Hollywood continues to confuse and amaze me with their measured indifference to the “fan-boy” crowd, despite some of the more successful Direct to DVD enterprises over the past few years. The Sci-Fi channel continues to air some of the z-grade features, Charles Band is back to producing films for his Full Moon line, and Sly Stallones’ kid has a pretty successful DVD venture with Grindhouse Releasing, while Troma is still alive and kicking. Several low-budget film companies have managed to take advantage of the Net in order to produce, market, and deliver on several independent projects that really push the envelope and introduce audiences to some truly imaginative works. And despite the alternatives that are out there, it’s still hard for a fan-boy like me to find information on these projects, much less to get excited about and promote these projects for like minded sicko-psycho-monster flick lovers. The websites and magazines devoted to the genre tend to focus most of their articles on the mainstream releases, with consistent updates from twitter accounts of the films stars and production teams. So while you might find some ad for an obscure feature shot on some kids’ home camera in the way back corner of Rue Morgue, you’ll rarely ever actually see these films get some review space in the same magazine. The classic cult features that find themselves put out on DVD might get reviewed in some of these magazines and/or websites, but these are classics from an older generation that had the “benefit” of finding these films in Drive-ins and Grindhouses around the country. It’s a sad state that I can remember the thrills and excitement with seeing Evil Dead and Toxic Avenger while kids today whisper in hushed tones about Two Girls and a Cup.
The truth is that it takes a lot of money to make any sort of feature film, and the only way to really recoup your costs on a project like this is to sell that film to some major studio’s low budget “independent” branch. They’re going to spend the money on advertising, they’re going to put their polished finish to it, and they’re going to market the film in their catalogues for the chain stores to pick up on surplus. If they lose money on the project, they can write it off as a tax liability and recoup their losses from other ventures. In fact, some companies purposefully release these types of films for just that sort of end result. Meantime, you have these smaller companies attempting to promote their films in trade magazines and they sell them through the mail on an individual basis. At $20 a pop, these DVD’s are rarely of the same quality as a mass-marketed production from a Major Studio’s various branches, and they barely scratch the surface of recoupment for production costs. With a close-knit fan base, the only chance to really promote your film comes from the attendance of various conventions and competitions throughout the country and hope that one of your films is seen by a few key people who are either interested in picking up your flick for sale, or that you find enough people to spread the news of your project through “word of mouth”.
Why am I bothering to rant about all of this? I just spent some of the day perusing my favorite horror movie website, where there were pages upon pages of “news” regarding the recent “Twilight” film, news about the return of Sydney Campbell in the latest Scream film currently in pre-production, and several “Sneak Peak” photos of the new Freddy Krueger make-up by way of showing the new Toy Line being produced to coincide with the films release date. I have to pull a search for any low budget film reviews, much less any in-depth news regarding the production or release of these films. Admittedly, so few people even care about these low budget productions that they probably wouldn’t be able to find a profitable business from exploring the news on these features… but it would be nice to see someone make an effort to introduce fans to the newest indie horror flicks out there. I found out about Hatchet through this same website, but they’ve long since been purchased by larger media conglomerates that news of that films’ sequel has been virtually a dry riverbed of apathy as far as their headlines go. With that said:
Go find yourself a copy of Two Front Teeth, a holiday horror flick I absolutely fell in love with last year. It featured Ninja-Nuns, a vampiric army of Elves, a world-wide conspiracy, and even an Easter Were-bunny. It’s a crazy film and everyone should check it out.
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