This October marks the first year anniversary of the Dallas VHS Swap, which has taken the past 365 to become a great new tradition for the D/FW community of movie-lovers. On the first Sunday of every month, fans of VHS tapes show up outside of Piranha Vintage in Richardson, Texas to either sell, trade or buy “dead” media. Piranha Vintage has also launched a VHS rental service (only $5 to check out two tapes a week), growing in popularity as more and more people excitedly show up to these events month after month. To celebrate the milestone, Eli Luna, who runs the event, decided to go big and host a Super Dallas VHS Swap at the Alamo Drafthouse in Richardson (right down the street from Piranha Vintage).
Owners of shops, as well as independent sellers (some traveling from Austin and Houston), filled up the bar and spilled out into the lobby of the theater with tables full of VHS tapes. For fans out-of-print tapes, this was heaven. Tapes could cost anything from $1 to $50 (with the more expensive tapes out-of-print or imported movies) While I didn’t spend $50, I did walk away with a bunch of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Godzilla and some horror flicks. It was a very successful haul.
In addition to the plethora of tapes to browse, Fangoria (hot off the press with their brand new issue of the re-launched magazine) had a table with author Preston Fassel in attendance with copies of his new book, Our Lady of the Inferno. If you are a fan of horror, we definitely recommend checking this novel … our review is coming soon.
The big draw that made this event special (besides the air conditioning and the bar) was the finale of the afternoon: people got to nominate (and then pitch) a tape for all of us to watch on a big screen at the Drafthouse. There were some interesting picks … but the one that ultimately won was an import from Mexico: Intrépidos Punks. A punksploitation movie with a biker gang, a ton of drugs and no real sense of who the main characters are supposed to be, Punks was part Mad Max, part exploitation and all insanity. It really was a blast for the audience and had one theme song that was played over and over throughout the movie (which has left many of us in the group still humming it more than a week later).
As the Dallas VHS Swap grows, so does the community and it has become a great hang-out with like-minded fans once every month. And as it grows, I hope that there will be even more of these special fun events to add to what is already a great local event in Dallas.
See y’all next month, VHS fiends.
