In a world of streaming, recommendations, and endless scrolling, one Adelaide store is bringing the magic of the old-school video shop back to life.
Vicious Video is opening in Gay’s Arcade, giving the city something wonderfully unexpected in 2026: a physical video store built around VHS tapes, cult films, retro cover art and the kind of browsing experience that takes you back to swinging by your local Video Ezy to pick up a few titles for the weekend. It’s an experience a lot of us had accepted had disappeared for good.
Run by collector and film-art obsessive Deniel Cross, Vicious Video has relocated from Charles Street Plaza into a larger new home, where the store feels part shop, part gallery and part living museum of physical media.
For Deniel though, it’s not about recreating a standard video shop. It’s about giving the artwork, objects and memories of a pre-streaming era the space they deserve.
“I guess I’m building the shop that I would want to find,” Deniel said.
“I love old-school promotional art, and artists from the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, all the hand-painted cover art that you see on old VHS and film posters.”
“These days, it contrasts a lot against today’s techniques of Photoshop collaging and photo manipulation. Growing up with it, we didn’t really know what we had until now, when you see this new technique and then go back and see the old hand-painted technique. It really stands out.”
The store is filled with VHS tapes, DVDs, paperbacks, posters, cassettes, skate stickers, T-shirts and collectable pieces, but the heart of the place is the cover art. Instead of packing tapes tightly onto shelves spine out, Deniel wants the covers to be seen properly.
“I wanted to bring my collection into the public sphere and share it with people,” he said. “I wanted these products to have their space, so they could be spaced out and not all shoved together, spines out, like you’d see at the end of the video age era, where everything was jammed into shelves.
“I wanted to really let the covers sing and do what they were designed for. A lot of these films only had their covers to sell them. No one would have seen the previews. They couldn’t afford to do posters or any significant marketing. Most of these videos or paperback books just had to grab your attention from the cover alone.”
“That was pre-internet days, when people couldn’t just check reviews or Rotten Tomatoes. You had to go by what the product was telling you.”
While VHS is a major focus, Vicious Video is not just a tape archive. In fact, it’s more of a curated gallery where you can interact with the pieces, and even take some home if you so desire. There’s a strong focus on horror, cult titles and artwork that makes you feel something.
“I’m usually going to go for ‘trash horror’ and anything with interesting cover art, thinking of the collector in mind. But I’m not the sort of guy that people call up because I’ll have that specific title. I’m not a hoarder. I’m not a completist.”
“It’s more like a curated selection, almost a gallery-type experience without the formality. I have the luxury to exist in whatever state I wish, because I don’t have to keep up with the record store. I don’t have to adhere to a bookshop. I don’t have to be an old-school video store either, because all my stuff’s for sale.”
That mix gives the store a rare quality. It is a place where collectors can find sought-after pieces, shoppers who stumble across it can discover something strange and wonderful, and anyone who grew up around video stores can be hit with a rush of memory.
Deniel said some collectors are chasing the full sensory experience.
“There are collectors that love a good sniff,” he laughed.
“They love to grab a tape, and the first thing they do when they open it up is put it straight up their nostrils. I don’t know what they’re searching for, but they tell me they’re after that video store smell.”
Some of the tapes are highly collectable. Deniel recently sold a copy of Evil Dead II to a collector in the United States who was willing to pay a premium, as well as an Australian release of Blood Beach to another US collector.
“Aussie tapes are quite sought after globally, because each country was responsible for making their own products, so they’re all unique to each country,” he said.
“Aussie tapes were built to a high standard, really. You’ve got labels like Roadshow, which are unique in the world, and they’ve got such a global appeal at the minute. Collectors from all over are trying to get their hands on our Aussie tapes, which is pretty rad.”
Among the titles currently on Deniel’s radar are RAD, Braindead, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Scanners and a UK “video nasty” called Absurd, a title he bought after years of admiring its cover.
“There’s something about it that you just need to have it in your life immediately,” he said.
“I saw one come up, and I just paid some stupid money to get it, just to have it here and share it with others.”
The move into Gay’s Arcade has also allowed Deniel to expand the world of the shop. The new space has more floor area, higher ceilings, room for displays and a setup that lets him screen films across a large white wall using laserdisc, VHS and DVD players.
“One of the happy accidents was setting up my projector against one of the firewalls. Everything just worked out really well, and I’ve got this nice big white screen. I’ve got the laserdisc, the VHS and the DVD player all linked up and into the sound system, so I can do big screenings.”
“There’s something about it. It’s got the quality of an old cinema, just a shitty sort of blurriness to it, kind of like a drive-in almost. I can just have that on in the background now, which is great.”
The Gay’s Arcade store also gives Vicious Video a different feel from its former Charles Street Plaza home. There is more light, more room to move and more space for the oddities Deniel has had tucked away in storage.
“Charles Street Plaza was really enticing, but after four years, I was becoming more mushroom than man. I needed just a little bit of natural light in my life.”
Deniel is also planning to lean into the contrast between old media and natural growth, bringing plants into the space and hoping they eventually creep through the store.
For Deniel, Vicious Video is the result of decades spent collecting, exploring and falling in love with physical media. His path moved from films to comics, then vinyl records, gaming, action figures and eventually VHS, but he says video tapes hit differently.
Deniel has been involved in the VHS scene for around 20 years, first setting up out the back of a toy collector shop in 2010, then launching Starblaze Collectables through Renew Adelaide on Hindley Street before COVID cut that project short. Renew later gave him another opportunity, which led to Vicious Video opening in Charles Street Plaza.
Now, in Gay’s Arcade, Deniel says the business has a chance to re-express itself in a setting that feels right.
“I love this position. This spot in Gay’s is just gorgeous,” he said. “Being here in Gay’s and getting a feel for the other businesses around me, and the sort of cosmopolitan feel, kind of like an open French side street, I want to lean in on that a little and work out the best way for this experience to work with the arcade and for the business.”
At its core, Vicious Video is a celebration of the objects that made people fall in love with film before streaming took over. It is nostalgic, tactile, strange, funny and deeply personal, but it is also carefully curated for a new generation of collectors and curious wanderers.
And for anyone who misses the thrill of discovering something by its cover alone, Deniel has created a space where that old magic still lives.
As he puts it, Vicious Video is “like a museum where you can buy the exhibits.”
Vicious Video
Where: Shop 107 Gay’s Arcade Lv1 Adelaide
When: Official opening Friday 22 May, 6 – 8pm
For more info, click here.
