If film marketing seems frantic and excessive perhaps it's because there's hundreds of millions of dollars at stake. Thankfully for the studios, as films shorten their theatrical runs and increase their revenues from ancillary markets, VHS, PSP, and DVD rentals and sales offer new routes to fiscal solvency in the daunting world of film accounting.

First, there are the Titans, movies like The Incredibles that do it all at the box office and overseas and then, for kicks, add another $100 million in sales and rentals.

Next, the Underachiever Made Good. After the Sunset, which had a bankable director, Pierce Brosnan, and Salma Hayek as collateral for its $58 million dollar budget, disappointed its handlers and dropped quickly from the multiplexes after grossing only $28 million. Solution: rush it to DVD and coin an extra $31 million in two months of rentals.

Then comes the Sequel. A theatrical release creates lots of good publicity but if the publicity is already in place, no need for the theatrical-distributor-cum-middle-man. Disney is a big fan of this method.

Finally, purity is reached: the Direct-to-DVD movie that ignores the class and pizzazz of its theatrical kin and cashes in its rental chips early. Perhaps a producer was looking for a small gamble, or an independent auteur sent her work lovingly on the festival circuit where it met with mild enthusiasm. These movies are not headed to the Loews in Time Square or the arthouse on Houston but to the Blockbuster in Dubuque.

DVDs have given rentals higher quality and a touch more respectability. Intelligent directors like Steven Soderbergh, with one eye on the post-modern death of fine-art/base-art dichotomies, talk of releasing well-financed, artistically challenging movies directly to DVD. All well and good, but that's not where the spirit of Direct-to-DVD movies lies. In 1999, as the market was taking off, Ice-T starred in at least 8 direct-to-video productions. Confident, apparently, that the money was there, he produced half of them. The bulk of the original titles being released direct-to-DVD involve various government agents jumping away from various explosions, viruses, demons, and deadly women.

Like the B- and C-movies that flushed out the double features of the 1950s, these films have a specific audience which is not overly concerned with artistic merit or mainstream respectability. And so, for the most part, neither are the producers: they are as unprepossessing as their viewers and the generic titles they give their movies; they are the working class of Hollywood; they labor out of the spotlight, making movies that will never be seriously promoted but fill a very specific niche.

Since these films get little to no press 90ways has stepped into the lurch. The people making direct-to-DVD movies vary in their priorities, their passion, and their talent. Some titles are terrible and offer us all the opportunity to laugh at their terribleness and feel better about ourselves. Others are unexpectedly good and offer the delights of unknown actors and filmmakers operating free of expectations. We want to find both the diamonds and the unburnable hunk of rock in the coal mine of your local video store. We are interested only in those movies that have, as their United States premiere, a spot on the New Releases shelf. No contenders who failed in limited release, no animated sequels, no foreign films that will show up only in the theaters as a remake. Original movies. Straight to video. Quite possibly terrible. Today we begin:

The gift of Direct-To-Video films is that renters choose them with little or no expectation. And it shouldn't be ignored that many find a strange and shameful joy (shadenfreude?) in films 'so bad they're good'. This runs a cultural parallel to the experience of fast food (I'm thinking of McDonalds post-Super Size Me). In spite of our better judgment, we willingly indulge in what we know will be egregious material. I figured, while I was reveling in the egregious, I'd make that D-T-V a horror pic. After all, only porn is more excessive than horror and if you're going to have a burger you may as well have a shake too.

Shallow Ground, a horror flick about death and revenge in a backwater town, is lovingly bound together with tears and holes (puns intended). The title sequences sets tone uniquely by adding a bit of literate trickery to some traditional genre antics. In a sequence of constantly changing focal distances one can make out images suggesting word play: hooks intersect with eyes, worms writhe in holes and knives rest in gashes. The constantly changing visual terrain establishes the reality of the film as one of ambiguity, uncertainty, and latex.

Open-minded as I might seem, I can't ignore the poor traits of the film. Think of them like burnt fries in the happy meal: love them or leave them, they're part of the experience. Suspense in Shallow Ground does move at an acceptable pace. Foregrounding techniques, such as dissonant sounds and sweeping compositional intros, are constantly cuing you into material that you will learn has no bearing on anything at all. Ironically, this misplaced agitation slowly morphs into strain, causing one to question if this will be the time the tension pays off. Perhaps this is because the viewer has a great deal of access (egregious access, you might say) to unsettling visual material that eventually becomes comfortable to see. This is not wholly inappropriate, horror films do need to up the ante. The movie is trying to gross us out but one can't help noticing when restraint is lacking and restraint is the high road in the world of cheap movies; cheap horror films especially.

Like comedies, horror films tend to rely on a kind of punch line. The horror punch line serves to expose the underlying logic of the terror: e.g. why are people rising from the grave? Answer: they're looking for revenge! As you may have guessed, the quality of this punch line often dictates your feelings about the quality of the film. I suppose our expectations are never really as high as when we hear a bad horror punch line. Then the expression "I could write a better movie if I were drunk" is often intoned.

Though formally problematic, Shallow Ground does fulfill its agreement with the video renter. It's gory, it's about decomposition, and it will make you to cringe. Also, there are bare breasts. I suppose, when we really look at it, that's a fully stocked happy meal. With a shake. Provided that's the experience you're willing to have. And if it is, I'll be writing about Blood Angels next: they're the white-trash hoes of the vampire world and they're working their way up!

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