At the Thrift Store...

I was doing my usual thrift store rounds today. As usual of late I wasn't finding much. Pickings are indeed slim in these crazy horror-happy days.

I entered a store and made my way to the movie shelves. There was a young woman already there. She appeared to be barely out of her teens. The typical trappings were in place: Impaled septum, ink embedded all over her arms and legs.

She was looking through the DVDs and I heard her make a hiss of excitement. Trying to be unobtrusive, I peeked over to see her treasure. It was Annabelle, a Blumhouse movie in the Conjuring Universe.

I'm not much of a fan, but if I were as young as my co-shopper, I undoubtedly would be. Older horror fans felt the same thing about the slasher movies I loved and continue to love so much.

She grabbed a couple more recent horror movies. It was the kind of typical stuff I don't bother carrying at my vendor tables. No judgement; I merely try to offer rarer items to my customers.

It made me happy to see a young person excited about building a horror library. Or maybe she was just grabbing a few for a big night with her friends and would later chuck the discs.

I like to think this young woman is a budding fan.

Thousands of sunrises and sunsets have come since the days when I loitered around the horror section of my local video store, but it's the same spirit. People used to stand around hoping hot new movies would be returned so they could scarf them up.

Now collectors search WalMarts for budget Steelbooks and the time-honored five dollar movie bin. They buy from the boutique distributors and hope for deals at Amazon.

For me the purest act of collecting today is scouring the thrift stores. It's usually a crapshoot where you find very little, but those golden moments when you make a big score are huge adrenaline rushes. The real beauty of it? You pay almost nothing for your prizes.

To real fans, my idea of real fans anyway, nothing is more important than having a collection. Your own video library to be enjoyed at any moment of your life. The cases and the cover art, the beauty of the discs themselves, the joy in beholding the menu page, discovering all the juicy extras.

Those of us who cherish these things are a rare breed these days. Most choose the convenience of streaming. Why not? With streaming you often get inferior quality, censorship, and you don't even really own what you pay for. Talk about a racket.

I keep hearing more about movies being altered to remove offensive materials. What about those of us who find the very notion of censorship offensive? We have no voice? We, the people who live for the arts, the real fans, do not want any movie to be altered in any way. Even from the original filmmakers. George Lucas and Frances Coppola have monkeyed with their own creations enough to infuriate fans of the original works.

You might as well have watched cut movies on TNT or the USA Network back in the eighties. It was no real way to enjoy a horror movie. If three minutes were trimmed for sensitive audiences, those three minutes were the most important moments of the movie.

I may have gotten a little off-track, but this is the gist of it. Fans want their movies. That's why we are fanatics. We want good prints, in beautiful packaging. We want to see them on our shelves. We want to have them and hold them. They belong to us and we belong to them. My favorite horror movies have had a steel grip on me for the entirety of my life.

Getting back to our young fan, part of me wanted to speak up, but that would have been a little creepy. I let her be, but my wishes followed her out the door. My hope that she will never grow out of it. That she will revel in cinematic horrors for decades to come. That she will explore beyond the popular movies and delve deeply into the depths of the genre.

I see young fans all the time at my vendor tables, but it was inspiring to see one out in the wilds, breathless with happiness about finding a beloved movie and taking it home.

Written by Mark Sieber