They’re kind — and they rewind!
A pair of VHS aficionados have transformed their basements into their own private mom-and-pop video rental shops — with thousands of tapes, neon lights and promotional cardboard cutouts.
Anthony Sant’Anselmo’s store even has a restricted “Adults Only” section.
“Video stores were cinematic libraries of yesteryear,” said Sant’Anselmo, who spent somewhere in “the low five figures” turning his Atlanta-area home’s basement into Mondo Video, a correct-to-the-last-detail homage.
“I couldn’t get enough of the video store as a kid,” the 47-year-old screenwriter told The Post. “No two looked alike, and I’d lose myself for hours, searching for a movie that didn’t exist. You had to have lived it or you won’t be into what I’ve done [to his basement].”
The Mondo Video idea first came to Sant’Anselmo in 2018.
He’s since amassed a collection of over 20,000 VHS tapes, and even gotten his three kids — ages 5, 4, and 2 — in on the fun.
“They’re so young, I think they assume everyone with a basement has a video store down there” he said with a laugh. “But no, guys — daddy’s just weird.”
Aaron Gullett, 42, a lawyer in Columbus, Ohio, said he was inspired to repurpose his own basement after watching some of the video tours Sant’Anselmo has posted of his tribute to the VHS era.
“We lived in a small town, so we didn’t have a Blockbuster,” said Gullett, who spent “a few thousand” dollars on his basement’s renovation.
“There was a guy named Joe, and he ran this video store. You could rent videos from him for a buck. I would walk around the store, and he’d tell me about the movies on the shelves, and treat me like an adult, even though I was a kid.”
Like Sant’Anselmo, Gullett searched far and wide for authentic video store racks and antique signage from shuttered video shops.
There’s also the 2,000 tapes he’s procured from thrift stores around the globe; neither open their shops to “strangers” though.
“I love it because I tried to recreate what I remember of video stores as a kid, but sourcing some of the stuff is tough,” Gullett admitted, adding his has over 800 offerings on display and created his own membership cards for friends and relatives.im “It’s been really fun bringing what I had envisioned to life.”
“I go down there, I turn all the lights on, and the nostalgia comes right back,” Gullett continued, adding he’s planning to install an “Adults Only” section soon. “I love streaming as much as everybody else. But there’s just something about VHS that you can’t really replace.”
There’s been a slowly bubbling resurgence in VHS’ popularity that’s finally boiled over, with Gen Xers, Gen Zers, and millennials re-embracing the medium that went extinct in 2005 following the VHS release of “A History of Violence.”
Thanks to the VHS renaissance, video tape buffs scour sites like eBay as well as their local thrift stores, searching for rare video tapes and still-working VCRs before going on social media sites like Reddit and Facebook to share photos of their finds and boast about their bulk “hauls.”
Gullett said most collectors buy in bulk, hoping to find tapes still wrapped in their factory plastic or “screeners,” which are VHS versions of films, sent to members of the media.
Big-budget films like “Titanic” are easy to come by for collectors, since the studio mass-produced video copies of the classic 1997 movie, he added.
Underground films, such as cult classic “Killer Klowns from Outer Space,” had limited VHS runs, and are much more rare.
When VHS stopped being a format, is when “people started collecting them,” said Matt Desiderio, one of the founders of the NYC VHS Collective and the producer of the documentary “Adjust Your Tracking.”
“And you weren’t just buying tapes, you bought the movie. If you are a collector, you like physical stuff, and video tapes look cool and they feel good. When you watch a VHS, it has a warm, glowing feeling to it that’s very attractive,” he said.
Desiderio agrees with Sant’Anselmo’s theory, that modern shows like Netflix’s “Stranger Things” and “Fear Street” have millennials wishing they grew up during VHS’ heyday.
“Younger generations appreciate VHS like they appreciate vinyl, which has that sound you want in a listen,” Sant’Anselmo said. “VHS is very nostalgic for Generation X, and the younger generations are eating it up, too, just because they crave something simple and something tangible.”
