there, what’s going to happen at the Birthday Party? You’ll have to come along to the 100th Duke to find out!
The Ultimate Trailer Tape Haul!
Yes we’ve managed to get our hands on quite an incredible Trailer Tape haul, a huge collection of 59 vintage trailer tapes all from the 1980s and early 1990s, but just where did they all come from?
Well they’re all from one closed down video store from somewhere in the UK, a local small store that had closed 5-years ago, simply locking the door and walking off after having been there since the early 1980s. One smart video collector managed to contact the owner and agreed to purchase everything in the store in one go, including all the odd trailer and promo tapes from behind the counter, which is where we came in.
A few ebay deals later and we’d managed to buy every single trailer and promo tape from the store via the very helpful collector, so we’re now the owners of this huge batch of vintage store tapes! We’ve been collecting these sort of tapes for years as they’re a treasure trove of unseen trailers, video company promos and anything else unexpected which can turn up on them, but we’ve never see a collection this large come along in one go like this, so we didn’t waste any time in snapping it up.
What’s in it? Well it’s a total mixture of very rare trailer tapes from all sorts of video companies, along with a few promo films and probably rarest of all 3 video store training tapes, designed to help you set up your video store! We’ve never seen anything like those before and we can’t wait to screen them for you, but you’ll have to wait until January 2016 to watch them with us, because that’s going to be Video Store Night at the Duke, mark it in your diary now!








