Video Killed My Lucky Star

By Hank Fredo

Tom Bradford runs a successful small town video store, recommending all the best horror moves to his customers with dreams of making movies of his own one day. But his life turns into a real life horror movie when mysterious tapes start showing up in his store. At first he thinks its just a prank or a snuff film ring. But the tapes begin to show bloodier, more violent footage as people around town start going missing. Tom realises that everything he's watching is real, but nobody else will listen to him. And whoever is making these movies is coming for him next.

Can Tom solve this mystery and keep himself and the people he loves safe? Or will this turn into another Hollywood tragic ending?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Seagull Editions
• Release date: May 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223991779

Book preview

Chapter One

I don’t know if you remember the 90s. It was the age of bright colours, pop music, new technology, and freedom. The Berlin Wall had fallen and the Millennium Bug was still years away. Everyone was excited about the future for the first time in a long time. It was different from the 80s when everyone was afraid of Communism, AIDS, and heroin. Those all seemed a distant dream by that time. Or at least we had stopped caring about them so much. We didn’t realise it at the time but everyone was a lot happier back then before those planes hit those towers and the whole world descended into chaos that never seemed to end. And a lot of it was thanks to this new thing called VHS and video stores. But that’s the thing about a golden age; you don’t realise you’re in one until it’s over.

I worked in a video rental store back then, before DVDs took over and way before streaming closed all the video stores for good. Movietown wasn’t like one of those sanitised chain stores only selling the same dozen new releases and upselling candy and popcorn to get you addicted and keep you coming back. Back then, it was basically the only thing to do in our small suburban town on a weekend, and even during the week. We didn’t have any arcades, bowling allies, or even one of those big chain supermarkets. It was either this or shoot cans in the woods. Not unless you wanted to stay home, watch one of the five channels on tv, and listen to your parents scream at each other. I’m not the only one who thinks of the store when I think back on the 90s. I’m not the only one who thought of it as home and was devastated when it closed down.

Do you know that song Video Killed the Radio Star? About how music videos and VHS killed radio? It was the same thing for us. DVDs came along and killed VHS and then streaming came a few years after that and killed DVDs and video stores entirely. It wasn’t just that, either. It was the big corporations who killed the small indie places like mine. It will happen again to streaming eventually, just you wait and see. I can’t say I even feel too bad about it after what it all did to me.

I know lots of people secretly want the video stores to return. I hear them talking about ‘the good old days’ with a wistful tone in their voices. The people my age who just want the nostalgic hit. They want to feel the way they felt back then. I’m exactly the same.

But it isn’t as simple as that, as I’ve come to realise. You can’t rewind to a time in the past. If you could, I would have done a lot of things differently. I couldn’t prevent what happened anymore than I could prevent the video store being killed off. It can’t blame it on myself for failing to adapt and change. It was all them. They wanted me gone because they wanted to take over. And it worked. There’s no point in starting over when you’re already behind. You can’t catch the boat if they kick you off.

I can still visualise the store clearly in my mind. Sometimes when I can’t sleep, I close my eyes and go over the whole place. I rearrange the shelves back to how they used to be. I still remember every nook and cranny. I even remember the smell. There was the family section on the side wall which always smelled faintly of pizza from the pizza place next door. We had a sort of symbiotic relationship with that place; the smell would draw them in. They would order their pizza, come to the store to pick out a movie, then go back and pick up their pizza when it was ready. The set up was perfect. The middle aisles were the comedy movies, the raunchier the better according to the customers.

And on the left side was the horror section. These were proper horror movies, not the mainstream crap coming out today or the ones which want to make you feel bad for the killer. Most of them were movies made by smaller studios in the 80s and they were really scary and bloody. You didn’t even have a hundred websites full of reviews and ratings back then, only the blurb on the back of the box. You had to watch dozens of movies to find the ones you really liked, and that’s what was so great about it. Not like today when people flick between tv channels or spend half an hour deciding what they want to watch on Netflix.

