Perkinsun Dzees

(Killer Shrews II is coming? Yippie!!!)


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/03/movies/03lidz.html?
(need to be registered with site to access article)

NY Times

Attack of the $1 DVD's

By FRANZ LIDZ

July 3, 2005

THE scientist in the 1959 horror film "The Killer Shrews" is not only mad but also cheap. Monstrously cheap. To solve the problem of world hunger, he tries to breed humans down to half their normal size. Rather than increase the food supply, he reasons, he will decrease demand. But his penny-pinching plans go awry, naturally, or unnaturally, creating a pack of giant, munchies-afflicted shrews.

"The shrews were actually hound dogs with fangs stuck to their heads and hairy rugs on their backs," recalled James Best, who portrayed the hero, Thorne Sherman. Mr. Best's love interest was played by Ingrid Goude, a former Miss Universe who was, he said "very well-endowed but not very well-paid; she got about 15 cents." Mr. Best, now 78, reckoned that that was about 35 cents less than the budget of the entire movie.

"The Killer Shrews," the masterwork of Ray Kellogg, is one of hundreds of cheap old films now available as ridiculously cheap new DVD's. Because of lapsed or improperly registered copyrights, even some very watchable movies - among them, Howard Hawks's "His Girl Friday," Marlon Brando's "One-Eyed Jacks" and Francis Ford Coppola's "Dementia 13" - are now in the public domain and can be sold by anyone.

While overall DVD sales are robust - last year retailers sold $15.5 billion in discs - the low-end market is positively booming. Recently, 19 of the 50 top sellers on the Nielsen VideoScan national sales charts were budget DVD's. "The prices are irresistible," said Gary Delfiner, whose Global Multimedia Corporation offers 60 film, cartoon and television titles with prices ranging from 99 cents to $1.99.

Global, based in Philadelphia, is one of a half-dozen major players in what's called the dollar DVD industry. Since starting up in September, the company said, it has shipped more than two million discs.

Sheathed in cardboard slipcases, they are distributed to some 15,000 99-cent stores around the country, as well as thousands of supermarkets, drugstore chains and, soon, lingerie shops. "An intimate apparel store is a great place to sell old romances," said Mr. Delfiner, whose catalog includes the 1939 Irene Dunne-Charles Boyer weepie "Love Affair" and the 1954 tearjerker "The Last Time I Saw Paris," with Elizabeth Taylor and Van Johnson.

How does Mr. Delfiner define his audience? "Anybody who's breathing and owns a DVD player," he said. "Nobody ever walked into a store looking to buy my product. It's the ultimate impulse buy."

Still, he has his standards. "I won't produce any title that's too obscure," Mr. Delfiner said. "Or any title that's not family-friendly." Or any title without sound. "Silent movies are for aficionados," he added. "They don't appeal to the masses, and I'm in a mass business."

The chief attraction of cheap DVD's is that they're, well, cheap. "On average, a family of four spends around $40 to see a movie at the neighborhood multiplex," said Don Rosenberg, publisher of Home Media Retailing magazine. "For that, you could buy 40 budget DVD's."

The very term "budget DVD" makes Mike Omansky bristle. "It brings up the image of schlock, which our product is not," said Mr. Omansky, the chief executive of Digiview Productions, a New Jersey company that supplies Wal-Mart with classics like "Bucket of Blood" and "The Beast of Yucca Flats." "McDonald's puts out a high-quality, low-priced hamburger. Our burgers are high quality, too, without the frills."

Of course, for a buck you don't expect frills. And mostly you don't get any: the vast majority of dollar DVD's start playing the moment they're loaded. Only the best-made low-end discs have cast biographies, on-screen menus and chapter stops. And only Global's have an option for Spanish subtitles.

"We commissioned the translations," Mr. Delfiner said. "There's a huge Hispanic market for this stuff."

In the cutthroat world of cut-rate DVD's, different labels often release the same titles. "Print and sound quality varies according to the source material," said Bill Lee, division manager for Westlake Entertainment in Los Angeles. Mr. Lee stocks 13 early Alfred Hitchcock films, from "Easy Virtue" (1928) to "Jamaica Inn" (1939). "We look for pristine masters," he said.

