Excitement Video

Somewhat redundant due its location, immediately adjacent to the well-​stocked Risqué Video, Excitement nonetheless comes out ahead. Not so much due to its smut selection, which isn’t noticeably superior, but because of its oddball touches, which retain a rare spark of weirdness in this increasingly homogenous market.
The racks of public-​domain DVDs presumably intended for the dollar stores of the world is one such flourish (for the discerning customer who wants an old Lucille Ball film alongside the day’s Sasha Grey?), but the true money shot is the surreal room of old (non-​porn) VHS tapes. It’s a perfect inversion of the old mom-​and-​pops video store backroom, where here it’s a bizarre constellation of hundreds of copies of the same sports and hunting tapes, plenty of big-​box former rentals, and just sheer oddities (the only copy I’ve ever seen of the 1980 Tony Curtis/​Lou Gossett Jr flick It Rained All Night the Day I Left, for one). This is *precisely* what I’m always hoping to stumble upon, and I never do. Except here. So kudos to you, Excitement Video.