And there were none of these ‘parental controls’ either. I probably desensitised a lot of kids by overlooking the age rating and letting them rent them. For a lot of the local kids, it was like a rite of passage for them to find the scariest movie in the store and dare each other to watch it all the way through. But once they did, they were one of the popular kids and set for life. I never let them take out the ‘adult’ movies in the little room behind the curtain, but if I thought they could handle it, the horror movies were fair game. Some of their parents got mad, and some of them even came into the store to scream at me, but they didn’t realise it was all part of their kid’s personal development. I watched movies like those as a teenager and I turned out just fine. The older you get, the more you realise there are way worse things to witness than a few scary movies. Those movies can never capture the true horror of the world.

In the back was the storage room where we kept the actual VHS tapes, so they couldn’t get stolen. That part of the store was like my palace, or my sanctuary. The only other person who could go back there was the owner, Mr. Branch, and he was hardly ever even there, so I basically had it all to myself. The only other people I ever let back there were a few regulars I used to hang out and watch movies with. That’s why it was my Happy Place.

But I knew it wouldn’t be for much longer. The store was doing well and I enjoyed working there. I didn’t actually need to work there after I got my mom’s inheritance, but I did it anyway because I enjoyed it so much. Because I was doing a service to the whole town by supplying them with the best movies. They didn’t realise it until the store was gone but I was the heart of the whole town; the pin keeping it all in place. Without me, they would have all been bored out of their skulls.

I was probably the only person in town who actually enjoyed his job. But I always knew it wasn’t what I wanted to do forever. I didn’t want to just rent out movies or watch them. I wanted to be the one making the movies. That’s why Quentin Taratino was my hero; he had started out working in a video rental store just like I did. I always thought if he could do it, I could do it. That hope was all that kept me going most days. I watched his movies knowing I was going to make something just like him one day. In fact, I was going to do even better. Someday he was going to come up to me, shake my hand, and tell me that I was his inspiration. It didn’t matter whether I was writing, acting, or directing. I just wanted to be involved somehow. I wanted to put my own mark on the world of movies, and I knew I had something to say.

I was in my 20s at the time and several years past high school graduation. Nearly ten years past, in fact. Most of the people I went to high school with had either long since moved on or had settled down to the wife, three kids, and white picket fence lifestyle which would keep them shackled to the town whether they liked it or not. I was probably the only person in my entire high school class who still lived in the town, hadn’t gone away to college, and was still single.

But I knew that was going to change soon. My mom had passed away in an accident a few years before. It was really stupid; she had tripped on the staircase, fallen down, and cracked her skull open. By the time I found her, it was already too late. As hard as it was to lose her, the inheritance and life insurance money finally gave me enough to move to California and attend film school.

I made my own short movie with a camera I bought second hand and shot around the town. It was a simple documentary movie about life in a small town. If I looked back on it now, I’d find it too cringy. I’m not sure if it even still exists anymore or if I threw it out long ago. But the people at the film school must have liked it, because I got a place on the course. I was beyond excited. This was one of the best film schools in the country. In the world, even. The type of place rich directors send their kids to so they can network and become great directors themselves. And I was going to join them; me, little Tom Bradford from the most regular of American towns. I was going to put my own stamp on Hollywood. People would be going to the store to rent my movies.

Everybody I spoke to was shocked when they found out. Some of them lit up at the thought that somebody from our town could become a big time Hollywood star and were probably already planning on bragging on how they knew me before I was famous. Some nodded politely and said ‘Good luck’. A few came right out and said ‘It’ll never work out. You’ll be back here before you know it’. Those people, I purposely didn’t rewind their tapes. I was going to prove them wrong. They were going to regret their words. A few of the rudest customers didn’t come back after making those comments. I guess they were scared by even the whiff of somebody else’s success. Or they were just jealous that they had never achieved their own dreams and were stuck in our crappy little town.

Sure, I was nervous about the change. I would be leaving behind the only place I had ever lived and the only life I had ever known. I wouldn’t have the familiar security of the video store or the sanctuary of the back room anymore. I wouldn’t be able to live in my mom’s house rent free. But I was excited, too. As tragic as my mom’s accident was, I knew it was the gift she had left behind for me. She would want me to follow my dreams and become happy.

But before that big change, I still had one more summer to go. It was just like the summer between high school and college, except it was coming several years later for me. My goal was to continue working at the movie store that summer and earn as much as I could to keep me going through college. Then when the summer was over, Mr. Branch could give my job to somebody else and I’d be off to achieve my dreams. But until then, I was still going to enjoy that last summer and my time at the store. I had to absorb as