Global ensures that its masters are pristine by buying them from companies that specialize in film preservation. The digital videotapes are compressed and encoded into digital linear tapes in a manufacturing plant called a replicator. The data are then downloaded into a computer. Dollar DVD's vary according to "the quality of the master and the quality control of the replication house," Mr. Delfiner said.

"Replication house" sounds like something from one of Global's horror flicks, and there are indeed horrors to be found among the replicants. Some reissues of the original "House on Haunted Hill" are haunted by ghost images as well as ghosts. A dollar edition of "Fangs of the Living Dead" - the 1969 picture that hammered the final nail into the cinematic coffin of the bomb-shelter-era bombshell Anita Ekberg - is so murky that the film seems to have been shot through the bottom of an inkwell.

"You see a lot of quick-buck artists," said Brian Austin, president of PC Treasures of Detroit.

With so many companies happily cranking out the same old stuff, Digiview is phasing out of public domain and phasing into public humiliation; it recently licensed some of the mangiest mutts ever to have escaped Hollywood's kennels.

Digiview actually paid for the rights to "American Vampire," a kind of "Beach Blanket Beowulf" starring Carmen Electra of "Baywatch." Whether anyone will pay for the DVD is unclear. "Just because it's a dollar doesn't mean people want it," said Mr. Rosenberg, of Home Media Retailing. Indeed, a nickel might be too much for a DVD of Raymond Burr in "Bride of the Gorilla."

Mr. Rosenberg said the novelty of dollar DVD's would soon fade. "There's a great danger of overdistribution," he said. "This is a business without much room for profit - either in the making or the selling. A year from now, most cheap DVD's will be gone from stores." One "Killer Shrew" alumnus hopes to cash in while the cheapness lasts. "This craze could build an audience for the sequel I'm writing," said Mr. Best, who played the stuttering Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane on "The Dukes of Hazzard."

He has nearly finished a first draft of "Killer Shrews II." The plot is fiendishly simple. "I return to Shrew Island to rescue a bunch of teenagers," he reported. "A new mad scientist has turned herself into a human shrew that not only chews, but swims."

So what's the projected budget?

"This one's a little more expensive," Mr. Best said. "I could make it for, say, 75 cents."

marty888

Has anyone found any of these $1 DVDs that is actually watchable? The few I've ever seen have been pretty bad as far as picture quality.

sracer

THE LAST MAN ON EARTH that was available at the $1 spot in Target is definitely worth it. (I'll venture to say that everyone who bought it will think so too)

HORROR EXPRESS (Walmart), AGENCY, and SUDDENLY (Walgreen) had acceptable quality.

battlingbutler

The dollar Tom & Jerry DVD is pretty good.

gutwrencher

There are a few buck discs that are decent....but I'm still in the habit of avoiding the cheap bastards. I go to the $ store for toilet paper maybe...but not dvds.

I'm just never really around where the cheap ones are so maybe thats why, I dunno. I have a few though.

Cameron

I have bought quiet a few of these and have found many to be very watchable. Some scratches and muffled sound at points, but for a dollar its cheaper than renting something. I love old movies and I think that helps. Here are some good threads that were going in bargains that may give you some idea of Picture quality, and another article.


$1.00 DVDs at Wal-Mart B&M YMMV

Target $1 DVDs (incl. The Stranger - a GREAT Orson Welles film w/ Edward G. Robinson)

Dollar Tree dollar dvd's getting even better double features



Here is another article posted in one of these threads

December 16, 2004
Who'd Buy the Public Domain for a Dollar?
Posted by Ernest Miller

Apparently a lot of bargain shoppers, according to USA Today (Hot off the shelf: DVDs for a dollar):

According to Videoscan, the national point-of-sale tracking service, last week, 19 of the 50 top-selling DVDs were dollar DVDs from Genius Products, a leading supplier of budget videos. Compilation discs of Popeye cartoons and The Lucy Show episodes came in at No. 17 and No. 18, right below the Star Wars Trilogy and Dawn of the Dead [I suppose they mean the recent remake, not the original, which is also in the public domain].
And trip on this:
"We get letters all the time from people, thanking us for making this great stuff available at such a low price," says Howard Balaban of Genius Products. "It's mind-boggling."
Gosh, I wonder if there would be a market to have these works delivered straight to your TiVo via a BitTorrent hybrid?
Most dollar-DVD titles are in the public domain, which means the copyright has expired and has not been renewed. That makes them cheap to put on DVD.

