Family Video Is OK

I went into Family Video last night. I wasn’t actually interested in getting a movie, I just wanted to check out the store. In this age of rampant false advertising, I wanted to make sure that a place that called themselves “Family Video” didn’t have any movies unfit for family consumption in our City of Churches. “Family,” you see, is a shorthand way of saying: “we don’t handle anything ‘adult’ because ‘adult’ is filthy and undesirable and we don’t want anything that's not wholesome.

I moseyed around trying to look innocent, noticed there is a new chainsaw massacre movie out—nothing there to be worried about. I’ve never seen a chainsaw massacre movie, but as long as all the women keep their clothes on and don’t threaten us with their bare breasts, I can’t see anything unnatural or unhealthy about slicing their heads off with a four-foot chainsaw. Those women probably had impure thoughts anyhow.

I noticed they had a copy of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of The Christ" and made a mental note to rent that later to show to all the neighborhood kids. (Kids nowadays don't get enough religion.) But I checked behind "The Passion" to make sure the store owners weren't hiding anything offensive behind this religious classic. There was noting there, but I did notice in the process that "The Passion" was rated "R." So I scratched my plans to show it to the neighbor kids. (Guess they'll have to go to church to learn about that.)

I checked through all the slasher movies for hidden "adult" DVDs, through all the war movies, all the horror movies, and most of the murder movies. I even checked through movies made just for children like "Jimmy Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" where Jim Carry plays a villain who kills a bunch of people and threatens the lives of three innocent orphans. (Maybe I should rent that for the neighborhood kids. No sex there.) There was a lot of good, clean, healthy family-oriented violence, murder, and slaughter in all those kids' movies, but no hint of anything inappropriate.

After my search, I had to concede Family Video, like all similar video stores, is a fine corporation dedicated to offering only family-value type productions.

And today, I received an email from said video store reminding me when my rentals are due back. They also kindly gave me a short list of videos they have available which included "Blood Trails," Blood Diamond," "Masters of Horror," and "Night of the Living Dead."

I'll probably rent all of those DVDs just to make sure there is nothing in any of them to offend my sensitivity.