Going to Video Extremes in Cinephile’s Oasis : ‘We have one copy of “Rambo: First Blood Part II,” and I’m surprised we have that many.’

Yvette Tolliver doesn’t own a VCR, so what’s she doing in Vidiots, a video rental store?

“The cappuccino’s only 75 cents,” she says. “That’s unheard of.”

So is shooting off exploding projectiles--something that performance artist Mark Pauline wanted to do when he made an appearance at the Santa Monica store. He was persuaded to hand out posters instead.

“I thought explosions were a little extreme,” says Pat Polinger, who owns the store with Cathy Tauber.

Except for exploding projectiles, hardly anything is ever too extreme at Vidiots, where even the videos are unheard of. About one-third of its 3,000 titles are obscure films, some so off-the-wall they don’t even play the Nuart Theatre. Vidiots calls itself “the alternative video store” and rents more Jim Jarmusch than Sylvester Stallone.

But Vidiots is more than a candy store for cinephiles. In the three years since its inception, according to Polinger, it has evolved into a multimedia headquarters for the avant-garde, a place to have heated discussions over the validity of Jean-Luc Godard’s vision or listen to live music by Rotondi, a metaphysical polka band.

On any given night, the wire racks in the airy (2,400 square feet) store are prowled by customers looking for early Spalding Gray or documentaries on Indian pottery. Vidiots is highbrow enough to sell books on Rainer Werner Fassbinder and high camp enough to host an appearance by movie schlockmeister Russ Meyer.

And since the coffee bar was added in April, Vidiots has become a hangout. “This place is like a mini-Gorky’s--it’s that kind of feel,” said Tolliver, referring to the all-night Russian deli in downtown Los Angeles.

No borscht at Vidiots, but there are robot sculptures by Drew Wayland and plenty of neon. Clerk Mark Cowley said patrons are diverse, but notes a predominance of “vintage clothing and the bowling alley look: black shoes and punk hair.”

The thought that Vidiots might be the latest fad makes Polinger nervous. “I hope people feel comfortable coming in here,” she said, “but I don’t want to get pigeonholed as one of those flash-in-the-pan trendy places. That’s not what we set out to be.”

The concept was first introduced in New York City at New Video, which started out by renting tapes by video artists such as Michael Smith and John Sanborn. In April, 1985, Polinger, who hated her job in international film distribution for MGM, and Tauber, who worked for Frank Zappa, read about New Video in an Esquire magazine item. Eight months later, after research at New Video and San Francisco’s Captain Video and help from their families, they opened Vidiots, hoping to fill the art-video void in Los Angeles.

“You can’t even find ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’ in some video stores,” said Polinger.

To create an esoteric inventory, Polinger and Tauber, both 35 and friends since nursery school, consulted with film historians and customers and got their titles from purveyors such as New Video, which was distributing independent and cult films, and Les Blank, a documentary film maker with his own distribution company.

It wasn’t long before Vidiots became a haven for underground film makers. There were receptions and “video signings” and screenings. Two years ago Polinger and Tauber held a screening for Tom Corboy’s “Rock & Roll Disciples,” which was eventually picked up for distribution by Rhino Video and renamed “Mondo Elvis.”

The clerks at Vidiots all have the sallow look of people who spend a great deal of time in dark rooms watching movies such as “Henry Miller Asleep and Awake” and “Desperate Teen-Age Love Dolls.” All are serious and knowledgeable about film and specialize in various genres.

“Harry leans toward camp, and films like ‘Tender Mercies’ are right up Quintan’s alley,” Cowley said. “Me, I tend to like classic foreign and language films. Truffaut. Godard. I find them more subtextural than American films.”

A hot rental at Vidiots is Gray’s “Swimming to Cambodia,” Cowley said. “The two copies are always out.” But mainstream videos seldom do big business at the store. “We have one copy of ‘Rambo: First Blood Part II,’ ” Cowley said, “and I’m surprised we have that many.”

Occasionally, he said, “a commercial thing will rent well, like ‘Fatal Attraction.’ But it’s hard to know in advance. We got too many ‘Stakeout’ and not enough ‘House of Games.’ ‘The Moderns’ will do well here. ‘Delirious,’ an early Eddie Murphy stand-up routine, was always out until we expanded, and now it’s lost in the shuffle.”

The film IQ of Vidiots clerks is always being tested by customers. “Some guy came in here looking for ‘Warlords of the UFO,’ ” Cowley said, “but I knew it wasn’t on video.”

Despite the coffeehouse ambiance and art-house emphasis, a video store--even in a Santa Monica neighborhood of art galleries--can’t live on esoterica alone. Said Polinger: “If we didn’t carry mainstream titles, we wouldn’t survive.”

To pull people into the store, Vidiots has a free “happy hour” screening every Thursday night at 6. Customers can sit at the coffee bar, drink inexpensive cappuccino, munch butter-crunch popcorn and watch a movie on two color monitors above their heads.

During a recent screening of “Hope and Glory,” a customer wandered into the store, noticed the half-dozen people watching the movie and asked Polinger, “What’s going on here?” When she told him, he smiled in awe and said, “This place is so far out.”

But nobody has launched an exploding projectile.