The dollar-DVD market arrives after a steady decline in DVD prices across the board. Hot new theatrical releases routinely sell for less than $15 their first week of release, about half what they were going for when the format was launched in 1997. The drop-in prices for older films is even more pronounced: Wal-Mart has huge "dump bins" in its high-traffic aisles filled with DVDs selling for $5.88.

Given the cost of printing the box, stamping the DVD and shipping them all over the US, is there really that much of a price difference between public domain and the older films in the "dump bins"? Searching through those bins for something you are interested in takes time. How much would people pay to have them readily available at the press of a button on the remote?

rasalas

99.9 percent aren't watchable. This article doesn't do enough to inform readers of that aspect. In fact, it does the opposite with bogus lines like, "Global ensures that its masters are pristine by buying them from companies that specialize in film preservation." Riiiight. Then it goes on to describe the manufacturing process of these DVDs as if it's unique, but it really applies to every DVD made.

This article is merely the result of an aggressive pitch from the PR firm that represents Global. And it reads like it.

Cameron

new article from home Media Retailing

Run on Budget DVDs
Author: JESSICA WOLF
[email protected]
Posted: July 11, 2005

The budget DVD market is booming. When BCI Eclipse first went to a trade show for surplus goods suppliers in Las Vegas four years ago, it was one of just three companies pitching dollar DVDs.

At last year’s show, there were 22, said Greg Glass, SVP of BCI.

As the number of budget-DVD suppliers has mushroomed, so has the market it serves. Though the original target for $1-priced discs was dollar stores, the bargain-basement-priced DVD is popping up everywhere — in drugstores, supermarkets … even mass merchants such as Target Stores and Wal-Mart.

Budget providers are bullish about the business, even though they’re vying for the same shelf space — and, quite often, with the same royalty-free, public-domain content.

Gary Delfiner, co-founder of Global Multimedia Corp., said while there’s more competition in what he calls the “value business,” the market is far from saturated. In fact, he said he’s planning on doubling his sales force this year.

Genius Products CEO Trevor Drinkwater entered the value game strong at the beginning of 2004. He said many of the newer players may be getting into public-domain sales in the hopes of turning a quick profit and trying to keep costs low by sourcing in product from China. But, he said, when margins are counted in pennies, it’s critical to have a strong operations system to keep retailers happy.

“There’s a pretty high level of service required in this market, and there’s a lot of potential to lose your margin,” he said.

Retailers come in and out of budget, BCI’s Glass said, adding that “a lot of it is dependent on the studio releases.”

With such tight margins on product, retailers always are working out ways to maximize floor space and cost per square foot for budget titles.

Late last year, Target Stores created “The $1 Spot.” The front-of-store locations, which were rolled out in time for the holidays, were packed with $1 goods, including an ample supply of DVDs. By mid-December, 19 of VideoScan’s 50 top-selling DVDs were from Genius, which at the time was furnishing Target’s $1 discs. Among the top sellers were compilation DVDs of “Popeye” cartoons and “The Lucy Show” episodes.

The budget DVD craze most likely originated several years ago, when Wal-Mart began setting up giant dump bins of $5 catalog product, Glass said.

It wasn’t a new idea, but prior to Wal-Mart’s strategy, these bins were transitory — they were used to get rid of a lot of product quickly and then removed.

Now, Wal-Mart also carries $1 product, mostly through Digiview Productions, formed in January 2004. The company’s Web site says it regularly adds new titles to its catalog, much of it from the public domain.

