At first, home video was an expensive novelty. One had to rent a VHS machine along with the movies (usually, one rented a VCR and two films for ten bucks a night, more for a whole weekend). VHS machines gradually became more affordable to purchase, but it took a few more years until pre-recorded VHS tapes became wallet friendly for the average consumer to buy instead of rent. (As late as the early 1990s, some singular VHS titles retailed for 100 bucks… now you can buy two or more DVD boxed sets for that.)
When renting movies became such a craze, a consumer could also go to the corner store to rent a movie, instead of going to Jumbo Video, The Video Station, etc. This was still a time when the retail price for a movie was 80 to 100 dollars apiece, so in order to avoid these overhead costs, a lot of convenience stores would have the services of a person with a large inventory of movies, who would travel the circuit (especially in small towns like mine), and stock convenience stores with a fraction of his inventory. Every few weeks, titles would get rotated, and corner stores would be replenished with a new batch of films after the others presumably played out at that location. Then once a year or so, this person would travel to big bad Toronto, for a big swap with other merchants who travelled other circuits, to replenish their inventories with other titles. And in my hometown, Ron Botten was such a person.
Ron (or Ronnie) circulated titles with various convenience stores in the county, and stocked his own corner store, Ronnie’s Variety. (He also lived there, in a dwelling attached to the back of the store.) Before I continue, I should segue with this anecdote. As early as 1987, in my typical restlessness, I tired of much standard mainstream fare that predominated most of the stand-alone video stores. I was hungry for a lot of obscure trash that I could only read about vicariously in the columns of Graffiti magazine that my cousin John would buy, which I would read when he cleaned at the hotel. This glossy Canadian publication (which focused on alternative music) had a regular section devoted to capsule reviews of trash cinema, all found on the shelves of a place called After Dark Video in some faraway land called Toronto. This was still a couple of years before I would eventually move to the big city, and so in the meantime, I had to quench my thirst for cinema obscura however offhandedly it happened. One Friday in March of 1987, I found our hometown’s version of After Dark.
Upon my very first visit to Ronnie’s Variety, I walked out with the snoozefest Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks starring some character named Boris Lugosi, and the infamous Last House on the Left. How’s that for an introduction? And these were just picks from a huge litter of great trash that people like me would covet. It seemed fitting to see these garish cereal-box-sized video cases aligning these dusty wooden shelves. Even at this point in the video revolution, these titles seemed out of place, out of time… yet at Ronnie’s were orphans rescued from the storm. For the next few years, many Friday nights or Saturday afternoons were spent going through Ronnie’s shelves, wondering what ragamuffin films to take home. Ronnie did stock his shelves with mainstream, current releases too… and no one in town gave you a better deal. One day, four movies, five bucks. Take that, Blockbuster. It was the crop of obscure stuff that was most synonymous with the “Ronnie’s” experience, but there was more… much more.
Going to Ronnie’s Variety usually turned into an all-night or all-afternoon thing, where the ritualistic act of deciding on what misunderstood piece of celluloid to take home was followed by three hours of talking about cinema (and he sure knew his stuff), or listening to his stories. One could say that Ronnie’s was the last bastion of “communal retail”, like the corner barber shop, which was more than just a business, it was a meeting place. You sure as hell didn’t get this at Blockbuster.
And he was one hell of a host. This sandy-haired gentleman, with a creasy smile, ubiquitous cigarette in hand, was a true character. He would talk about being up till six in the morning watching movies until his wife told him to go to bed. That was Ronnie! One time he had a portable sign outside the store (where one would add the plastic letters): “Make her day- buy a rose. Make Ronnie’s day- buy anything.” That was Ronnie! One time I read in the paper that someone tried to hold the store up, and he managed to run to the back and call the police, causing the robber to flee. The newspaper story had one quote from the store owner: “At first I thought it was some kind of joke.” That was Ronnie!
His good-natured, sardonic humour was just the perfect fit for an unusual place that had some of the most unique stuff you’d ever want to watch. These out-of-the-way films found their home in this out-of-the-way place… all as colourful as the man behind the counter. After I moved to the city, I learned that Ronnie had since retired, sold the business to someone who ran it into the ground in less than a year, and the dwelling now serves a driver’s education office. Part of me envisions Ronnie still spending his time sitting next to a crateful of films, listening to his beloved jazz station on the tinny little boom box that used to be in the store window. I doubt he’d remember me now, even though we were on a first-name basis (okay- I was on a first-name basis with almost every video retailer in my hometown), but I just would like to say, thanks for the education, Ronnie. You’re the greatest.
Originally published on the ESR blog, 2008