vhs-tapes
photo via Flicker/makelessnoise

Alamo Drafthouse opening video rental store, VHS tapes included

photo via Flicker/makelessnoise
photo via Flicker/makelessnoise

Video stores were everywhere just 10 years ago but almost all of them have closed thanks to streaming and on-demand. Variety reports that the movie lovers at Alamo Drafthouse are getting into the market, opening Video Vortex as part of their soon-to-open 11-screen Raleigh, NC location. They want to make it one of the largest video archives on the planet and, in addition to DVDs and Blu-ray, they are going to rent VHS tapes, too:

The inspiration for Video Vortex comes from a long-running Alamo Drafthouse programming series that celebrates straight-to-video movies from the 1980s through the early 2000s. That series is curated by Joseph A. Ziemba, founder of review site Bleeding Skull and director of genre programming for Alamo Drafthouse, and Bleeding Skull writer Annie Choi.

“It gives me hope for humanity to see Video Vortex grow from a series at the Alamo to an actual video store,” says Ziemba. “VHS is still the only way to see hundreds of forgotten genre movies. But in this era of rare tapes selling for insane amounts of money, Video Vortex will make them easily accessible for everyone in the Raleigh film community.”

Don’t own a VCR anymore? Video Vortex will rent one to you, and will include a HDMI/RCA adapter free of charge. Perhaps they’ll even have a copy of Jerry Maguire, if Everything is Terrible hasn’t bought them all already.

The Raleigh location of Alamo Drafthouse with Video Vortex is scheduled to open first quarter 2018.