Jim Wynorski ain't no Krzysztof Kieslowski--though, like the late master of European angst, Wynorski directed a trilogy. Oh, you didn't catch Wynorski's Sins of Desire, Victim of Desire and Virtual Desire? Then you may not know the rest of his work, sequels (Sorority House Massacre 2, Body Chemistry 3, Ghoulies 4) to movies you also never heard of.
So O.K., we sing the low-budget auteur. The 40 or so films Wynorski has made in the past decade have snap and menace and lots of folks with their clothes off. They also have an audience. Recently the director checked his TV Guide and found that 10 of his films were on the cable channels--usually late at night, when the kids are either asleep or stealthily time shifting. Wynorski owns 4 a.m.
His business is direct-to-video, low-budget narrative features that bypass theaters and have their world premiere in your 27,000 local video stores. DTV began in the infancy of video, about a decade ago, and now has its own traditions, stars and fans.
The genres: action, horror and erotic thriller. The icons: muscular folks like Michael Dudikoff and Cynthia Rothrock, curvy sirens like Shannon Whirry and Monique Gabrielle. The plot: some nasty person is spying on and terrorizing some pretty person. The basic props: knives, candles, swimming pools, satin sheets. And everywhere bosoms--bosoms so large and preternaturally firm, thanks to the miracle of plastic surgery, that the question arises: Are they live or are they Mammorex? But for DTV, cleavage has it all over big stunts and pricey morphing tricks. Says Wynorski: "Breasts are the cheapest special effect in our business."
And remember, it is a business. DTV producers give up the prestige of an opening night at Mann's Chinese Theatre and a critical thumbs-up to sell their product straight to the consumer. They don't make blockbuster movies; they make Blockbuster movies. Somebody's got to fill the store shelves, and the major studios simply don't produce enough junk. That's where DTVs come in; they are the drive-in movies of the '90s. Says Michael Weldon, author of Psychotronic Video Guide and the guru of gross-out: "Just because most of these films are bad doesn't mean that others aren't excellent, or at least better than what's in theaters."
Last year some 300 of these low-rent films were released direct-to-video--more than the number made by the Hollywood majors--and they returned about $200 million to the producers. Those numbers wouldn't make a mogul drool; a single studio smash like Aladdin made more in video than all DTVs put together.
Which isn't to say big studios ignore the DTV market. The majors have long seen DTV as a dumping ground for films they thought might flop theatrically; recently New Line demoted Theodore Rex, an excruciatingly whimsical comedy about future cop Whoopi Goldberg and her dinosaur partner, to a video release. Increasingly, though, the majors view DTV as an attractive alternative--a place to release franchise spin-offs, avoid $50 million marketing costs, make a bundle. Sequels to such mainstream fare as Land Before Time, Darkman, Children of the Corn and the Jim Varney Ernest series have been big DTV hits. In 1994, when Disney released The Return of Jafar, a DTV sequel to Aladdin, it expected to move about 2 million copies. Jafar sold close to 11 million, earning Disney around $100 million.