Deditorial #8: Major Retailers Banning Movies?

#8: Major Retailers Banning Movies?

Greetings, and welcome back for yet another addition to the Deditorials. Every once and a while, something will happen in the industry that will make you raise up and take notice of the fact that we as horror movie fans are getting shit upon. Usually, we get dumped on when our movies come to the theater. Our films gets butchered in every sense of the word when it comes to content just so it can be released to a teenage audience or so that non-horror fans won’t raise too much of a stink about something they are not going to watch anyway. But in most cases, we are very lucky when it comes to DVD releases. Most companies and directors know that they can’t show all of their artistic vision on the screen, so they usually have top-notch director’s cuts come out with everything that was missing theatrically. The majority of the big name retailers will either make these available in store or by special order. That is, until recently. Case in point:

“July 12: AFTERMATH DVD banned by U.S. retailers Unearthed Films is reporting that its upcoming DVD of Nacho Cerdà’s short films AFTERMATH and GENESIS have been banned by every video retailer in the country. According to company topper Stephen Biro, “Every retailer so far refuses to carry it after viewing screeners and reading the IMDb listing. It sounds like the only retailers that will sell it are on-line retailers. I myself am a little upset about this turn of events, especially since we were able to get the GUINEA PIG Box Set into Best Buy.

“I also don’t think we will be able to get them into Canada as well,” he continues, “since they have to go through a ratings board and there is no way that anyone is going to give a seal of approval on AFTERMATH. I’m sure everyone in Canada will be able to order these through the mail like everyone else but so far, retailers and distributors have been a little hostile towards us over this DVD.” This is especially ironic, too, as Cerdà’s shorts first won North American notice when they played at Montreal’s Fantasia festival.

Keep an eye on the Unearthed site above for list of on-line retailers that will carry the AFTERMATH/GENESIS disc (which goes on sale August 23), and more info about it. And see FANGORIA #246, on sale August 16, for our review of the disc. —Michael Gingold*1*”

Take a minute to sit back and digest what was just said above. Retailers are refusing to carry it after viewing screeners and reading the IMDB listing? What in the hell kind of madness is this? I let this story stew in me for a couple of days before coming to the conclusion that SOMEBODY had to step up to the plate and find out why this film was being targeted in the manner in which it was. Before I did anything else, I decided to contact Stephen Biro from Unearthed Films. To set the record straight, I am not an employee of Stephen Biro or Unearthed Films. I first found out about Unearthed Films when I heard about the infamous Guinea Pig series. I logged onto their site, and four 3 hours, I was totally blown away! Here was another guy who not only was into the same stuff I was, he was actually making it available to the general public in a very professional and personal way. This man has my dream job! But back to the point, I thank Stephen and Unearthed Films for having the will and determination to bring to us, the genre fans, what it is we want to see. They bring us a product that many are just too afraid to touch! But, I digress. I asked him a few general questions, and here are his responses:

Dedman13: You were able to get the GP series into many retail stores, but what is it that they are finding so objectionable about Aftermath?

Stephen Biro: I don’t know! LOL the film is one of the hardest films ever made and well, I think if anyone regular gets their hands on it, they’re going to freak! Yeah, true horror fans can handle it and so can people who know what it is going into the film but if a normal person buys it and watches it not knowing, their going to lose it and who knows what can really happen. I know if you check out the IMDB reviews, a couple of gore happy reviewers said Nacho should have showed more of the vagina stabbing. The key word is more I think so that might have scared them away.

Dedman13: Do you feel that the stores should follow the same ratings as the movie theaters and sell the movies only to people of that age (ex, PG13 to 13 year old and up, R to 17 and up)?

Stephen Biro: I thought they were doing that already? We release all of our stuff unrated so it should be 18 and up. Aftermath is definitely 18 and up people! Seriously! To be honest, I want only professional horror film watchers to watch Aftermath. I’m not joking. If you get it, don’t show it to people you know shouldn’t watch it.

Dedman13: Not so much a question, but could you speak a little on how this impacts you as a company not being able to have your product on the shelf?

