The World of Movies: Our First Video Set

Hello Screen

On the Saturday that week, my dad and some technician spent most of the morning piecing it together. I remember that it was Sony (he was a brand loyalist, even the stereo was a Sony. If they made a Sony car, he would have bought it). The screen was pretty big for those days (an 18 inch) and I looked forward to watching the videos.

Hello VCR

The deck was also a…you guessed it, a Sony. I laugh thinking about the fact that it had a remote control with a really long wire. Later on dad devised a plan to conceal it: under the carpet, and it emerged just next to his favourite chair. That was to be the source of countless remote control wars later on. It was a remote control with a wire. It actually had a wire. You would be hard pressed to find those nowadays

Goodbye Drive In, Hello VHS

I loved the fact that all we needed was to go to a video shop, rent a few VHS tapes for a few days and our weekend was a great family affair around that new altar: the video set. No more drive in cinemas. I hated them when it rained, not to mention the terrible speakers you had on the driver's window and dad had to keep the engine on to defrost the screen. We got to memorize where the speakers that worked were. then there were those battles between my sister and I of the "prime viewing spot" which was in the middle of the front seat. Then there were the long car lines when the movie was over…aah, those were the days. But now the Video is in. No more Apollo cinema too. The video was king.

A Lot More Came In

A lot of other things began to change in Malawi. With the dwindling popularity of the drive in and the Apollo cinema, the video took off. The first movies we had were "The Man from Hong Kong" and "The Man With The Golden Gun" (a James Bond movie). My sisters and I kept a log of the movies we had watched, under my parents' strict (mostly unfair, I thought, eye). Within the first two years we had clocked over three hundred movies. You do the math. That's an average of 2 per week…and counting. The video rent businesses began booming. Censorship became more strict and then dwindled. Smuggling illicit, under the counter, banned movies was big business. Video houses mushroomed. We started trying out some of the things we saw in the movies.
In was a trend that would change our lives forever. How did this trend change your life? You can comment at the top of the page where it says "comment".