Film Sack
Film Sack 661: Direct to Video Roundtable
Time to talk about the lost art of direct to video releases. The good ones, few they may be, and the terrible ones. And where did this method of distro go? We get into it!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
- Duration:
- 37m
- Broadcast on:
- 21 Jul 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
Well, we got a minute and I'm going to buy that truck I've been wanting. Wait, don't you need, like, weeks to shop for a car? I don't. Carvana makes it super convenient to find exactly what I want. Hold up. You're buying a car on your phone? Isn't that more of a laptop thing? You can shop wherever you want. I like to do my research. Read reviews, compare models. Plus, Carvana has thousands of options. How'd you decide on that truck? Because I like it. Oh, that is a great reason. Go to Carvana.com to sell your car the convenient way. We all belong outside. We're drawn to nature, whether it's the recorded sounds of the ocean we doze off to, or the succulents that adorn our homes. Nature makes all of our lives, well, better. Despite all this, we often go about our busy lives removed from it. But the outdoors is closer than we realize. With all trails, you can discover trails nearby and explore confidently. With offline maps and on-trail navigation. Download the free app today and make the most of your summer with all trails. Welcome, friends, to a special episode of Film Sack. It's time for us once again to have somebody out of town and therefore create a round table episode about a subject in the film business. Yes, that's right. I'm Scott Johnson. Let's see who we have here. Let's do an order that's different than usual because we don't have to do the same thing as always. So I'm going to say it's Brian Ibbit here. Hi, Brian Ibbit. Hi, be kind, rewind. The other Brian Dunaway, he's here as well. Oh, hi. That did make sense. It makes it sound like there's two to Brian Dunaways. That's weird. There's two. There's two of me. Randy Jordan, of course. Hi, I'm Randy. I am an underfunded sequel. Wonderful. Yeah, I know what happened to those. You're funded. Yeah, and it's also a good mention because today that is our topic. We are going to round table all about the idea of direct video. And you might be thinking to yourselves, weren't those all just trash and garbage and there's never been anything of worth? No. Let's find out. Let's find out together that that's just not the case. It's just not true. There's some decent stuff that happened that way. So let's get into it. How do you want to start us, Randy? Because you did a little bit of digging on this. Yeah, it's a phrase that we often say, but over the time that we've been doing film sack together, it has changed because basically direct to video has ended. That's not a thing anymore. Where when we started film sack, that was a still thing. Direct to video is a genre, right? It is a time frame. The time frame starts in the mid 80s and it ends in the mid 2010s around 20, around 30 years later, there's no more need to call something direct to video. Because of streaming. So we have this, we have this like encapsulation, but what's in there? What are the movies that we refer to when we say that? Oh, that was a direct to video. By the way, is it always a slur? I think we have always kind of used it as such. We definitely use it as a slur, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. I don't know about slur, but a pejorative, I suppose, is the way to look at it. But if I told you guys, if I told you Starship Troopers, Heroes of the Federation was a direct to the DVD movie, you might believe me. Yeah. How about American Pie Presents Bandcamp, the second episode of American Pie? What's crazy about it is though, much of that movie is not the whole cast returning, but there are some people from the cast returning. What makes these people not want to go straight to theaters? What are the circumstances that condemns a follow-up to a video rack? I don't know why they ever did this. What was the problem? Well, I think it's interesting because I think during this time when we're having video cassettes, people were... So today, you just have a lot of really good content on streaming services, and so there's a way to distribute your made content to everybody everywhere. Back in those days, what you would either have is like cable or, you know, over the air, but the way to really market directly to the home market was through video cassette tapes. And so that's what you would do. You'd be like, "Okay, this idea we have to capture a little bit more cash with a little low risk, low budget is how you would do it." There were tests in the water, mostly, I think, because I don't think it ever became... It wasn't ever like a huge boom for any of these