Trust Your Market Place - 15th Anniversary Post

My 15th Anniversary Blog

Trust Your Market Place

Well that makes 15 years of the NUTS4R2 blog.

As regular readers will know, I don’t usually do an actual review on anniversary blogs or posts ending with a 00 number. So this time I thought I’d talk about something which really annoys me about the decisions, presumably economically minded decisions, in the world of the boutique media labels.

We’re in a golden age of physical media right now and collectors and modest film fans alike have never had it so good. And this isn’t an attack on the boutique labels and, as you’ll know from my recent 2700th post (right here), I love what these labels are doing, but, seriously, they need Paddington Bear to come along  and give some of them a long hard stare when it comes to releasing only partial series’ of films…

I was in Fopp records about 8 weeks ago when I saw that the 88 Films label had put out a Blu Ray of Erotic Ghost Story, which had somehow escaped my attention. I know nothing about the film but I’m always happy to learn about any cinematic history which involves supernatural shenanigans combined with naked, sexy ghost ladies. All well and good but, literally a week or two after I’d bought it, 88 Films announced a box set (already on the shelves now for a few weeks) of the Erotic Ghost Story Trilogy. What can I say? If I’m learning about sexy gals n’ ghosts then I really need to stretch that degree to a masters but… why the heck did they put out a single edition when a box set was in the works? To punish people who bought the single edition and make them double dip… again?

Similarly, let’s look at Arrow films (who are great but also do seem to be all about money for old rope these days)… I was fortunate enough to grab their box set of all four Psycho films pretty much the week it was released. Lucky me then because, literally a couple of weeks after, it was already unavailable and Arrow had reissued it as a Psycho Sequels box set, excluding the first movie. What the heck? Who would want that without the first film? And sticking with Arrow, they’re about to make me double dip with the ‘badly described because none of these films feature the same characters’ Sergio Leone Dollars Trilogy. But here’s the thing, instead of releasing it as a box set as you might imagine would be the best format to release these films, they’re stupidly releasing it as three single editions, one per month. I mean, what the heck? And don’t get me started on their missing film from their Coffin Joe box set... I mean, I’d almost rather they didn’t issue any of them if they’re going to have one missing.

Eureka Masters Of Cinema are another much respected label doing some bizarre ‘odds and ends’ releases too. I got hold of their Mr. Vampire release one year and, the very next year, they released a Mr. Vampire sequel set of the other ones closely (but still somewhat loosely) related to that movie. I’ll get to why I think they and 88 Films have been doing this stuff to us in a minute but… let me just reel off another couple of examples for you…

I’ve been saying to my friends (and anyone who will listen) that, with all these gazillions of Shaw Brothers releases seeing the light of day on Blu Ray these last few years, somebody should put out a box set of one of the jewels in their crown, the four Monkey movies based on the Chinese tome Journey To The West (best known over here in the UK from the Japanese TV show adaptation called Monkey, in the 1980s). It seems to me that a box set like this would be like a licence to print money. Monkey money. Well, the Australian label Impact has just released three Shaw Brothers movies into the wild, similarly themed but in single editions and… one of them is the first Monkey movie. I mean… what? Surely they must realise their target audience for these will be happy to pay out for all four in a nice slipcase? What the heck?

Let’s turn our attention to Severin Films now. Severin, for a while now, have been putting out huge boxed editions covering subjects like Al Adamson, Ray Dennis Steckler, Folk Horror, Black Emanuelle and even Psychotic Women. And for years now, I’ve been wondering why they or someone else hasn’t put a Russ Meyer box set out onto the market, which would surely sell well? And Severin would, of course, be the perfect fit for those films… except… a few months ago, Severin put out Meyer’s Vixens, SuperVixens and Beneath The Valley Of The UltraVixens as single editions… with a couple more single editions following a month or so after that. What’s going on? Surely they must know a box set would get even more bucks in for them?*

One last example before I carry on... Curzon cinemas have their own Blu Ray label that releases ‘comprehensive’ box sets covering directors (their words, not mine) and lovely things they are too. Why then do their box sets for Wim Wenders and Lars Von Trier both have at least one film missing? What’s the point of that then?

Okay then...here’s what I think is going on in some of these cases (or slipcases). Single editions before boxed versions such as Mr. Vampire, Erotic Ghost Story and The Monkey Goes West may well be testing the waters to see if anyone wants to buy them. But come on, trust your market place people! The kinds of customers who buy this stuff, even it’s a blind buy, known their movies and have done their research. They are as likely to splash out on a boxed edition as they are a single edition. And in the case of someone like me, less likely to buy the single editions. For example, I’ve never bought Blu Ray editions of The Exorcist or Trancers movies because I can’t find them all in the same boxed venue. I dont want to have to do the work tracking down different distributor’s versions around the world because legal can’t get all the films in one place. So deal me out, there are a gazillion other films already taking up my time and valuable shelf space.

And if it is a case of testing the financial waters on a release before repackaging it with the sequels... sure, some people will buy it but, there are just as likely going to be people who won’t because they’re optimistic a box set will be coming down the line at some future point. In which case, you’re just not getting an accurate reading on how well the full monty would do on the shopfloor (real or virtual).

So yeah, my message for my 15th Anniversary post is... please labels, trust your customers a little. We want the movies you’re putting out, for sure, but we want them all in one place, properly curated. Definitive editions are definitely the way to go with these things. Anything else just leads to customer frustration.

And for those of you who have been reading this blog over the years... thanks very much. Normal service will return again tomorrow.


* Since writing this last week, I’ve listened to one of their always excellent Severin Podcasts which explained that, due to their growing relationship with the rights holder and the rigid art direction and production of these coming from the estate, the Russ Meyer titles are not something they can get all the licences for, at present. So that lets them off the hook as far as those are concerned and let’s just be happy with what they managed to achieve.