News
This Man Was Arrested For Not Returning His VHS Copy of ‘Freddy Got Fingered’
Our older readers will remember the constant frustration and aggravation with having rent movies from a video store.
I remember being forced to pay $120 after I left my copy of Hellraiser in the car and it melted in the sun. Shit, you couldn’t even buy a copy of a film you loved until it was placed on the used rack 6 months after release. There were also the insane “failure to reward” charges that were, I assure you, very real.
Shit, the late fees were like having a mobster turn you upside down and shake all the coins out of your pockets.
So, ready this story about a man being arrested 14 years after failing to return a copy of Tom Green’s Freddy Got Fingered is not only hilarious, but also vomit inducing.
The story hails out of Concord, North Carolina, where James Meyers was arrested for failing to return a 2002 VHS rental movie, Freddy Got Fingered.
Meyers showed Channel 9, video above, the arrest warrant Wednesday. It shows Meyers is charged with failure to return rental property, a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $200.
Explained the site:
“The rental store in Kannapolis, J&J’s Video, has since closed, but Meyers was still given an April 27 court date for failing to return the gross-out comedy about a cartoonist returning home to live with his parents.
Meyers said he was driving his daughter to school on Concord Parkway Tuesday morning when a Concord police officer pulled him over for a tail-light that was out.
Meyers said the officer ran his license and approximately 25 minutes later asked him to step out of the vehicle.
“The officer said, ‘I don’t know how to tell you this but there’s a warrant out for your arrest from 2002. Apparently you rented the movie “Freddy Got Fingered” and never returned it.’ I thought he was joking,” said Meyers.
Meyers said the officers were very polite and professional. They let him take his daughter to school and go to work as long as he promised to turn himself into the police department later that day.
Meyers said he thought everything would get straightened out at the department. He was surprised when officers arrested him and then took him to the magistrate’s office.
“For the first time I got put in handcuffs,” said Meyers.
Meyers said he vaguely remembers renting the particular movie from the family-owned video store in Kannapolis.
On Wednesday night, Meyers received a call from Green, the writer-director-star of “Freddy” who reached out after Meyers’ friend shared the story with him on Twitter, according to The New York Daily News.
I just saw this and I am struggling to believe it is real. https://t.co/GrTXoUj29X
— Tom Green (@tomgreenlive) March 24, 2016
Green, who is currently on a stand-up comedy tour in Australia, told the Daily News that he is happy to support fans of his film, which was the subject of terrible reviews and currently has an 11 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
The 44-year-old comedian told the Daily News that he could put in a good word with the court or even help out financially as long as the outcome doesn’t involve an outrageous sum.
“If it’s 200 bucks of course I’ll pay it for him, just for the principle of the thing,” Green said.
Meyers told Channel 9 he can only hope the charges get dismissed.
He added that he had been pulled over since the warrant was issued in 2002, but had never heard about the lost tape.
“They’re not focusing on the crimes I think they should be focusing on,” said Meyers. “That hour the cops sat out there with me, the hour and a half I was down in the magistrate’s office could have been spent somewhere else.”
Let’s start with the good news. Lockbox looks far better than its misleading marketing materials suggest, a supernatural horror movie so darkly lit and color graded that you’ll have to squint your way through jump scares. It’s also anchored by reliable genre performers. That’s also about where the good news ends with this rote adaptation of Knifepoint Horror Podcast story “Winthrop.”
The empathetic Carla Gugino gives her all as Ellen, a saint of a woman with boundless patience who takes on life’s hard luck with a kind smile. After giving up her career as a fashion designer to become caretaker for a dying mother, she’s then forced to reinvent herself once more when her caretaker role ends. That catches us up to the events of Lockbox, where Ellen is asked to take in a cousin she hasn’t seen in quite some time who’s dealing with severe PTSD.
Just as Ellen finally establishes a real connection with Winthrop (Lou Taylor Pucci), it’s interrupted by the arrival of peculiar neighbor Vahna (Katharine Isabelle), who spells clear trouble. When Vahna shows up dead, it sets in motion a supernatural battle of possession.
Image Credit: Aura entertainment
Director Daniel Stamm (The Last Exorcism, Prey for the Devil) and screenwriter Justin Yoffe approach Lockbox in the broadest of brushstrokes, dooming it from the start with clunky storytelling and woefully underdeveloped themes of heady topics like PTSD. Winthrop is a character that comes loaded with emotional baggage and trauma that’s piled on throughout his tragic life, but much like its title, his interiority and history are treated like a tightly guarded secret meant to prolong the supernatural mystery.
The problem here, though, is that Lockbox is too sparse to sustain mystery at all, and it instead robs Winthrop of characterization. It winds up trapping the talented Pucci without anywhere to go, toggling between wounded animal and mentally disoriented.
From there, Lockbox bounds through plot developments without any sense of stakes or purpose, peppered by a smattering of haphazard paint-by-numbers jump scares. The only unwavering constant is Ellen’s resolute faith, and Stamm seems to leave it entirely to Gugino to guide confused audiences through this inconsequential story right up until its supernatural climax.
Image Credit: Aura entertainment
To give more credit, Lockbox at least injects an unconventional exorcism here; just don’t expect much in the way of explanation. When the film finally reveals the meaning behind its title, it dangles a fascinating carrot it has zero interest in delivering. More than a severe lack of fleshing out its characters beyond plot drivers or devices, this faith-based flick also seems terrified to offer any worldbuilding whatsoever.
Yoffe’s script stretches the short story beyond its means instead of fleshing it out, and Stamm fills out the gaps with cheap CGI scares and overwrought performances; Isabelle’s Vahna is beyond cartoonish in her villainy. It’s also pretty nonsensical, treating only Ellen’s faith with the utmost sincerity and largely squandering its typically reliable talent. So much so that the final imagery, pure sunkissed saccharine sentimentality, leaves you with the feeling that this horror movie might be better suited as an entry in Chicken Soup for the Soul.
Lockbox releases in select theaters on July 3, 2026.
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