Budget suppliers tend to work closely with their retail accounts. It’s a no-return business, and with everyone offering essentially the same content, it’s important to forge strong relationships, Delfiner said.

The dollar DVD is an incremental sale, not a replacement for another DVD purchase, he noted.

“Nobody price-shops this product,” he said. “It’s complete impulse, like buying a candy bar. You see a Kit-Kat, and if you want one, you buy it. You don’t go to a store down the street and see if they have a better price on it.”

The Future

One thing on every budget DVD supplier’s mind is the finite amount of royalty-free titles in existence — maybe 1,500 to 2,000 total. Copyright laws and licensing practices over the past few decades have slowed the pace of new content dropping into the public domain. As a result, suppliers said, they need to get creative.

BCI began adding exclusive licensed content with public domain content to differentiate itself, Glass said.

Delfiner would like to convince content providers that there may be budget life for titles after they’ve juiced out their rental and sellthrough runs.

Genius has a few ideas on how the budget game might feed the company’s growth as a front-line independent supplier. It’s getting into fitness for the first time this year, in part through the company’s acquisition of the Wellspring library. There might be potential to one day put out a 15-minute workout on a $1 disc and capture consumer attention for a brand, inspiring a future sale of a higher-priced product, Drinkwater said.

Budget titles may seem counterintuitive to the next-generation market, but suppliers said they are readying for that, too.

After all, they’ve already taken this content and remastered it for DVD. Once demand goes up and cost comes down, high-definition is the next step.

“This is not a business that is going out of business,” Delfiner said. “This is a business that is going to increasingly broaden as we penetrate more and more of the retail base.”

calhoun07

I never saw one that I wanted to buy, but I know that the arrival of the budget dollar DVDs is the second to the last nail in the coffin of VHS. Wal Mart ridding their stores of the inferior format will be the final nail.

Alan Smithee

How much does it cost to produce these things? Even using old video masters, it seems like they wouldn't make very much off of these selling at $1 each. I've picked up a number of them since they came out but have only watched a few- some are decent enough for the price while others are embarrassingly awful. Many of them not only come from 16mm prints in bad condition, but the video masters often have dropouts and other analog video artifacts, then on top of that some of the discs are encoded poorly so you get digital artifacts too.

ernestrp

I picked up some .25 cent Dvd's awhile ago at Target (usually, 1.00 with 75% off). They may not be great transfers but I found them comparable to other PD titles sold by other companys for alot more.

Gizmo

"McDonald's puts out a high-quality, low-priced hamburger. Our burgers are high quality, too, without the frills."

What the fuck? Mcdonalds has high-quality burgers? He is comparing his DVDs to McDonalds hamburgers?

calhoun07

I would never call McDonald's high quality food. I wonder what the author of the article considers low quality food? Maggot poop?

snorlaxnut

I am nuts about dollar DVDs! Take a look at the post I made here:

http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthr...=403780&page=5

Most of the DVDs I bought so far this year are the $1 titles!

Sure, most of the titles have real lousy transfers, some couldn't even play on my player! But some have good transfers, like Street Fighter, Katherine, and To All My Friends On Shore (a good Bill Cosby movie). TV show DVDs are o.k., but they take out the theme songs. Cartoons are the worst, but they have some cartoons I don't see on any other set, like Moonbird, and All This and Rabbit Stew.

marty888

Easy to see why you love 'em so much!

calhoun07

Even if I found something I was interested in on a dollar DVD, I would hold out hope that somebody some where would get a hold of the original source and restore it and make a better DVD.

PopcornTreeCt

My friends complain that when I buy from the $5 bin at Wal-Mart I'm doing it just to pump up my collection. That is of course a lie but if I were go out and buy a lot of these titles well then that's what I'd be doing.

Vision of Love

I have never seen these. I've only seen the $5 ones.

Are these sold in Canada?

darkhawk

The only $1 dvd I've ever bought was Royal Wedding from Target, because it said remastered on the box. I compared it to others like Madacy and Alpha and the Target version was the best.