Playboy, Penthouse Do Battle in Soft-Porn Wars
Home video insiders are calling it the porn wars. Over the past 10 years, Playboy Home Video has carved out a niche in the adult video market with the softest of soft-core porn, selling videos of female nudes that are as antiseptic and inoffensive as possible.
Then a few months ago, Penthouse barged in with a similar line.
The difference is that Penthouse doesn’t play it quite as safe. Just as the pictures in its magazine are more suggestive than those in Playboy, so are its videos racier--such as “Fast Cars/Fantasy Women” and “Satin and Lace.”
“There’s room in the market for something a little more sexy and daring,” said Stuart Hirsch, president of A-Vision Entertainment, which distributes the Penthouse line. “The boundaries have been moved a bit. For instance, you see ads for those 900 numbers on TV all the time. But there’s a line between what Penthouse offers and hard-core pornography. Penthouse doesn’t cross that line.”
There’s a large audience, primarily male, for these videos--which are mostly 45-50 minute programs selling for $20 each. Penthouse and Playboy currently account for 10 spots on the Billboard magazine Top 40 video sales chart.
Jeff Jenest, Playboy’s senior vice president and general manager, said that his company ships from 80,000 to 100,000 units of its titles in that price range, such as “Playboy Sexy Lingerie III” and “Playboy 1991 Video Playmate Calendar.” (Penthouse wouldn’t disclose its figures.)
Seeking to widen its audience, the adult soft-core business is slowly branching out to the couples market. Playboy has been marketing a line of co-ed tapes, which are relationship-oriented and somewhat racy--among them “Sensual Pleasures of Oriental Massage.” Jenest said that the company usually ships about 50,000 units of these 60- to 65-minute programs, which cost $30.
Hirsch said that Penthouse will enter the couples market this year with a tape based on the magazine’s famed Forum Letters column.
The soft-core market has changed since Playboy began earnestly pushing its titles in the mid-1980s. While the big discount stores and many video retailers still won’t carry them, a new distribution channel has been developed in the last few years: the record-video chain outlets, such as Tower and Musicland.
“About 70-75% of our business is done through these stores,” Jenest said. “They are great at displaying and marketing this kind of product. And they’re not skittish about censorship issues since they deal with it regularly with music product.”
Music Videos: Queen’s “We Will Rock You”--footage of a 1982 Montreal concert--is just out, along with the Pet Shop Boys’ “Videography,” a collection of the British duo’s videos, some never seen in the U.S.
Gloria Estefan’s concert video, “Into the Light World Tour,” recently arrived in stores, as did Ned’s Atomic Dustbin’s “Nothing is Cool.”
SMV is re-releasing the “Neil Diamond: Love at the Greek” on Tuesday at $15. But that company’s eagerly awaited “The Search for Robert Johnson,” a British TV documentary never seen in the United States, has been postponed again (it was announced for early January) and there is no release date.
Next month’s big releases will be Motley Crue’s “Decade of Decadence,” a compilation of 17 videos, due out March 24, and Michael Bolton’s “Soul and Passion,” which hits the market that same day.
Other long-form videos on the way: Jimi Hendrix (March 31), Prince (April 14), ZZ Top (April 14), Bonnie Raitt (April 21) and the Beastie Boys (May 5).
What’s New on Video: These movies have recently been released:
“Dogfight” (Warner, $93). A soldier (River Phoenix) has a volatile encounter with a feisty woman (Lili Taylor) who is his date, unknowingly, at a cruel, “ugliest date” party. Critically acclaimed, limited release.
“Defenseless” (LIVE, $93). In this implausible mystery, Barbara Hershey plays a lawyer who tries to clear herself of charges of murdering a boyfriend with porno business ties. Sam Shepard co-stars as a cop.
“Suburban Commando” (Columbia TriStar, no price). Mainly for wrestling fans, this action comedy--another “E.T.” rip-off--offers Hulk Hogan as a kindly alien hiding out with a suburban family (Shelley Duvall and Christopher Lloyd) until evil aliens come after him.
“Mystery Date” (Orion, $93). Frothy, teen-oriented comedy adventure about a young couple (Ethan Hawke and Teri Polo) whose date, through mistaken identity, turns into a cops-and-crooks chase.
“Cry, the Beloved Country” (Monterey, $70). Once considered hard-hitting, this 1951, black-and-white British film, the first to deal with apartheid, now seems amateurish and dated. Co-starring Sidney Poitier and set in South Africa, it chronicles the racial tensions created by the murder of a white liberal by a young black.
Coming on Video: “Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare” (March 4), “Barton Fink” (March 5), “Boyz N the Hood” (March 11), “Dead Again” (March 12), “The Fisher King” (March 25), “Shattered” (March 25), “Stepping Out” (March 26), “Billy Bathgate” (April 1), “At Play in the Fields of the Lord” (April 8) “Black Robe” (April 8), “Necessary Roughness” (April 9), “The Commitments” (April 9), “The Butcher’s Wife” (May 13).
