Catalogs Promise the Good, the Bad and the Obscure

Home video’s first decade was defined by the industry-sponsored slogan, “Watch what you want, when you want.”

These days, however, video store shelves are dominated by the latest new releases. It’s becoming harder and harder for the true film buff to--in the words of one chain’s ad--go home happy.

Securing a copy of “Good Will Hunting”? No problem. But documentaries, foreign films, vintage silent films, serials, B-movie obscurities or live TV recordings are much harder to find. It’s not some “X-Files” conspiracy to thwart aficionados, just bottom-line business. But check it out: Out-of-the-mainstream videos are out there, you just have to know where to get them.

Mail-order companies fulfill video’s promise, allowing customers to rent or purchase the buried treasures and guilty pleasures perhaps not stocked at their local video store.

That is, in fact, how some companies got their start. “This is what I like, and no one else carried it,” said Sue Braviak, who started Science Fiction Continuum in New Jersey nearly a decade ago. SFC carries close to 1,000 science-fiction, horror, Hong Kong action and Japanese animation films and “whatever seems to be fun that year,” she noted, adding: “Our business is one that the chains don’t know exists.”

Ron Bonk, owner of the B-Movie Theater Web site, said: “There are a lot of companies that sell 50,000 movies, but they’re selling mainstream stuff that you can get at Tower. But you can’t go down there and find my stuff.”

Considering that his stuff includes “Killing Spree,” “Creep” and “Vampire Lust,” this may be just as well . . . and exactly the point.

Browsing the mail-order video catalogs or scrolling through the Web sites is nirvana for offbeat film and vintage TV lovers, especially those who live in small towns where there is no access to an art-house or repertory theater. Home Movie Festival, based in Scranton, Pa., was founded in 1984 when video “was just coming of age,” said company President Dan Jury, and area video stores simply stocked “films that played at the mall theaters six months before. . . . If a foreign film or documentary played in New York, and your video store owner didn’t buy it, there was no way you were going to see it.”

The company’s mandate became to offer anyone in America essentially the same opportunity at video selection as those who lived in major cities.

Quentin Tarantino may have educated himself about movies while working as a South Bay video store clerk, but film buffs need not leave home to steep themselves in a century of cinema history--the good, the bad and the ugly. “Used intelligently, a video library becomes a means of film education,” said Milos Stehlik, founder of Chicago-based Facets Video.

“It gives customers access to the world’s film heritage. No matter where you live, you can systematically watch films by one director or from a certain country.”

According to New York-based Alexander & Associates, consultants for the home entertainment industry, video mail-order enjoyed a market share of 9.3%--up a half-point from the previous year--during last year’s fourth quarter, the holiday gift-giving season.

It is a consistent business, not so much hit-driven as it is choice-driven. Companies with names such as Movies Unlimited, Video Yesteryear, Critics’ Choice and Something Weird give customers a good indication of what they can expect. Illustrative is that while “Spice World” recently topped Billboard’s video sales charts, at Something Weird, the hot title is “Teaserama,” Irving Klaw’s 1955 burlesque epic featuring the elusive pinup Bettie Page.

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The box-office hits or commercial studio releases are not where mail-order’s bread is buttered. Movies Unlimited, for example, sold thousands of more copies of Universal Studios Home Video’s collection of old “Ma and Pa Kettle” comedies than it did of “Jurassic Park,” which was released on video at about the same time.

“We’ll sell ‘Titanic,’ ” said Nancy Hamlin, vice president of marketing for Critics’ Choice. “That’s commodity product. But we specialize in selling titles not widely available at retail.”

Southern California residents are blessed with video retailers who cater to their film-savvy clients. Tower Records and Video has long been a champion of Japanese animation. Vidiots in Santa Monica is big on cult films. But one thing mail-order video companies can offer is scope and breadth of selection. The online movie store Reel.com offers 85,000 VHS titles for sale. The Movies Unlimited and Facets Video catalogs boast an estimated 30,000-plus titles. Critics’ Choice’s “Big Book of Movies” lists about 10,000 videos.

One way for companies to distinguish themselves is by offering exclusives. Critics’ Choice, for example, offers 50 titles exclusively, ranging from the silent 1927 melodrama “Sunrise,” starring Janet Gaynor, to “Mrs. Mike,” starring Dick Powell, to the TV miniseries “Rich Man, Poor Man.”

Other companies focus on a specific niche. Video Yesteryear, founded in 1978, “does for old movies what its [direct mail-audio counterpart] Radio Yesteryear did for old radio,” said David Goldin, the company’s founder and president. “My background and training is in the history of cinema. That is my interest.

“To market contemporary films required contracts with the studios, something that required large mounds of capital and front money, and that’s not the way I wanted to go. Silent and classic sound films were easier to obtain.”

Customer feedback and fortuitous discoveries have shaped the catalogs of several companies. “When we started, we offered a little bit of everything,” Hamlin said of Critics’ Choice. “There wasn’t a preconception of what the catalogs would become. It was more like, ‘What can we get our hands on?’ Our business evolved by customers requesting classic films they couldn’t find at retail.”

Something Weird and Sinister Cinema both nostalgically recapture the golden age of drive-in movies with catalogs brimming with low-budget horror films and other castoffs from the rural drive-in circuits, and compilations of previews and intermission fillers. “If we don’t do it, they’ll just disappear,” said Something Weird creative director Lisa Petrucci.

Sinister Cinema has rounded up a collection of 250 B-movie westerns. Characteristically, the catalog introduction on the company’s Web site is as enthusiastic about the “horrendously awful” (“The Irish Gringo,” “Lightning Bill”) as it is about films starring such beloved cowboy legends as Bob Steele, Ken Maynard and Buck Jones.

The catalogs themselves are a valuable resource as to what is available on video and can be irresistible as entertainment themselves. For example, the encyclopedic 20th anniversary edition of the Movies Unlimited catalog includes Top 10 lists of favorite films from a diverse array of celebrities, including Roger Ebert, Maureen O’Hara and Jerry Lewis, who, by the way, claims “An Affair to Remember” as his No. 1 pick.

In recent years, noted Stehlik, the industry has braced for “digital this and digital that,” technology that would revolutionize film transmission and distribution. “It has yet to come,” he said.

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Your Guide to the Little-Known

Here is a list of some of the top video mail-order sources. A more complete source list can be found in Leonard Maltin’s Movie & Video Guide.

B-Movie Theater, https://www.b-movie.com

Critics’ Choice Video, (800) 367-7765, https://www.vcatalogcc video.com

Facets Video, (800) 331-6197

Home Film Festival, (800) 258-3456, https://www.homefilmfestival.com

Movies Unlimited, (800) 466-8437, https://www.moviesunlimited.com Reel.cvom, https://www.reel.com

Science Fiction Continuum, (800) 232-6002, https://www.scificontinuum/sfvideo

Sinister Cinema, (503) 773-6860, https://www.cinemaweb.com/sinister

Something Weird, (206) 351-3759, https://www.somethingweird.com

Video Yesteryear, (800) 243-0987, https://www.yesteryear.com