A deprseeing article in today's New York Times details the probable, inevitable slow death of the niche DVD market. "Niche" DVDs would tend to be the ones that I recommend every Tuesday, the obscure cult items.
The article mostly explores the travails of smaller companies like Synapse Films and Blue Underground. Synpase is responsible for, among other things, the definitive home video presentation of Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator, giving this sleazy low-budgeter the kind of care and attention the major studios usually reserve for big-budget Oscar bait. Blue Underground has gone even further, miraculously unearthing pristine copies of such grindhouse classics as Fight For Your Life (featuring a stunning performance by William Sanderson as the scariest racist cracker in film history) and Emanuel In America (the highlight of which would be a lovely, unclothed redhead, um, pleasuring a horse named Pedro). The mere availability of these films is a godsend; that they look so good and are treated with such respect is amazing.
Titles like these obviously aren't going to reach beyond a certain market; chain stores aren't going to feature huge displays hawking the likes of Lady Terminator. DVD sales are flatlining across the board, and the big stores are introducing both the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD format hoping to increse sales, but of course Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD is a replay of the VHS/Beta conflict from the early days of home video, and consumers are understandably reluctant to invest in either format until one becomes the standard. So as stores decrease shelf space for standard DVDs to make way for formats nobody wants, what do you suppose will be the first things they get rid of--the latest Adam Sandler vehicle or Something Weird's double-bill disc of The Defilers and Scum Of The Earth?
Though the article in The Times focuses on smaller companies, even major labels are facing problems as they release catalog titles. A couple of web sites are suggesting that Best Buy made a conscious decision to not stock Performance on DVD, though it features Mick Jagger and is released by Warner Home Video. And certainly recent trips to Best Buy and other big chain stores resulted in frustration when I tried shopping for two Vincente Minnelli titles I've raved about here, The Clock and Home From The Hill, and I suspect it's simply because these places have no interest in carrying titles nobody has heard of--but how would anybody become familiar with them if they can't find them?
True, online sources like Amazon always stock niche titles. Again, though, that will only sell these discs to people who are already looking for them. Many DVDs tend to be impulse buys, and when you're cruising through the aisles at (the now-defunct) Tower Records and happen to spy the triple-bill of The Touch Of Her Flesh, The Curse Of Her Flesh and The Kiss Of Her Flesh, you might pick it up, simply in a "what the hell?" moment. But you won't be able to do that anymore.
