Halloween is coming up soon again and this time my family wants to be festive. We decided that we're gonna have a haunted-themed night with pumpkin carvings and creepy food as a fun little get together and I thought it would be a great idea to look for a pair of movies my parents introduced me to at a young age: the Bela Lugosi Dracula and the Boris Karloff Frankenstein. I started my search at all the places I knew of: two family videos, a Lion video, and a blockbuster. The glee I had in the video stores were apparent enough looking for the legendary film icons that are as timeless as Popeye the Sailor.
In the video sections, I searched for the D's and F's, the classic sections, the horror sections, and even the family sections in search and found nothing. They're gone! All four places I go to regularly don't have Dracula or Frankenstein I'm guessing because they're on VHS and not DVD.
I write this with a rather sad realization (besides not having Netflix at the moment). The video stores in my mind always carried the essentials that most people will watch; the movie that stay in our hearts and what we look up to the most from the medium and two of the greatest icons in film don't have a place in the stores of 2009. It makes me wonder what I'm missing with all these movies not around and reminds me of when the Kung-Fu films started to vanish from my favorite store.
It is a new age where I thank the heavens for Netflix and all it has to offer, but the sad fact is not everyone can get Netflix. Dracula and Frankenstein were great memories watching with my family just like Nintendo, pumpkin seeds and Charlie Brown. There was always that feeling of seeing the movie you want from the shelf and watching it 20 minutes later, it builds suspense that I still find myself going back to every week. Netflix has that but once you get it in the mail, the suspense is over. Sure you can get instant films but that just kills the suspense.
There's probably no way to get this back, just as impossible to have a grind-house movie, go to a drive in or watching effects with stop-motion figures like Army of Darkness. It's also sad to know that Young Frankenstein will be as much as we can get from the two classic films. It's really sad to see something like this go for simple convenience and quick timing but I cant help but think we're trading in charm for the convenience.
