VIDEO: Kensington Shop Is Famous for Selection : Pick a Video, <i> Any</i> Video : Entertainment: A mom-and-pop store in Kensington has built its reputation on its selection. They'll even help you choose from among the 8,000 titles.

By G. JEANETTE AVENT

April 30, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

SAN DIEGO — The first customer at Kensington Video was a retired Catholic priest who didn’t even own a videocassette player. Guy Hanford, who owns the video store with his parents, went out and helped him buy one.

“I got him a VCR, and he’d rent one movie a day after that,” Hanford said.

That was seven years ago this month, and the incident was just one of the early clues that the mom-and-pop store at 4067 Adams Ave., next to the Ken Cinema, would be a bit out of the mainstream. Other signs soon followed.

One of the first special requests was for a video on cannibalism, Hanford said with a grin. He said he pondered the request for a moment, then told the customer, “Well, we have a film on Idi Amin.”

Like every other video store in town, this family-owned operation stocks the latest releases, but it thrives mainly as the source for foreign films, classics and the offbeat.

With its worn boxes lining cramped shelves--some of which overflow into the family’s card and gift shop next door--the store is a stark contrast to the chain video stores such as Tower and Blockbuster.

The inventory tells a story, too: More than 1,000 of Kensington Video’s nearly 8,000 titles are foreign films. Tower’s Sports Arena store has a foreign film list of about 400 titles in its 7,500-video collection, and the Blockbuster at 2011 El Cajon Blvd. counts about 450 foreign films among its 5,000 titles.

Hanford, who works as Kensington Video’s buyer, said the chain stores recognize the value of the smaller store’s offerings.

“There is a friendly camaraderie among video stores, because most people rent the standard movies--the recent releases--in their own neighborhood,” he said. “It is when they can’t find a foreign film or a classic at their neighborhood video store that the store sends them to us.”

On a typical Friday night, customers ring the counter at the Kensington, chatting with each other and the store owners. A huge inflatable crocodile--a promotion holdover from “Crocodile Dundee”--dangles overhead. A mobile of Pee Wee Herman floats in the air like a modern-day Peter Pan.

Behind the counter, Hanford, 42, his mother, Winnie, 63, father, Rich, 62, and sister Pam, 38--banter with customers and keep up a brisk pace dispensing tapes and homespun advice on which movies to see. Teen-age clerks pad back and forth from the counter to the stockroom, filling rental requests and learning the ins and outs of what for many is their first job.

Three of the seven grandchildren in the Hanford clan work at the store, including Pam’s 10-year-old son, Daniel, who helps out by directing cars in the miniature parking lot out back, where customers park two deep.

“You need a mixture of young and old behind the counter,” Winnie Hanford said. “A lot of people my age ask me what’s good. After I get to know the person, I know what they’ll like. You let me know what mood you’re in, and I’ll help you. Maybe they want to cry. We can help select a film.”

Toward that goal, Guy said, his mother watches just about every new release, and he watches the foreign and classic movies. He doesn’t claim to watch everything he buys for the store, but even so, he’s seen about 6,500 of its nearly 8,000 titles.

But you can’t always tell what a customer likes by the way he or she looks, Hanford said. A boy with an earring, punk hair and ripped clothing checked out “The King and I,” starring Yul Brynner.

And, of course, films that are distasteful to some people are thrillers to others. A woman who looked to be in her late 60s checked out Stephen King’s “The Shining” because she loves horror, Hanford said.

In fact, horror films are so popular that the store has opened a special section that spills over into the gift shop. Horror needs a section by itself, Hanford reasons, because “some of the video boxes are scarier than the movies.”

He also has to be careful what he recommends to people. One man told him he had a friend who had suffered a loss, and he wanted a movie to help take her mind off it. He said he’d heard “A Fish Called Wanda” was funny.

“I asked what kind of loss she had, and he said her dog had died,” Hanford said. “I told him that wasn’t the movie he wanted because it had a scene that shows a dog being run over.”

People come from within a 50-mile radius of San Diego, even from Tijuana, Winnie Hanford said. One Rancho Santa Fe man sent his chauffeur to pick up a tape.

The store requires a $10 lifetime membership, Guy said, and more than 10,000 people have joined. “The fee gives us a way of stocking the store the way other stores can’t,” he said.

