Headline: Video Hell

Tell me if this sounds familiar: You go to the video store to pick up a little timekiller for the evening, and half an hour later you still haven't found anything. You roam row after row, and every movie you look at is either something you've already seen or a stinker with a title like "Death Kill" and bears the critical acclaim of "Watchable!" from someone at KGHT (880 AM) in Little Rock.

Desperation and despair settle in. The longer you stay, the more you want to get a great movie to justify all the time you're wasting in the store.

Adding insult to injury, if you're in one of the national chain stores like Blockbuster or Hollywood Video, you may have to endure the in-house video ads that try to convince you to rent a video. They're often quite loud and make it even more difficult to concentrate on your search. Why do they have them, anyway? What do they think you came in there for, soup?

As time wears on, your patience gets thin and the trenchcoat wearing gangs of half-drunk videophiles discussing options back and forth across the store start losing their charm.

"Dude, there's like a million movies that start with 'Dead!'"

"Whoa, there's a digitally restored director's cut of Tron!"

Eventually, you walk out with nothing, or with something you wouldn't have watched on TV for free. Pathetic, but it could be worse.

For instance.

Some people liked it, but when I saw the film Barcelona I hated it so much I stopped the tape after the first twenty minutes. I didn't even rewind it; such was the depth of my indignation. I worked hard to put the film out of my mind, but that turned out to be a bad idea. A couple years later I failed to recognize it and rented it again. The process of realizing what had happened was a study in Dante's levels of video hell:

"This seems vaguely familiar. Maybe this part was in the preview."

"This is pretty bad."

"This is really bad. This is a waste of my time."

"That does it, I'm pulling the plug. This is even worse than GI Jane."

"Worse than Mystery Men, worse than… wait a minute… (Sickening feeling here, like realizing that you just mailed a love letter in the wrong envelope)"

"No… Nooooooooo!"

It still bothers me that I paid to not see that movie twice.

The only way to avoid trolling the video store endlessly is to have blissfully low standards or plan ahead a little. The former might not be within your grasp, but the latter is. Keep a running list of films that your friends have spoken highly of. Buy and occasionally browse a good video guide, like Moviehound, which will give you more ideas. Take this list with you to your video rental facility. There are lots of good movies you still haven't seen. Have you seen The Imposters? Well see, there's one already. Add it to your list. Tell me if you liked it.

But who's kidding whom, if you haven't adopted this system already, you probably never will. You probably don't use a list at the grocery store either. Some people are just listless.

There is just one last chance for help, in the form of the astute and helpful video store employee. These people carry with then an encyclopedic knowledge of every film committed to tape. If you tell them five movies you liked, they will look at you sagely, snap their fingers, and lead you to the other side of the store. "I think it's still in," they mutter along the way, because they somehow also remember what films have been checked out. They then hold up some film with Harrison Ford or Kevin Spacey that you've never heard of, and you have to admit it looks promising.

I hate to imply that these people are idiot savants, able to memorize thousands of titles but unable to feed themselves, but they tend to look the part. Are these people born or made? I suspect they are bred for video store employment on some distant island where they are also trained to survive on lousy pay.

Unfortunately, like all beautiful and useful things, they are quite rare. You are much more likely to encounter the weaker strain of the Intelligent and Helpful Video Store Employee: The Slightly Overzealous Video Store Employee.

I'm referring to the people who follow you around the store holding up their personal favorites, one of which, I guarantee, is Willow. They can't seem to recognize that your tastes might be different than theirs. They mean well, but they're hard to shake, and the worst part is the look they give you when they don't approve of your choice.

Which, just to get out of there, is likely Death Kill II. Next time get The Imposters.

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Sven Davis is a freelance writer and widget builder who took Introduction to Film Theory in 1985.