Welcome to the VHS rental store! VHSレンタル店へようこそ！
You head out of your home. You want a late night movie...
Filtering past, head lifts light and flits across weaving walkers, signal to go, so head on...
Feeling shlock, tar pistols that whip, thugs gangsters & punks too all of them in trilbys cocked, evanescence americana smut, you've arrived at the video store...
Bold bound electrified monsters invite!
Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992)
Japanese Price: ¥14,800 = $133
Color Me Blood Red (1965)
976-EVIL / ホラースコープ (1988)
Bad Taste / バッド・テイスト (1987)
Annihilator / SFバイオノイド (1986)
Japanese Price: ¥13,890 = $96
So, why were they so damn expensive?
That steep price tag comes down to how the home video market operated in Japan during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Tapes like Annihilator, Bad Taste, and 976-EVIL weren't actually priced for regular people to buy and keep at home.
The Rental Store Business Model...
During this era, video distributors used a "rental pricing tier." They knew a video rental shop would buy a single tape and rent it out hundreds of times to make a massive profit. Because of this, distributors charged the stores an incredibly high upfront wholesale price (usually between ¥13,000 and ¥16,000) to get their cut of that future rental revenue.
The "Sell-Through" Shift Hadn't Happened Yet...
The concept of selling cheap movies directly to regular consumers for their personal collections (called "sell-through" pricing) didn't become the global norm until later in the 1990s. In 1987, if you were a die-hard movie fan who absolutely insisted on owning a physical copy of a niche film, you had no choice but to pay that exact same premium rental store price.
都こんぶ "MIYAKO KONBU" (Japanese Snack)
You hear the click of the tapes' coil unwinding...
theartofmadeline
andulkaphoto
2087
jbbartram-illu
discoholicmusic
yousharknotpass
jacobvanloon
stormborns
turnnoffyourmind