Stephen Biro: This impacts it a lot actually. The making of a DVD costs quite a bit of cash, much less the film rights for both films and the advertising, marketing, menu design, cover artwork, time, effort and money we put behind each presentation. I do have to say, the Aftermath/Genesis DVD is our most complicated and in depth DVD to date. We have a fresh new telecine for both short films and a new 5.1 audio mix and so many special extra’s that it took us over a year to put the whole thing together. When we can get our hands on extra’s and we have source materials to work from we will go the extra mile for our dvd releases and personally, I think Aftermath and Genesis is worth all the time and effort and money we spent on the dvd release.

Stephen goes on to say:

“Not getting this DVD onto the shelves of retailers is going to hurt us pretty bad unless the horror community actually backs us up on this one. Internet sales have really never been huge for us, anywhere between 500 to 2000 for each DVD so the retail stores are really important for us. As a horror fan, I personally wanted to release a couple of films that would get banned but now that the company is actually moving ahead and we have employees to think about and future projects both in production and distribution, it’s imperative that we get sales for all of our dvd’s.

If we can’t be who we are as a company and the ultra splatter fests that we are known for end up just losing us money, then it’s going to end up changing us a bit and I really don’t want to release normal films or even regular horror films since there are so many other companies out there doing that. We might be able to keep chugging out the gore by not offering 5.1 and maybe some of the special features but that would suck as well. LOL

From what I can tell, there are about 100,000 real horror fans in North America. I get this number by the number of sales of all the major horror magazines. It might be higher then this ’cause all horror fans don’t buy every issue and are usually pretty sporadic in their buying habits. But if we can actually get 20% of the horror fans to pick up a copy through the Internet, we can continue to give the horror genre the films we hope they want. Gut busting, in your face atrocities that will make it hard for you to sleep at night. LOL

We are going to have two different versions of the DVD since it’s been hard to get retailers to pick it up due to content. The normal version in a blue dvd slip case with a normal dvd collectors booklet and the normal cover and then we will be having the graphic gore version with the Spanish video release cover on the flip side of the regular cover, a more viscous and naked graphic collectors booklet in a red dvd slip case, sort of a Heaven and Hell version of the Aftermath/Genesis DVD. The Hell version of the dvd is what we wanted it to be in the 1st place but we ran into opposition at every corner so The Hell version of Aftermath will only be available through indie online retailers and the Heaven version will be available through normal distributor outlets like Amazon, CD universe and so on.

I’m working on a list of retailers for our website that will be carrying this DVD for us and it will list where you can get both versions. I think we may still run into problems ’cause the DVD hasn’t even been released yet. Time will tell.
Best,

Stephen S. Biro
Unearthed Films”

So now having heard the story from the man himself, the next logical step was to contact a few major retailers and find out what was going on from their end. If they have any real legit reason why this film is not going to be carried, this was their chance to have a just and equal chance to state their case and reasoning for doing so. I called the first retailer and got passed around to several different individuals before getting passed along to the correct mailbox. The only funny side to this was that everyone was willing to talk to me even after I told them whom I was and that I wrote for Horror-Zone up until the point I mentioned Aftermath. After that, I was shuttled off to voicemail hell, and to this day; I have not received so much as a return phone call from them.

Where it starts to get more interesting is with the second retailer. I went through the same routine with them, being passed off from extension to extension. I also left a voicemail with them; again explain whom I was and what I was asking about. I also explained to them that the story that I was going to be writing was not a butcher piece and that they would have their fair chance to tell their side. I hung up with them not really expecting to hear anything more. Much to my surprise a few hours later, I did receive a phone call from a young lady in their marketing department. We starting talking in general terms about the film, and she assured me that the film was not banned, but would be orderable through their web site. I questioned about several of Unearthed Films other titles, to which she said they had carried in store. I continued on and asked the question that had been bothering me the most. Was the DVD not being carried in store because of content?

