Romeo Montague scrambles around Verona, searching for the object of his true desire while fleeing the manhunt of a rival bloodthirsty clan. But Romeo is not quite the familiar teenaged renegade here, serenading his true love from below her balcony while avoiding the sword of her vindictive family. Romeo is instead a disfigured robot, a hired killer, a pimp; Verona is a futuristic American city, rife with nymphomaniac androids, vampire prostitutes, and amoral zombies. The camera jerks dizzyingly amid poorly lit scenes of superhuman vice.
If Frankenpimp sounds like your brand of B-movie gold, then Alexandria’s Video Vault is the perfect pile of brains to quench your zombie appetite. In its basement location, Video Vault houses an unfathomable 65,000 titles, encompassing all genres, budgets, eras, and levels of talent. DVDs and VHS tapes stand on the overflowing shelves in roughly equal numbers.
And by the end of the month, it all needs to be gone.
“What we’re trying to do is raise awareness, that people should be coming down and trying to buy a piece of home video history,” owner Jim McCabe said.
Since McCabe and his wife opened Video Vault on Washington Street in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia in 1985, the store has been a haven for local movie buffs, especially those interested in low-budget productions with laughable scripts. Since its founding, the store has moved all around D.C. and Virginia (including a stint in Georgetown), eventually winding up back in Old Town, where it will meet its untimely end. On April 30, the store will close its doors on longtime customers for good.
But McCabe is adamant about that a market for the store’s selection, particularly its VHS tapes, exists. “There’s a big group out there for VHS,” McCabe said.
The Washington Psychotronic Film Society, captained by fearless leader Carl Cephas, could just be that group, one comprised of D.C.’s B-grade movie connoisseurs. WPFS—which currently has just three official members—encourages appreciation for the so-bad-it’s-good films by screening “classics” like Frankenpimp at The Warehouse, a restaurant near Chinatown, every Tuesday night.
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“A lot of these B movies are more memorable than the academy award films,” Cephas said. “Like how many times have you seen Barry Lyndon? Yeah, how many times have you seen Plan 9 from Outer Space? Or The Toxic Avenger?”
Although WPFS hasn’t used Video Vault for their movies since the store’s move from the District in the early ‘90s, Cephas was severely disappointed in hearing that the store is closing. With Amazon and Netflix making the search for any movie as easy as typing into a search box, and major video rental chains like Blockbuster flailing a bit more every day, it seems inevitable that a place like Video Vault is on its way out. Although McCabe admits that the store’s clientele is a niche group, he insists that the final nail in Video Vault’s coffin came down to a simple matter of transportation.
“I knew parking was going to be a problem [at the new location],” McCabe, said. “I had no idea it was going to be this bad. Literally business fell off about 50 percent when we moved.”
But like a B-movie zombie—and unlike Video Vault, whose thousands of leftover movies McCabe has yet to decide what to do with—WPFS just won’t die, despite financial difficulties. According to Cephas, the Society is going “more underground,” developing more personal relationships with filmmakers and delving even further into the black lagoon of the horror genre.
“They’re experiences like Rocky Horror,” Cephas said. “And every time you watch it, you’re like ‘Wow, that’s like seeing an old friend, a good friend, a goofy friend.’”
