An Introduction to Danger Zone Video
Let's head out to Mount Juliet, Tennessee to visit Danger Zone Video and pick up some DVDs.
This feature was originally written in September of 2024 exclusively for the Nashville Movie Dispatch: Movie Annual, 2024.
It’s a warm Saturday in September - the sun is beaming down through blue skies. A slightly cool breeze blows, reminding us that fall is on the horizon. It’s the perfect day to get out and piddle around Mount Juliet, Tennessee - bookstores, record shops, clothing boutiques, and of course, Target. Whatever your shopping needs may be, our small town has it covered.
There’s a pop-up shop down at our local video store, Danger Zone Video. They’re celebrating Twilight as a franchise that should be celebrated. Beverages, bumper stickers, art, and merchandise is all available that fits the theme. Hell, there’s even a photo op with a cardboard cutout of Edward Cullen just for the occasion. Home-based bakery Literary Flour has a table set up in the front of the store selling themed cookies such as the ‘Skin of a Killer’ sparkling sugar cookie.
I grab a cup of punch as my wife picks out which cookies she wants to indulge. Instead of picking between two, I implore her to get both, to which she happily obliges. While I appreciate the nostalgia of a functional VCR, I’m more of a disc man myself. So, I step into the DVD room and peruse the latest inventory. After settling up, I walked away with a fat new stack - Jackie Brown, Love Actually, The Other Guys, Munich, and Hannibal (don’t judge me - that movie was vibey). I sat and talked with Brittany for a bit, and then we were on our way, Saturday morning made. While there isn’t a popup every Saturday at Danger Zone Video, such a morning highlighted the reasons I love stopping by every couple weeks or so.
Earlier this year, Best Buy stopped selling physical media. Target is set to stop in 2025. It sure seems like big retail is doing its part in killing off our opportunity to collect our favorites. With fewer options these days, places like Danger Zone Video allow us to still practice the time-honored tradition of flipping through movies without any particular want in mind. It’s not so different from collecting art, and you never know what the gallery at Danger Zone will have on display. That’s one reason that I love filing through their inventory every couple of weeks.
But, there’s more to what makes Brittany and Jesse, the minds behind Danger Zone Video, easy to root for. They’ve helped foster an atmosphere of community among collectors and entrepreneurs alike. Friends set up tables regularly, offering Danger Zone’s clientele something fresh, be it cookies from Literary Flour, aguas frescas from Besitas, or coffee and vinyl records from Dark Roast Vinyl. It’s a way to introduce people to new businesses in the area and generate sales all the same.
The spirit of chasing your dreams is alive and well within the confines of that video store at 11942 Lebanon Road. It’s also a shrine to the history of cinema. I’ve picked up copies of 2022’s Violent Night and 1922’s Nosferatu in that store. That’s a hundred years of film history between those two films, and the shelves have a little bit of everything in between. I’ve added Gone with the Wind, Full Metal Jacket, and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter to my collection from this store for crying out loud. Pictures, posters, and memorabilia adorn the walls, feeling like a small museum of relics from yesteryear. In a sense, the nostalgia that Danger Zone Video stirs within me is akin to time travel.
It’s a place where I can disappear from the real world for a few minutes, explore the annals of film history, have a good conversation, and add to my ever growing movie collection. I hope you’ll visit them some time too. Physical media forever.