A new meta-horror film called The Last Video Store blends reality with fiction, set at The Lobby in Edmonton. Kevin Martin, owner of the store and actor in the movie, joined co-director Tim Rutherford to discuss this movie on CTV Morning Live.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Kimberly Wynn: You’ve had this store for decades and we’ve done stories on it. What motivated this movie?
Kevin Martin: Meeting guys like this guy (Tim Rutherford) through my video store. We have shot a series of short films in the video store over the years and it just got to the point that we needed to do the feature movie. Some people have kids leave their legacy in life. Some people make a movie about what they do for a living. This is it. This is my legacy.
Kimberly: Do I call you “video store owner” or “actor?” Which comes first?
Kevin: Just “video store guy playing himself,” I guess. It’s a blur between reality, what’s real and what’s not real.
Kimberly: Because you got to play yourself.
Kevin: Yes. And just getting back from England, the one thing about everybody over there, they were more fascinated by that fact. Like, “Wait, you actually own a video store?” and they wanted to talk about the real video store more than the movie. They were saying, “Because we don’t have video stores here anymore.”
Kimberly: Tim, can you tell us what this movie is about?
Tim Rutherford: We got Kevin in his video store, kind of a lost vestige of a bygone era, and a young woman comes in to return some movies and all heck breaks loose. It’s a classic B movie trope of the haunted videotape unleashing all these B movie monsters and characters into the video store, so the two of them have to survive.
Kimberly: I saw one of the villains in the trailer and correct me if I’m wrong: it looks like it possibly could be Jason from Camp Crystal Lake (in Friday the 13th), but they are from “Beaver Lake.” Am I correct? Because it’s not like you could get the copyrights for all these real villains, right?
Tim: Well, it was important for us to also play on the B movies that are in the store, instead of doing a satire or a parody of more popular movies. We wanted to highlight the movies that were made as the cheap mirror images in the video store. You get the Canadian version – and what would be the Canadian version of Jason? Well, if he’s wearing a hockey mask, he’s got to actually be a hockey player. So, he’s the goalie of the “Beaver Lake Tail Slappers.”
Kim: You’ve both been through the festival circuit now. How has the reception been for the movie?
Kevin: Pretty great. Obviously, we had the world premiere in Austin, Texas, so a lot of the Canadian jokes might have gone a little bit over their heads. We didn’t realize we unintentionally made what we call a “Canucksploitation movie,” because we had a lot of our friends we’ve met through festivals, who have cameos in this movie, that are other filmmakers.
If nothing else, people have been saying it’s got a lot of heart, because they miss video stores. If you grew up in video stores and found these great silly movies, hopefully it resonates more than just, a silly B movie. It is one, but we weren’t expecting people to be sad walking out, thinking “I want to be a kid again.”
Kim: Okay, we just had our movie bracket. You saw we put up The Addams Family against Hocus Pocus. What’s your vote?
Kevin: Oh, The Addams Family. It’s not even close.
Tim: One hundred per cent, it’s The Addams Family.
Kim: Thank you both so much for joining us this morning. Good luck for the rest of the viewing. People can catch The Last Video Store tonight and tomorrow night at Metro Cinema at 9:30 p.m.