‘Total Recall’ Will Aim for Christmas Market

“Total Recall,” the summer’s biggest-grossing action movie, will be out on cassette Nov. 1--just five months after its theatrical release. Priced at $24.99, the sci-fi adventure film, which stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, is being rushed to the home-video market to make it available to shoppers during the Christmas gift-buying season.

The announcement from LIVE Home Video was somewhat of a surprise considering that the fall schedule for low-priced, sales-market titles is already full and includes blockbusters such as “Peter Pan,” “Pretty Woman” and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”

Some industry skeptics are saying that many video retailers won’t have enough money to stock up on all these titles.

But Stuart Snyder, vice president of marketing at LIVE, disputes that notion. “Retailers aren’t stupid,” he said. “They’ve learned how to set up their budgets to buy what they need, particularly since they have a lot of time to plan. The fall movies were all announced early enough for them to make the necessary plans.”

Besides, he noted, these particular films can coexist more easily than other possible competitors because they’re aimed at different audiences. “Peter Pan,” “All Dogs Go to Heaven,” “The Jetsons” and “Ninja Turtles” are for kids, he said, while “Total Recall” is targeted for young men and “Pretty Woman” has much stronger appeal to females.

“Total Recall” is facing another obstacle in aiming for the sales rather than rental market. Movies priced in the $20-$25 range are generally family films, or at least are low in sex and violence. The R-rated “Total Recall”--criticized by some for excessive violence--doesn’t seem to fit these qualifications. But Snyder said that the company was convinced otherwise.

“According to our research, people indicated a strong interest in buying ‘Total Recall’--strong enough for us to price it for that market,” he explained. “Also, the research shows it does have high repeatability. Some people will want to own it so they can watch it many times.”

But mass merchants such as Target and K mart, who move most of the cassettes in the under-$25 category, usually carry family-oriented videos and tend to shy away from anything R-rated. Warner’s “Lethal Weapon 2,” R-rated for sex and violence, suffered earlier this year in the mass-merchant market.

LIVE did its homework there too, Snyder said: “Before we decided on pricing ‘Total Recall’ for the sell-through market, we conferred with mass merchants and various big outlets that might have a problem stocking an R-rated movie. We were assured there would be no problem. They look at the situation title by title. This is the kind of R-rated movie they would carry.”

Discussions about placing a commercial on the “Total Recall” cassettes are taking place but a final decision has not yet been reached, Snyder said.

MARKETING CLASSICS: Many classic movies are languishing in home-video vaults because it doesn’t pay to release them. When released at a retail price of around $20, the profit margins are so slim that there is generally little or no room to pay for a marketing campaign.

MCA/Universal, however, came up with a relatively low-cost plan to boost sales of “Harvey,” a 1950 comedy starring James Stewart, which sells for $19.95. Label executive Jane Ayer dreamed up the idea of adding a six-minute introduction to the tape, featuring a narrative by Stewart and rare stills from the movie.

“It didn’t cost that much to do the intro,” Ayer said. “We were able to sell so many more copies that the expense was worth it. What that intro did was give the media a hook--something to write about and something for TV features. They did interviews with James Stewart, who was a big help in marketing the movie.”

Ayer wouldn’t reveal figures but insisted that, because of the introduction, “Harvey” sales are much higher than they would have been otherwise. “Harvey,” a May release, made it to the Top Five of the Billboard magazine sales chart--a remarkable achievement for a 40-year-old movie.

“Without the intro, it would have been perceived as just another old movie and it would have gotten lost in the shuffle,” she said.

Adding narratives may be new to home video but, for some time, they’ve been used as a marketing tool for laser-disc movies. Stewart did something similar a few years ago for the laser-disc version “Winchester ’73.”

Ayer said that, for now, MCA/Universal has no plans to release any other movies with such an intro. “This wouldn’t work for just any old movie,” she said. “You need the right movie and the right star.”