It’s around this time of year that I really start to miss video stores.  I know there are a few left here and there but they’re often packed to the brim with overstock DVDs and VHS tapes culled from shuttered mom-and-pop stores.  These can be an overwhelming mountain to climb, only worth it if you have a truckload of time to spare or aren’t looking for anything specific.  I still prefer the days when the rental franchises hadn’t kicked in yet and your friendly neighborhood video store had full but not packed shelves of titles to choose from.

Every store did their checkout process their own way but my favorite was always the ones that had the display box sitting in front of the rental case (if it was in).  That way you could always see what movies the store had and could keep an eye on a title if you happened to miss it on that particular trip.  In 1990, when The Willies was released, finding the single copy of the movie in at Good Neighbor Video in South Minneapolis was a nearly impossible feat.  The store didn’t do reservations so you had to be in the right place at the right time to snag a copy.  I remember waiting for weeks to rent it, making a beeline for its location every time I entered the store only to be disappointed when there was no rental case in place.  Then, one day, there it was and it was finally my turn to get…The Willies.

Another entry in the line of popular anthology films like After Midnight and Cat’s Eye, The Willies is a teen-targeted horror comedy that’s best viewed now through the lens of forgiving nostalgia.  After looking for a copy and not willing to pay a high price tag (it’s since come out on a cheaper disc), I watched the film on YouTube and was surprised at the quality.  It’s no 4K Blu-ray but for a low-budget, mostly-forgotten film from the ’90s it doesn’t look too shabby streaming on the popular website.  In fact, if you’ve been on the hunt for a particular movie (or, better yet, a television movie from the ’70s or ’80s), YouTube is the place to go because I’ve found a lot of good content there recently.

The basic premise of the film finds three boys (including Sean Astin, Gloria Bell) telling campfire tales, each trying to outdo the other in the scare department.  After three initial quick-fire tales that are amusing in their own juvenile gross-out ways (the woman trying to dry her poodle in the microwave has stuck with me for the last 29 years), we move on to two longer tales with a bit more meat on the bones.  A bullied kid finds an ally at school that gives his tormentors something more sinister than a week of detention is a bit rough in the narrative department but boasts some fun performances from familiar faces James Karen (Poltergeist) and Kathleen Freeman (Hocus Pocus).  The next yarn involves a young outsider obsessed with insects that makes the mistake of stealing enhanced manure from a local farmer.  When he introduces the fertilizer to his bugs, they turn the tables on him and do more than put him under the magnifying glass.