Now this is where the story really starts to get interesting. At first, I was fed a story about how when certain other titles by Unearthed Films were carried, they had a certain amount of money that they could spend and they made a purchase for in-store sales. Now, at this current time, they did not have the funds to carry this film in store. Then she goes on to tell me that the distributor watched the film and found some of the content to be questionable. When I inquired as to how many people make that decision, she said one. So I went further and asked if the opinion of one individual who was doing the buying for the company could sway whether or not a DVD would be carried in the store and really just got a rehash of what I wrote above. I then asked her straight out if this was a censorship issue due to the graphic content of the movie. Again, she really did not provide me with an answer. I asked if their had been any protest from anyone about the release of this film, and the answer was no, but several genre fans has been in contact with the company and had voiced their displeasure about the film not being carried. I then went a step further and wanted to know why movies such as ‘Passion of the Christ’ and ‘Saving Private Ryan’ which had received alot of press about the gratuitous violence and gore depicted in them were carried in the store in mass quantities in storefront displays, but we could not get one copy of this in the horror section. She actually sounded offended by the question and asked me how could I even compare the content of the three films to one another. I countered with the fact that the reason they carried ‘Private Ryan’ and ‘Passion’ was because of the fact that they both made well over $100 million at the box office, and names like Tom Hanks, Mel Gibson and Steven Spielberg were posted on the covers. I flat out asked her if their names had been attached to Aftermath or it had made $100 million at the box office would they carry it in stores. Again, I got not real response. I thanked her for her time and told her that if she liked, I would make sure that a copy of this would be emailed to her so that she could see that I was not going to misquote her, but I was told very strongly that she did not want her name or the company named mentioned in the article. She did tell me that I could order the movie in store for special delivery, and that was the end of the conversation.

Later on that evening, I talked with Stephen and let him know what I had found out, and we compared notes. Things were discussed, and I decided to sit on my story out of respect to Stephen and Unearthed Films for the time being. I mean after all, I was told that the movie could be special ordered, and that would end the discussion on the status of the movie being banned. So what has changed? I went to my local retailer today and inquired about special ordering Aftermath today, and much not to my surprise, I was told that the title was a moving that the company would not be carrying. Needless to say, this made me revisit this article and decide that it was time to let the horror public know that unless we speak up with one voice, this will continue to happen. While I understand that this is a title that not everyone should watch or see whether they are a horror fan or not, the determination of can I buy it or not should not be left up to one buyer who may be offended by the product. Nor should the retailer or I have to worry whether or not parent groups will protest because they are carrying it. They did not seem to care when 1000’s of religious people got upset at ‘Passion of the Christ’ or 1000’s of veterans were put off by the violence in ‘Saving Private Ryan’ regardless of historical content or not! So the question becomes what do we do about it? Is there a happy solution for both sides? I think so, and here it is…

Movie theaters have a rating system that is mandated to them by the MPAA. If you are under a certain age (supposedly), you are not allowed admittance into movies that have certain ratings. My solution is to use that same system in these local retailers. Having worked in and shopped in these stores, why do we allow 13, 14, and 15-year-old kids to go into these stores and by the MPAA rated movies when we do not allow them to do so at the theater? I can all ready see what people would say to this idea. It creates too much work for the store employees, it would slow down lines, and the companies would lose business from sales because they can’t sell these movies to the kids. My stance on that is tough shit! What I can buy off of the shelf and what I can watch on the movie screen is all ready being trimmed down because theaters don’t enforce their ratings codes, and stores don’t check age when someone buys something. But my blame goes even further. If the parents of these kids are not held responsible, that nothing will ever be gained. I can’t tell you how many times I have been walking through a store and have seen a kid I KNOW is under age buying an R rated movie. Because the Ratings are not enforced at local retailers, kids can buy them and take them home. The parents get pissed because the kids come home with stuff that the parents don’t like and they go back and chew out the store clerk who was just doing his job. Well, being a parent myself, I think we as group need to look at ourselves. I see the parents dropping the kids off, I see the parents giving the kids the money to go buy the movies and music, and I see the parents just staring off in space in line when they buy it for their kids. Become more involved in knowing what your kids are doing, and this will become less of an issue. Don’t make us suffer because you can’t keep an eye on what your kid does and watches. Companies are scared to carry stuff with some objectionable material because kids MIGHT buy it. I am not a kid, and my money is as green as yours. If you don’t like something, then don’t buy it. But don’t tell me what I can and can’t buy because people can’t control their kids or one idiot in buying thinks something is offensive! If you have any questions or comments, please post them here!

REST IN PEACE!

“Because I am the Dedman, and you’re not!”

*1*: News Article Courtesy of http://www.Fangoria.com, Reported by Michael Gingold.