“That’s why we have the selection we do,” Rich Hanford said. “If everybody did what we do, we’d all starve to death. We’ve got movies we may not rent for a year. But it’s all a part of the mix.”

Among the most asked for videos are “The Frisco Kid,” starring Gene Wilder and Harrison Ford; all of Charlie Chaplin’s movies; “Labyrinth,” and “Eating Raoul,” a black comedy that’s always out, Guy said.

But the mix also includes a children’s section; 100 silent films; opera; videos of Shakespeare’s plays; 1,500 classics, such as “42nd Street”; cult films, such as David Lynch’s “Eraserhead”; Divine’s “Polyester” and “Pink Flamingos,” and films with unusual appearances, such as Liberace playing a coffin salesman in “The Loved One.” Hanford also counts more than 500 film noir titles--mostly black and white movies such as “The Maltese Falcon”--in the store collection.

The rage now are the serial films such as “Flash Gordon” and the “Green Hornet.” The serial fanatics, mostly men, “are going nuts over those,” he said.

Hanford occasionally has to educate people about the foreign films. One customer asked, “Do you have to speak French to watch a French film?”

“I told her I’d give her a book, and then she’d have three days to learn the language,” he said.

Hanford told one customer that a movie contained black humor, and she said, “That’s OK, I’m not prejudiced.”

“I just said, ‘That’s good.’ ”

Having the Ken Cinema right next door helps, Hanford said. People come in before and after the movie looking for films by the same director. And when Bette Davis died, “we were inundated with requests for her movies,” he said. “We had a separate shelf we created as a memorial for her.”

Hanford’s own interest in movies grew out of the hours he spent watching them as a child with his grandmother in St. Louis. The store was a chance to satisfy a lifelong interest, he said.

“I’ve always been a movie buff, since I was 8 years old. We’d be watching ‘Goodbye Mr. Chips’ and I’d be crying right along with Grandma.”

When he was 13, Hanford became interested in movie trivia; as he got older, his interest shifted to the art of filmmaking and directing. Even if he didn’t like the story or the acting, he’d still watch a movie to learn more about technique, and in the process he amassed close to 600 film books.

He also delighted in tracing the obscure roots of now well-known actors. For example, William Shatner had a role as a young boy in “The Brothers Karamazov,” and Jeff Goldblum was the rapist in the opening scene of “Death Wish I,” Hanford said.

When videocassette recorders became more affordable in the 1970s, he bought one of RCA’s giant Selectavision tape machines so he could watch movies at home.

Back then, VCRs weren’t the compact boxes they are today, he said. “They weighed a good 40 pounds, certainly more than my 4-year-old” daughter.

Still, it was heaven for a movie buff. The only problem was, the video stores were playing it safe by stocking just the top films. “I also wanted to see offbeat, experimental and old classics,” Hanford said.

But going from movie lover to video store owner was a big step. Hanford, a former assistant principal at a junior high school who is now a third-grade teacher in Ramona, had no plans to give up his career to start the store. He wanted to do both.

Starting out with 300 titles, he opened the store in 1984 in a 200-square-foot corner of his parents’ 3,000-square-foot gift shop, which opened 20 years earlier. The video store now dwarfs the gift shop, taking up about 2,000 square feet. If customers look closely at the wall near the front door, they can still see the blue paint that marks the original boundary of the store.

Opening the video shop was a substantial risk, Hanford said. “I took out a second on my house to finance it, and some days were very meager. Sometimes the whole take for the day would not have bought a video.”

“I kept wondering, am I going to have the largest home video library ever?” he said. But his parents kept telling him to stick with it, and he did.

Between his two jobs and the commute from his home in Poway, Hanford sometimes puts in more than 80 hours a week, but he said he gets enormous satisfaction from both teaching and the store. He’s taught school for 19 years and is in his eighth year as a film buyer.

It’s the customers who make it worth the effort, he said. An elderly German gentleman once visited the store asking for a copy of the silent version of “Pandora’s Box,” which he had seen in Germany as a youth, Hanford recalled. The man hadn’t seen the film for 50 years, and he broke down crying when he learned the store had a copy.

“It was almost like he had a religious experience,” Hanford said.

“As a third-grade teacher, I’m affecting lives and making a difference by my presence,” he said. “I feel the same way about the store. And it’s fun doing something I love.”