When Vinegar Syndrome shut the doors on its Aurora shop, The Archive, last September, manager Theresa Mercado figured the break would be brief. Instead, nearly a year passed before the film restoration and distribution company found its new home on Denver’s west side.
“We never anticipated that we would be closed for all intents and purposes for almost a year, which is crazy,” Mercado says. “Moving was a lot for our team and not something that we were necessarily prepared for. There were some hiccups and delays with getting the new space ready, but that’s also just how it goes. Everything takes longer than you think it’s going to take.”
That long pause left Mercado wondering whether patrons would still be there when the lights came back on. “We were afraid that our customers were not going to be here when we reopened, that they had moved on,” she says. “That they had moved on and didn’t believe we’d reopen.”
She needn’t have worried. On July 19, the rebranded Vinegar Syndrome Denver opened in Lakewood’s Lamar Station Plaza to a line of movie lovers waiting outside, proving that Denver’s appetite for strange, obscure, lovingly restored cinema hasn’t gone anywhere.
“Our opening day here in this space was absolutely heart-melting,” Mercado says. “There were probably forty people in line here to buy movies. Our customer base has been amazing. They have stayed with us on this journey. And then, already being in this space, we have got new customers walking in traffic from people frequenting Casa Bonita and the galleries. So we are building a new customer base in addition to our regulars, who we wouldn’t be here without.”
Founded in 2012 by Ryan Emerson and Joe Rubin in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Vinegar Syndrome has become one of the most respected names in cult film preservation. The company takes its name from the chemical process that causes celluloid film to deteriorate, and its catalog includes oddities like Demon Wind, Spookies and Tammy and the T-Rex. Over the past decade, the company has restored more than 500 films, many of which might otherwise have been lost.
“What we do at Vinegar Syndrome is find those lost, obscure genre films that have never had a Blu-ray or 4K release, and then restore and release them,” Mercado says. “We’re putting in the work to make them look better than they ever have, and then putting them in a really special packaging and getting them out there into the world.”
The company’s catalog spans from cult horror to martial arts mayhem to once-lost X-rated titles, with restorations celebrated by institutions like MoMA and the Academy Film Archive. In recent years, Vinegar Syndrome has expanded into retail shops, creating community hubs for collectors. Denver joins Bridgeport, Toronto and soon Pittsburgh as part of the growing chain of stores.
“We don’t sell many non-genre titles, like, for instance, a used copy on DVD of Pretty Woman, which is more mainstream,” Mercado says. “Folks can get that stuff elsewhere. We want a collection in this store of the hard to find, the obscure, the weird, the genre titles, the martial arts movies, the exploitation, the B movies; all the things that there is not a dedicated store in Denver that carries that stuff.”
For Mercado, the store is more than a job. Her love of strange cinema began in childhood, watching late-night horror and TV movies with her father. That early love eventually led her to Vinegar Syndrome and her work as curator of Scream Screen, the quarterly horror series at the Sie FilmCenter.
“He was a huge horror and weird movies guy,” Mercado recalls. “I’m an only child, so a lot of our bonding came through watching weird movies. Anytime Creepshow came on TV or made-for-TV movies, like Dark Knight of the Scarecrow, he would make me watch them with him, which as a little girl seemed pretty lame, but as the adult I became, I’m so grateful to him for exposing me to genre cinema.”
Colorado’s relationship with Vinegar Syndrome began in 2020, when the company set up a distribution hub in Aurora. The space doubled as The Archive, a retail shop where collectors could browse boutique Blu-rays and rare VHS tapes.
When the business outgrew its Colorado warehouse and consolidated distribution back to Connecticut, the Aurora store was left without a home. That forced Mercado and her small team to relocate to a temporary location while they waited to move into their new location.
“As I was looking for different spaces, this shopping center, Lamar Station Plaza, had a few vacancies, and I saw the traffic around Casa Bonita,” Mercado says. “People, both tourists and locals, were so excited, so I said, ‘I would just love to be close to Casa Bonita,’ and here we are. But this area is also the 40 West Arts District, which is a pretty bustling area with galleries, art spaces, First Friday art walks and marketplaces in the summer. It just made sense to be here.”
Inside, the store features Vinegar Syndrome’s own releases — four to six new restorations a month — alongside its partner labels, like American Genre Film Archive, Shudder and Utopia. The shelves also carry Criterion, Arrow, Grindhouse Releasing, A24 and a carefully curated selection of used Blu-rays, DVDs, VHS tapes and even laserdiscs.
“We put out something fresh every day we’re open,” Mercado says. “So on our social media, we’ll post, ‘Hey, here’s a stack of new stuff.’ We try to really keep it from getting stagnant.”
Vinegar Syndrome Denver will also continue hosting filmmaker events and signings, just as it did in Aurora. The opening featured horror director Joe Begos, and this week, cult filmmaker Cory McAbee will visit for a signing in the store on Friday, September 19, ahead of a 35mm screening of his film, The American Astronaut, at the Sie FilmCenter on Saturday, September 20.
“We did a lot of events in Aurora and are looking forward to continuing that tradition here,” Mercado says. “We’re really excited to bring the people whose films you see on this wall to the store.”
Now settled in Lakewood, Mercado views the store as more than a reopening. It’s a home base for Denver’s cult-film diehards, a stop for curious visitors spilling out of Casa Bonita and a gateway to filmmaker events and hard-to-find titles you won’t see on streaming.
“Sure, streaming’s great, and it’s a nice supplement to collecting, but when you have physical media in your house, you own that movie,” Mercado stresses. “You can put it on whenever you want. With streaming, there’s no guarantee of what’s on there, and the quality is not always great. So for so many people who are nostalgic about movies or new films as well, nothing beats collecting physical media. You have it at your fingertips anytime you want it in the highest quality that you can get it.”