'Tourists go past, and they take a step back and are like, 'Oh, a video store',' Mrs Fox said. Other stores in Cairns had clung, white-knuckled, to the glory days until this year, when they – like VHS, Betamax and 8-track – also bit the dust.īut somehow, almost impossibly, Fox Video is trading as well as it did four years ago. Rockhampton's last video store, Suzie's Movie Scene, closed last year, as did Movie HQ in Bowen. ( ABC Capricornia: Tobias Jurss-Lewis) The old guardĬOVID-19 and a growing number of streaming services have placed extra pressures on the embattled movie rental industry. Mount Morgan's Fox Video boasts of a catalogue four times the size of Netflix's.

'There's quite a few people I'll be able to box up their choices and have them ready before they come to the counter.' if someone picks a movie and he thinks 'they're not going to like that', he'll put a movie in (the case) that he knows they will like and doesn't charge them for it.' And they've become adept at picking what customers will and won't enjoy.

'Everyone likes something different,' Ms Fox said. His wife, Louise, has a reputation for recommending the notorious tragicomedy Bad Boy Bubby to tourists looking for an Aussie classic.īut more than anything else, the couple's reputation revolves around their love and commitment to their trade and clientele. Rumour has it Larry invented binge watching when, more than a decade ago, he stockpiled TV box sets.

With quirky paraphernalia and regular patrons, it is the video store equivalent of a country pub.Īnd like all good country publicans, its owners Louise and Larry Fox are renowned in the town. Nestled in the streets of a town lost in time, is the last vestige of a fading era – of cheap Tuesdays, one-dollar thrills and counter-side sweets that kids beg their parents to buy.įox Video – fittingly found in historic Mount Morgan in central Queensland – has been trading for more than two decades, amassing a film library owner Louise Fox says is three times bigger than Netflix's.

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