Streaming Sucks. Support Your Local Video Store!

July 14th, 2026

For a good chunk of my life, one of my favorite things to do with family or friends was take a trip to the video store. At least once or twice a month, I'd head over to my town's Family Video, pick out two or three movies to watch, and spend the weekend kicking back with some popcorn and snacks. I have so many fond memories of roaming the aisles and looking at the hundreds upon hundreds of cases on display, talking with whoever I was with about movies we had seen, or renting video games from the Game Room to get a taste of the new releases. I loved our video store so much that I even put in my very first job application there, and sadly, I didn't make the cut. It was such a staple of my life that I never would have thought that it would ever go away. But sadly, ever since people bought into the shortsighted "convenience" of streaming media, most video stores have now disappeared. Our Family Video lasted until 2021 or so, and now a Dollar General occupies the building that I used to spend so many nights in.

After our store closed, I spent quite a while wishing that I could revisit those nights among the aisles of movies. Thankfully, since my job is half an hour away from home in a much bigger town, I finally have a way to do just that! Just off the town square in Bloomington, Indiana, tucked between a couple of shops on 6th Street, sits Vulture Video. It's a small, independent video store that is probably one of the last of its kind in the state. Ran entirely by volunteers who love film, physical media and the video store experience as a whole, the place is a haven for any cinephile that wants a more cozy and intimate experience than simply scrolling pages on Netflix for hours on end. I first heard about the place way back when I was in high school, and it was under the name Plan 9 Film Emporium at the time. I never set up an account back then because I couldn't drive and it was too far away, but since I'm now an adult and my job is only 10 minutes away from it, I figured it was finally time to stop waiting. I set up an account last November, and once or twice a month, I'll pop in after work on a Friday and pick up a few new things to watch. Membership is free, and each rental is only $3 for three nights. You can't beat a deal like that!

Vulture is a lot smaller than our Family Video was, but their selection is a million times better. When you walk through the door, you're greeted by a one-room shop with shelves covering every inch of wall space. Each one is pretty much stuffed from floor to ceiling with movies to browse, and you may have to get up on your tiptoes to read some of the cases at the very top. A rack in the middle of the room features their one-night new releases, which could be anything from actual newly-released movies to the latest offerings from Severin Films, Vinegar Syndrome, the Criterion Collection, Deaf Crocodile, and other boutique labels. A TV mounted on the wall always plays a move that's selected by whoever is running the store that night, and below it sits a selection of staff picks from each volunteer. They even come complete with little notes on why each person chose the movies they did. There's so much to browse that you could easily spend more than an hour just walking around and reading the cases before you decide to pick something up. I'm not sure of the exact number of movies in their collection, but the numbered drawers behind the counter that house the actual discs go up to around 40,000! That's not even counting the archive in the back of VHS tapes and stuff that won't fit on the shelves. I dare anyone to try to find a streaming service that even compares to that level of selection.

The thing that I love most about Vulture is that they cater to so many specific niches of film. Family Video may have offered a good selection of movies that pleased the average Joe, but Vulture is a place where a film fan can really dig deep into whatever genre or director they're interested in. The shelves in the front of the store have numerous sections that collect the works of specific directors in one place, such as Sam Raimi, David Lynch, David Fincher, even more out-there ones like Larry Clark. They have another section just for foreign / world cinema, with sections for directors ranging from Ingmar Bergman all the way to Lars von Trier. Do you like anime / Japanese cinema? They've got you covered there as well. Are you looking to find some critically acclaimed works or movies that lean to the artsy side of things? There's a little rack stuffed full of Criterion releases for you to dig through. Concerts, comedies, documentaries, animation, just about any genre you can think of has some sort of representation waiting to be picked over.

The back of the store is my favorite area to explore, since it's dedicated entirely to numerous subgenres of horror and exploitation films. Each one is labeled and can range from well-worn territory like slashers, zombies, Satanic cults and killer animals, to something as hyper-specific as "Disembodied Organs and Appendages" (like The Crawling Eye) and "Inadvisable Actions" (such as Don't Open the Door). A shelf on the left-hand side contains must-see and lesser-known selections from many of the classic masters of horror, all organized by director. Everything you've ever wanted to see from John Carpenter, Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, David Cronenberg, Clive Barker, Stuart Gordon, and others can be found here. There's even some love given to a few of the Italian / Spanish directors I really enjoy, such as Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, and even Jess Franco. The other half of the back has everything you can think of that contains the "-ploitation" suffix: Blaxploitation, Bruceploitation, Drugsploitation, Nunspoloitation, you name it! This is the type of selection that I wish I had access to in high school when I was first discovering exploitation films, since I had to... um... let's just say "sail the seven seas" to get many of these titles that didn't have easily-accessible or official DVD releases at the time. I frequently wonder if the owner of the store is also a big fan of these trashy genre movies, since there's more to pick over in these sections than any other part of the store. If that's the case, then I think he's got a pretty great sense of taste!

In the months that I’ve had my account, I’ve picked up so many movies that vary wildly on the spectrum of quality. For example, my most recent rental was a double feature of Ti West’s Pearl and MaXXXine, two horror films that have a lot of stylistic touches from the cinema of the eras that they take place in, and a super rare occasion where the middle part of a trilogy is arguably the best one. Another time, I rented Redline on a recommendation from a friend. It’s a rip-roaring anime racing film that is a treasure for the eyes because the entire thing was drawn by hand over the course of a few years. On a couple of other weekends, I’ve dug through their collection of old Wizard Video big-box VHS tapes and come out with schlock such as Jean Rollin’s Zombie Lake or an underseen giallo like The Tormentor, which was unfortunately very worn out and static-filled due to being nearly four decades old. On another notable night, another friend and I checked out their “Guaranteed to Make You Barf” section and left with Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible. While the movie was super well-made and grimy to the absolute extreme, I actually had to pause it and have a minutes-long cry after one infamous scene before finishing it up. I never know what’s going to catch my eye when I’m browsing around, and that gives every trip a small sense of mystery and surprise. For a while now, I’ve been kicking around the idea of writing some short pieces on different rentals that I think are worth shining a light on. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to try that out before too long!

There aren’t a lot of places like Vulture Video left in the country, but if you’re fortunate enough to live in an area that still has some sort of a mom and pop video store, pay them a visit and set up an account. In an era where the mass adoption of convenience has left us all feeling lonelier than we ever have before, a place like a small video store can bring a little bit of human spark and connection to something as simple as picking what movie to watch for the weekend. If you ask me, entertainment shouldn’t be treated as some disposable commodity to be consumed and tossed aside before moving onto the next thing. It’s meant to be valued, discussed, and enjoyed by one another as we share a connection through our common interest. My idea of a great movie night is spending half an hour with a friend or two exploring the store and recommending things to each other, not simply sitting on a couch at home and endlessly clicking through streaming services hoping to find something worth checking out. Whether it’s a video store, bookstore or a music shop, small spaces like this and the human experience of sharing art are big reasons why I think physical media is crucially important and something that should never be given up. But I’ll write more about that on another day.