In 2014, it is shocking and unexpected to have a wide access to heavily discounted movies and movie rentals in large metropolitan city like Dallas. Yet, there seems to be a fairly large number of movie stores within five minutes of campus. Premiere Video and Movie Trading Company offer rental and buying services for used and new movies. Other stores like Half Price Books and CD Source also offer inexpensive movies. A majority of these types of stores have been made obsolete by the Internet, but in Dallas, they seem to be thriving.
Premiere Video is one of the last standing places people can physically go to in order to rent a movie. The store carries hundreds of titles, and has a particular emphasis in foreign films.
“I went for French films for a class,” said junior Amelia Dracup. “They are inexpensive and you get reward dollars.”
Junior Emily Heft also enjoys the store.
“I have been there a few times to find movies for classes,” she says. “They have a huge selection of both educational films and foreign films, but also many movies I’d buy to watch for fun!”
Movie Trading Company is one of the largest movie stores in the area, and offers deals on buying, renting and selling movies and games. This place is almost overwhelmingly packed with thousands of titles organized by genre and alphabetically.
“I have gone to Movie Trading Company before because I wanted to watch a movie that I couldn’t find online or on demand, and they had it in the store,” said sophomore Meredith Matt. “I like seeing all the ‘blast from the past’ movies that you totally forgot even existed and that aren’t available online anywhere. It really brings back memories.”
While most video rental and video-only stores have been closing, these stores still remain open. They even seem to be doing a good amount of business thanks to passionate cinephiles and people looking for less popular film in a hurry. Perhaps, people enjoy the experience of going into a store and browsing or talking to others about movies. Whatever the reason, people of Dallas seem to be keeping these movie stores alive and thriving.
