Akron’s Killer Video Celebrates and Archives Dead Media

An endless scroll of genres is readily available on most streaming platforms, but just as many titles can be found at Akron’s nostalgic Killer Video. The movie rental museum and shop prides itself on having just as many movies to offer in its VHS and DVD collections.

“We actually just received a substantial donation, which will allow us to be in a unique position where we literally have more movies than Netflix,” says founder Jonathon Carmichael. “Even if you take the horror movies away, we still have more movies than Netflix.”

The scary movies make up the bulk of the appropriately titled organization’s collection; Carmichael estimates that his bank of horror movies is double what’s available on either of two leading horror streaming services, Shudder and Screambox.

In the digital media era, Killer Video aims to preserve the movie rental experience that died as streaming grew in popularity. Today, video rental stores are largely a thing of the past; Movie Gallery and Hollywood Video closed and liquidated stores in 2010, with Blockbuster shuttering its many locations in 2014. Even local Discount Drug Marts discontinued their low-cost DVD rentals about a decade ago.

But for about three decades, from the 1980s through the 2000s, perusing the video rental shop was practically a rite of passage, Carmichael says. 

“It was a true cultural phenomenon worldwide,” he says. “There are not a lot of things that last that long, that so many people have this shared happiness and shared good memories and nostalgia for.”

This dead format comes to life inside Killer Video, where more than 2,000 VHS and DVD movies are on display on classic display racks, paired with a couple of thousand artifacts from Carmichael’s collection. That includes promotional materials, press kits, ad sheets and themed toys, much of which Carmichael picked up while working in the film industry in Los Angeles for 25 years before opening Killer Video in early 2025.

Though the museum items are not available for purchase, Killer Video hosts a separate rental store for members to enjoy. The business also hosts a variety of events, including a monthly horror trivia night, movie viewings and its popular Dead Media Markets, where regional vendors sell their nostalgic media and collections with an expanding community.

That community includes the collectors who never stopped collecting, along with a new audience of young fans who are choosing to pick up physical media for the first time.

“I think there's definitely a novelty to it for some of the younger generations,” Carmichael says. “But I also think that there is some desire to own the tangible media, something about picking it off the shelf, holding it, having it, not worrying about bit rates or your wifi signal, or losing the rights to it and it disappearing off of your digital downloads.”

READ MORE: Cleveland Logs Off in a Growing Analog Movement

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