guys, but it was some money. Like, especially Disney really capitalized on it because a lot of those things were being purchased and brought home because that's how Disney was distributing their content at the time, other than their TV shows and stuff, but that's how they did it a lot. Do you guys have, like, at the top of my head, I have two movies. One in particular, I'll just focus on the one that I think is a great example of something that deserved... Not only full theatrical, but not the title of being, you know, direct to video. For me, that's snow piercer. This is toward the end of that era of why you would even do direct to video, but 2013 is the year it came out. That movie's amazing. And if you saw it today, you wouldn't go, "Oh, but that wasn't a movie theater." It's like, you just assume it was, if you didn't know any better. And to me, that's a weird one. Other things get cult classic status for a reason, and we can go through some of those, but snow piercer belongs in your DVD collection of things you really like, not shit that was an afterthought, or couldn't get sounding or whatever. Do you guys have one like that? I feel like they fall into two broad categories, right? One is underfunded sequels, and two is good film made by perfectly good filmmakers, but it isn't attached to a major studio. It doesn't have the prestige going in to really find distribution. And snow piercer is like the best of those. Boonjang Ko, just an unknown filmmaker at the time. Right? Well, known, but not so much to us, I guess. He had a lot going on in Korea, but yeah, it's another one that I was thinking of the other day. It's funny, because I went through the list that Randy provided, and I'm thinking, oh, yeah, never saw that, never saw that, never saw that. Oh, snow piercer, that's really good. Unfortunately, it's about the only one. I mean, I've seen Boondock Saints is good. I've seen obviously, and I saw the two stitch movies that we talked about Disney doing this and living on this practice for such a long time, but there were so other few ones because of that stigma. There was always attached to it. It's like, oh, it's not very good. It's a direct to video kind of thing. I might as well just avoid it. Right. It's funny what Donaway said too, because Donaway basically explained this really well. The world we live in now, that became a prestige thing. We don't call it direct to video anymore, but we have this direct to streaming services and other things like that. And we no longer go, oh, well, if that was any good, that'd be in a theater. Instead, we're like, nah, that was a really good movie, and it premiered here. And half the time they get some limited release so they can be on the Oscar list. But these are prestige high value films. Yeah, I mean, the brand new Beverly Hills Cop Axyleth thing is technically direct to video, right? Didn't go to theaters first, and they didn't even do that thing where they release it one night in theaters so that they can potentially throw it into the Oscar contention list. Like they do with some things where it's made for streaming, but we're going to give it a theatrical release day so that we can get Oscar potential for it. Yeah, the day just feels like it's a lot, not I want to call it an art, but it's a lost form of distribution. Yeah. Because lost medium to this led to a lost art, right? Right. But I'm sure most of them are, I mean, let's not kid ourselves, most of these. There's a reason, well, there's a reason for most of these to go right to. Yeah. So there was, so as a consumer of a lot of this straight to video kind of content during the early 90s, it was a way for me to, I didn't have direct TV. And so this was, and I liked movies more than I liked TV shows, and really the only way to really consume that was a little more limited. But I could just go, you know, pick up Lady Dragon with Cynthia Rothrock, which kind of, I think some of this kind of came from because watching a lot of those action movies from the early 90s and all through, because they were doing pretty good. I mean, you got, you got showdown in Little Tokyo. I don't know how you haven't seen that here yet, but we need to, though. That's the top one. Yeah, Brandon Lee. Yeah. I would watch the shit out of that. Yeah. Yeah. And so we had a, there was a very, very big moment in time where a straight to video was the thing, and action was at the top of that. If you liked the National Lampoon style kind of stuff, that was also kind of heavy hitter there, too, because those are all low budget films that can, you know, spark interest. Do you think it's because like a production company or a studio is like, all right, we knew American Pie would hit in theaters because we're bringing back the rated are, you know, Raunchy films from the 80s. There's