DVD and B movies
Walt Crawford writes about the appeal of bargain DVD “megapacks” and what makes them possible—namely, the combination of movies that are in the public domain or can be licensed cheaply, and minimal production costs. Before the advent of DVD, we had a cheap mono VCR and a few videotapes, plus a collection of MST3K taped from television. We resisted buying a DVD player for a long time, because most of the time we’d rather watch a bad movie on MST3K than any of the stuff that Hollywood puts out these days. When we finally succumbed, however, we realized that we had started developing a massive collection of DVDs. These are mainly things that were never available on VHS, like foreign movies, underappreciated movies, movies of questionable quality, and old TV series. As Walt writes:
They’re great cheap fodder for film studies, understanding the culture, and—well—making fun of the bad’uns.
CD has already done this for less mainstream music. And what about books? The (paper) format is already perfect—I expect electronic formats will make rare books and special collections more accessible, but I don’t want to do my reading for pleasure on a screen. The big bookstores don’t typically stock things that they don’t expect to sell, but libraries keep them. Amazon and other online booksellers can stock all kinds of bizarre titles, and online used booksellers have made tracking down out-of-print titles much easier.
Truly, life is getting better for those who appreciate the cultural fringes.
November 26, 2006 at 2:18 pm
Studios will do anything to make money. It’s interesting that these bargain dvds aren’t using available through normal retailer channels, instead you can only find them in big box stores like Walmart.
I always wonder when I see these movies is who buys this stuff? As a retailer I’ve been asked about these types of titles in the past, and I look them up on IMDB and they have barely any info on them, so you know they are lower than low on the scale of customer demand, but they most likely seen it in a bargin bin somewhere.