Videoheaven

Alex Ross Perry has spent most of his career directing music videos, themselves a phenomenon worthy of exploration (for which I recommend the 2019 documentary I Want My MTV. In this essay film – which runs to nearly three hours and is therefore, despite getting a theatrical run, likely to do best in home entertainment formats – he explores the other side of the video industry, its evolution as a medium for presenting films, with a focus on the short-lived retail phenomenon that was the video shop. Part of a recent wave of interest that has included documentaries like The Last Blockbuster and Cult Of VHS as well as fictional takes like Videoman, Video Vision and Custom, it’s weighted with nostalgia but also serves as an introduction for viewers under 35 who may not remember VHS or Betamax directly at all.

Ably narrated by Maya Hawke, whose soft yet textured voice is perfect for this sort of thing, the film opens with a clip from a take on Hamlet whose ‘to be or not to be’ speech is shot in a video store, situating it as a place full of possibilities – a place, as Hawke puts it, “where people pass from one condition into another.” This theme will echo throughout the several chapters to follow. The result is a rather didactic work which risks stifling the diverse interpretations available to viewers, but when it comes to plain facts, it delivers well.

Three hours is, of course, not sufficient to do justice to every aspect of video shop history, and there are some areas that this neglects to tackle altogether, but the choices it does make are solid ones and need no justification. They’re also well illustrated with clips from feature films with video shop themes or sets, which embody one of the documentary’s other themes: that of cinema talking about itself.

There is discussion of fears about the technology and its possible dark side, as seen in Demon Seed and Videodrome (a bit of subtext might have been missed here). There’s a look at exaggerated representations of the ‘back room’ (usually just ‘behind the counter’ in the UK, but this is focused exclusively on the US, culminating in an odd tribute to the Ring remake which neglects Ring itself), and the way that satire Video Violence addressed Americans’ moral panic about sex but bizarre comfort with children watching violence. There’s also a substantial section on the satirising of corporate incursions into the industry in the Toxic Avenger III: The Last Temptation Of Toxie, and Troma’s remarkable ability to get its posters and merchandise into the background of practically every independent video shop seen in a film after that point.

Key reference points include Brian De Palma’s Body Double – the first film to feature a video shop – and Last Action Hero, with its improbably glossy interpretation of how one might look in an alternate universe. There’s discussion of the meta-narrative in The Watermelon Woman, and how a similar take on the relationship between video shops and creativity emerges in Be Kind Rewind. A chapter looking at the hardships of frequently stereotyped and degraded clerks finds objects of sympathy in Serial Mom, and promotional schemes are addressed in one featuring The Fisher King. The documentary brings itself close up to date with the inclusion of I Like Movies near the very end.

Though it gets repetitive in places and is sometimes overly sentimental, all in all this is an enjoyable experience. Bear in mind that you will almost certainly want to take notes.

Reviewed on: 10 Aug 2025