10 years of magnetic madness celebrated at the church of Analog Sunday
Courtesy Elijah LaFollette
Ten years ago, in the back-room theater of the now-defunct Tapcade on Kansas City’s McGee Street, a bunch of friends and strangers gathered to watch Super Dragon’s Dynamo (1982), a bizarro Taiwanese action film known by an almost dizzying array of alternate titles. What made this screening unique – besides the unlikely subject matter – is that the movie was being projected from a VHS tape.
That first Analog Sunday was the brainchild of two friends – Bryce of Forever Bogus, and artist, graphic designer, and VHS addict Elijah LaFollette, who runs Magnetic Magic Rentals, “a little company dedicated the love, preservation, and distribution of analog media.”
Besides thrifting and trading tapes, uploading weird stuff to the Internet Archive, and programming Analog Sunday, Magnetic Magic partners with independent filmmakers to release their movies and soundtracks on VHS and cassette tape, with releases that include Two Witches (2015), Elliot (2017) and Blackhearts (2017), to name a few.
Courtesy Elijah LaFollette
Back in 2016, however, Analog Sunday was just an extension of a couple of friends watching tapes in their apartments. “Eli and I would gather our most recent VHS finds, stock up on junk food from Big Lots, and spend the entire day watching through our stacks,” recalls Bryce. “Before long, we started inviting friends and acquaintances to join us.”
Over time, those impromptu gatherings outgrew Eli’s one-bedroom apartment, and so Analog Sunday moved into the Tapcade. This was all before the COVID-19 pandemic, when new life was breathed into VHS collecting, and tapes and tape trading became more popular than they had been since the heyday of home video.
Courtesy Elijah LaFollette
The Tapcade closed down in 2020 due to the COVID shutdowns, but well before then Analog Sunday had already moved to the Screenland Armour, where it occupied that venerable institution’s Theater 2. That was where I first attended Analog Sunday, and I can still tell you my first movie: Little Devils: The Birth, a 1993 film directed by George Pavlou (Rawhead Rex) about diminutive monsters who are destroyed by lemon-lime soda.
Theater 2 wouldn’t be Analog Sunday’s final stop, either. After the Screenland added two additional “pocket theatres,” Analog moved into one of those, before relocating to the newly opened Rewind Video and Dive in the basement of the Screenland in 2022.
More recently, Analog Sunday has settled into a new – and hopefully more permanent – home at the Stray Cat Film Center on Broadway. “Analog Sunday’s wild, one-of-a-kind programming has helped to keep the world of analog media alive in Kansas City for 10 years,” says Andrew from Stray Cat. “We’ve been proud to provide Eli and his series with a home at Stray Cat Film Center and to showcase the eclectic and strange.”
For the first Analog Sunday at Stray Cat, Eli screened Absolution (1997), a post-apocalyptic sci-fi flick directed by David DeCoteau and starring Mario Lopez, Jaime Pressly, and an absolutely over-the-top Richard Grieco. That was in January of 2025. Since then, the Stray Cat Film Center has been home to such varied entertainments as Kindergarten Ninja (1994), The Screaming (2000), Blood Gnome (2004), Dollman (1991), and Love Object (2003), to name a few – always projected off VHS tape.
Courtesy Elijah LaFollette
From the start, Analog Sunday has been about more than just having an excuse to show bizarro movies to a room full of like-minded weirdos. Every month, in the lobby of the Stray Cat (and, previously, in the various other places Analog has called home), Magnetic Magic sets up tables full of carefully cultivated tapes, cassettes, and other analog media. And anyone else who has similar things to sell or trade is encouraged to bring them out.
Courtesy Elijah LaFollette
This turns the half-hour or so before every Analog Sunday into a sort of good-natured swap meet – and helps to build a community of tapeheads, movie buffs, and weirdos. “More than anything, I just appreciate the community and having an amazing place to gather and take in crazy flicks,” writes Greg from Nightmare Junkhead, whose first Analog Sunday was watching Turbulence 3: Heavy Metal (2001), a movie with an unlikely connection to the Kansas City area.
“There’s so much I love about Analog Sunday,” says local tattoo artist Ellen St. Michael, who once did a piece of art based on the bizarre erotic thriller Possessed by the Night (1994) after Eli screened it at Analog. “Everyone who goes is so cool and easy to talk to and it’s just awesome to all be in the same space enjoying the same thing, which by a lot of people’s standards is bizarre. Eli picks the best movies and is so inclusive in trying to get everyone together to enjoy filmmaking that would otherwise be lost to a lot of audiences.”
While it is Eli’s curatorial touch that brings many of us back to Analog Sunday time and again – he shows an almost preternatural ability to find some of the wildest, strangest, and most entertaining movies that we might never have heard of otherwise – Ellen St. Michael also highlights another element that sets Analog Sunday apart from an exercise in simple nostalgia: “I love how he brings in current indie filmmakers as well, which is one of the really unique connections he has with SOV movie making going on in the world right now.”
This aspect of Analog Sunday is an outgrowth of the work that Magnetic Magic Rentals has done with independent filmmakers from all over the country and around the world. Besides the unusual stuff that he finds in thrift stores and on Facebook Marketplace, Eli brings the work of contemporary filmmakers who are practicing in the same vein to Analog Sunday and adjacent screenings, where he has hosted films such as Leech (2024), A Corpse for Christmas (2023), Side Effects May Vary (2024), and many others – often with the cast or crew in attendance.
Courtesy Elijah LaFollette
In the decade since it first kicked off with a screening of Super Dragon’s Dynamo in the backroom of the Tapcade, Analog Sunday has amassed a tight-knit community of regulars and ardent fans – and there are also first timers at almost every show. Recent screenings of Dollman and Love Object packed the house at the Stray Cat Film Center.
“I love to see how much the event and our community have grown and changed over the last ten years,” Eli says. “And I still love doing it as much as I did on day one, from meticulously crafting the preshow mixtapes and cover art trading cards to seeing people’s reactions as they leave the theater. The full experience is as much for me as it is our audience, and it’s very rewarding.”
Unlike most moviegoing experiences, Analog Sunday encourages audience interaction, and a screening of a notoriously cheesy flick such as GetEven (1993) is likely to have the audience laughing, jeering, heckling – and sometimes hooting and hollering. “The improvised jokes and audience heckling is part of what makes watching these bizarre flicks with a crowd so fun,” Eli says. “When curating the year’s lineup, I seek out tapes that will draw the crowd in and force them to say something whether out of hilarity or shock.”
The community has also expanded beyond the confines of Analog Sunday, with a Facebook group (KC Analog Addicts) where local analog fiends are encouraged to trade and sell media, arrange times to go thrifting, discuss cleaning moldy tapes, and much more.
Courtesy Elijah LaFollette
This May, Analog Sunday will celebrate its 10th anniversary with a very special screening. So far, Eli is keeping what it is under wraps, but he had this to say as a hint: “To commemorate a decade of Analog, I’m bringing back a crowd (and personal) favorite from our early days that’s sure to be a blast.”
What does the future hold for Magnetic Magic Rentals and Analog Sunday? Only time will tell, but Eli and the rest of the Analog Crew have settled in comfortably at Stray Cat Film Center and hope to keep things running for months to come with plenty more cast and crew events, tape trading, and general VHS madness.
For now, though, we can leave you with a little taste of what Analog Sunday has in store for the second half of 2026, including screenings of Near Death (2004), Demonwarp (1988), and the return of the SOV Summer series, to name a few.
Courtesy Elijah LaFollette
