What to watch?
Before VHS became widespread, watching a movie in 1980s Australia meant seeing what was on television or going to the cinema. Sydney had five free-to-air television services by the middle of the decade - ABC, SBS, Seven, Nine and Ten. They broadcast what they chose, when they chose. Cinemas offered a large image but a small window: miss that window and you might never see the film at all.
VHS gave the audience control and flexibility. For my family, the place that made that possible was Dr What Video in Bondi Junction.
Dr What opened in Bondi Junction in 1981 as a hybrid electronics and video business. The logic was clear: stocking films gave customers a reason to buy an expensive machine. Neal Crisford joined in 1983, and his family took over the struggling business soon afterwards. A collection of about 2,000 titles eventually grew to around 40,000.
The shop sat at 562 Oxford Street, with the rental collection on the ground floor and production facilities downstairs. It became a Sydney institution because of what it chose to put on those shelves.
When I spoke with Neal about what set Dr What apart, he kept returning to the breadth of its collection.
“We bought almost everything that was released. We didn’t just buy 50 copies of the one movie. We bought a whole range.”
That was the difference between Dr What and the chain-store model emerging around it. A chain could stack the wall with copies of the latest hit. Dr What used the same space for a diverse range of titles - horror, Australian exploitation, arthouse, foreign-language, documentaries and oddities that larger distributors and stores overlooked.
This breadth had its own commercial logic. New releases cost more and had to earn their money quickly. An obscure older title could be cheaper to acquire and might keep renting for years. Neal described these films as ‘little gems’ that became evergreen parts of the store’s collection.
That diversity influenced the way I chose films. I often went in for a particular new release, only to find every copy gone. So I picked something else. Weekly two-for-one offers encouraged me to venture further: choose one film I knew, then take a chance on another.
For a few dollars, failure carried little risk. At worst, you sat through a movie you didn't enjoy and returned it. At best, you discovered a filmmaker, a genre or films from a country you had never encountered. VHS made films accessible; rental made curiosity affordable.
Dr What added human judgement. Its catalogue was too deep to navigate by alphabetical order alone. Staff arranged titles by genre and director, remembered what regular customers liked and turned vague requests into recommendations.
The store was small and personal. A recommendation from someone behind the counter carried a history: they knew the film, the collection and perhaps the person borrowing it. Modern streaming services offer more choices than a physical shop could ever hold, but their recommendations arrive as rows of thumbnails calculated from behaviour. Dr What’s recommendations came through conversation and care.
