Shop of the week: 20th Century Flicks

Walk up steep Christmas Steps and you will find David Taylor and Dave White’s shop, 20th Century Flicks. Push open the bright red door with a Bates Motel sign on it and as you step into the shop you are met by rows and rows of films and memorabilia. A log burner glows and spreads warmth through the shop, and a soundtrack of music from the 60s and 70s transports you into a world steeped in nostalgia to explore of one of the most beloved mediums the world has to offer.

“I was obsessed with watching movies when I was a kid,” David says with a grin on his face. “I was quite an introverted kid, so movies were perfect. They were the coolest people and I could just hang out with them.” He stands behind the desk surrounded by more than 20,000 titles – the shop gains around ten new acquisitions per week – accompanied by Poppy, the resident cat who is a bit of a character around the shop. You may see her slinking from area to area, but more often than not she’s enjoying a well-earned nap.

Like the staff at the shop Poppy is a film-buff, but her passion is Arnold Schwarzenegger films. “She likes movies with regular explosions because she really likes the subwoofer. So Commando and Predator are great films for her. Predator is her favourite.”

Co-owner David Taylor with Poppy the resident cat, who is a big Arnie fan

David went to university in Warwick and studied film for three years whilst working at a Blockbuster shop. After finishing his course he moved to Bristol and worked as a gardener before a friend told him about an opening at 20th Century Flicks in their previous location on Queen’s Road in Clifton.

“Jobs were really hard to get there, and the interview couldn’t have gone worse,” David says. “But the next day they called me to say I got the job.”

The shop had been established in Redland in 1982 with around 100 VHS and betamax tapes that could be rented out for £4-5 each, or around £15 with a video player thrown in to borrow for the week. After a couple of years the shop moved to its Clifton home and set down roots amongst a changing landscape for film fans.

At the time, videos cost from £100 to as much as £300 each, making the rental market viable. There was also a guaranteed 12-month period after certain films were released at the cinema before they were repeated on television, making the video rental shop the only place you could watch them. But as costs per film dropped, the days of renting one for the community began to wane.

From just 100 titles in 1982, 21st Century Flicks now boasts over 20,000 movies to choose from

When David started at the shop in 2003, video rental stores were experiencing their heyday and doing good business. However, by around 2008 things had become bad. People were discovering streaming and online film piracy and 20th Century Flicks lost their market. “It was very painful at the time,” David says. “Three of us decided to take the shop off the owner because it was just doing his head in. So he signed the stock over to us and we were now the owners.”

In 2014, 20th Century Flicks moved from their home in Clifton to Christmas Steps. Clifton had become too expensive, and the building lacked the size for development opportunities which were much-needed. Surviving was the objective. As David puts it: “We were jumping before we were pushed.”

The new space has come with lots of positives, most notably the space to expand and create two small cinemas within the shop that can be rented out for parties and events: the 11-seat Kino and 18-seat Videodrome. It’s something David would like to replicate in another shop, if something suitable comes up.

“The cinema rooms are where we get most of our income,” he says. “Building them has allowed us to be sustainable. We’ll always keep these movies that we’ve got, but one of the things we’ve sacrificed is space for browsing. If a building came up for a nice little screening room, it would be nice to have the space for browsing again. That’s one of the nicest things about a video shop.”

The 11-seat Kino can be rented out for parties

While the shop has struggled over the years to stay buoyant in an ever-changing world, now dominated by subscription streaming services and moving to digital-only platforms where the process of physically buying a DVD is a rare occurrence, 20th Century Flicks is a specialist in a sea of amateurs. “Our value for Bristol lies in the fact we can curate choices because we know our way through this archive so well,” David says. “That allows us to help customers pick movies and find specific movies they want.

“What I recently started to appreciate is there are some kids who have been coming here for four years. They were ten at the time now they are 14 and they have had this massive formative experience of watching movies and I’m part of their experience of film.”

20th Century Flicks
19 Christmas Steps, Bristol, BS1 5BS
0117 925 8432
www.20thcenturyflicks.co.uk