Video bunker hosts treasure trove of media
9/3/2025
Brian Hogan is the owner and a barber at Franklin Barbershop in Beaverdale. After a day of cutting hair, he returns home to his video bunker — a space filled from head to toe with movies, posters and more.
Before we could talk about that collection, Hogan mentioned some puppets that he also works on in his free time. He made some for a short film shot by him and his friends a few years ago, and he convinced his friends to take a puppet-making class. It didn’t stick for all of them, but it did for him.
“Had you told me, like, 10 years ago, I was going to be making puppets in my 40s, I would have told you you’re crazy. But, yeah, it just kind of made sense to me,” Hogan says.
As for his VHS and movie collection, this passion began at a young age, spurred by his parents and grandparents.
“At that age, everybody’s grandparents had movies lying around. With my grandmother, I used to watch a lot of movies with Buster Keaton and The Three Stooges, like the old black and white silent films,” Hogan says. “My dad would take me to see things that probably younger kids shouldn’t see. That was kind of cool. You felt like you were seeing something that was risqué. I remember my dad took me to see ‘Goodfellas’ in the movie theater. I was probably 8 years old.”
While perhaps Hogan should not have seen “Goodfellas” at such a young age, the seed was planted, and it grew into a stunning collection with thousands of VHS tapes, DVDs, signed movie posters and other memorabilia.
Having something tangible in an age of streaming services is important to Hogan. You could say he started his collection at that same young age. A flood at his parents’ house took most of his early collection, but he has since built it back up. He used to go to Showtime Video, a video store that was located in Clive.
“I used to ride my bike down there all the time. And even when I would go with my dad, my dad never censored me. I would go pick out a movie. And he’d never be like, ‘No, put it back,’ ” Hogan says.
Hogan is well-versed in video stores past and present, mentioning Suncoast Video Store, formerly in Valley West Mall, where he purchased a collector’s box set of “Terminator 2” for more than $100.
“I mowed lawns for months to get that,” Hogan says.
We stepped into the Video Bunker, a video store of his own creation in his home. Separated by genre, movies from the classics to projects few have ever heard of line several rows in one part of the room. Posters adorn the ceiling, and in another room in the back, they go from floor to ceiling. Hogan puts the ballpark number of the total number of movie-related items somewhere in the realm of 5,000.
Interesting pieces in his collection include various “WrestleMania” shows (which he has played on a projector during Beaverdale Fall Fest), a “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” poster (signed by actor Richard Dreyfuss) and, soon to be added, an original “Jaws” poster that is currently being restored.
A friend of his also made an addition to the collection with “Sorority House Massacre II.”
“I used to watch that a lot at the shop. Somebody stole it from the barber shop, which I was really surprised by,” Hogan says. “It’s a huge bummer. For the longest time, I was trying to get a copy of this, and it was $75-80. A good friend of mine bought a copy of it for me.”
Hogan obtains his tapes in a variety of ways including flea markets, thrift stores and traditional video stores.
An appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” after a video of the Video Bunker went viral on TikTok spurred people from across the country to send Hogan their collections.
Recently, he bought tapes from someone in Iowa City, which came with an interesting surprise.
“We were going through them, and we opened one of the cases. And, inside the case was a good buddy of mine’s middle school ID. He had donated all of his VHS years prior, and this person somehow ended up with them,” Hogan says.
Small world. According to Hogan, some movie studios even sent him pieces for his collection. As cool as that, and his collection, may be, some are not mystified by it.
“What I think is really interesting is that my kids are totally just desensitized to the entire thing. Their friends come over, and they’re like, ‘Oh my God.’ They think this is super cool. But my kids, it’s just like, whatever,” he says.
Hogan says he has watched about 90% of his collection. He tries to focus on watching what he has and catching up on what is out in theaters, but the task can be daunting. In the meantime, the collection continues to grow. ♦