an appetite for this, but you can't expect sequels to do that. Well, I don't know what the decision making process is because that movie made money in theaters. So why, why not the follow up, you know? I don't know. Well, and there's two, there's two ways to go with the sequels, and the cynical way is the way we usually go. And it's because movies used to get prestige by being in theaters, and then if someone made the prophecy to, you know, even though it started Christopher Walken, right? Right. Right. It went straight to video. You go, oh, well, then it must not be good because it doesn't get the prestige of the theater. And maybe it's actually not that bad, right? Like we, the project of film sack is to ask the question, was that actually as bad as we've heard? And then we go watch a straight to video movie, like trick our treat, and we're all, oh, this has some redeeming qualities. Like it's hard to believe that's a straight to video. That is a surprising one. Yeah. Yeah. I thought I saw it in theaters, but I've got that all wrong in my head. I'm sure. I'm thinking of something else. Was that the one with Gene Simmons or am I thinking of the shit? No, that's the one with the Gene Simmons one was. Yeah. That was where he was a DJ. The center of the floater? No. Gene Simmons was a, in the movie, he played a DJ or something at a rock station. Interesting. Oh, it's kind of fun. This sounds familiar. This sounds familiar. I can't even call it. That's when we watched for it. We also watched that one. We watched trick our treat, but then I think that one might be called trick or treat. Is that the one where all the action is going on? He's just kind of the DJ narrator for the whole thing. I think so. Oh, yeah. It is trick or treat. You're right. They just, it's just the normal way of saying it. 86 trick or treat. And he played, uh, let's see. Gene Simmons, where is he? Nuke. DJ's name was Nuke. Oh, that's right. Now I'm recalling this. Wow. That's my memory. Yeah, that's a bad movie. We saw this in high school because we were so excited because Ozzy Osborn also made a cameo playing himself. Right. Yeah. On a TV show. Oh, you, okay. So I watched this for soundography. Ham and I watch movies occasionally that have a big music component to him because, obviously, the podcast is about music and he made me watch this thing. And, uh, the great, you know, the great, uh, uh, uh, match game staple Elaine Joyce. Yeah. Yeah, we need to see it here at some point. Maybe not too soon because you just did, but, uh, it's been long enough. It's been, uh, a couple of years. So I could watch it. You know, we could, we could certainly tie it in for Halloween this year. Sure. So trick, trick or treat. Trick or treat. We gotta get them. We gotta catch them all. Trick are being the much better of the two. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is hilariously not in theaters, whereas trick or treat was. And so it's like, you know, my plenty of movies make bad movies make it to theaters. Right? That's not an unusual thing to say. But it's always a little surprising when you find a gem in the stuff that came straight home. But I don't know that I ever went to a, uh, a video store and went and sought that stuff out. I feel like done away might have, but I never did. Yeah. Well, you know, I worked at Blockbuster at the beginning of the direct to video kind of market started kind of becoming. Uh, before then, you couldn't have a direct to video because before then, uh, in the 80s, for the most part, video tastes for $80 when they come out. So it would take a while for them to ever make themselves available for, you know, consumer markets. Um, but yeah, a straight to video stuff was, it was good for me, especially with horror stuff because the horror you can usually make pretty inexpensively and probably the biggest part is getting the marketing out there. And we do a straight to video is this kind of like, we make a deal with someplace like Blockbuster or someplace and you, you, you'd get it there. That's how you do it. It's just enough money to make it profitable. Just people trying to squeeze a little bit of money out of a market that was available. It just wouldn't have it now. Just nobody's going to go media. Don't we? Did you come up with a absolute favorite? Like this is the one straight to video movie for you. Well, funny that we should say that because I thought it was fatherhood, but then I was corrected last week. That's the one with Patrick Swayze, but actually it did get a theatrical release. And so if you had asked me before, then I would have said that. So I'm going to fall back to tremors aftershocks, which is part two tremors because I was so huge into the series. That's probably some of that whole, that whole run that just went straight to video. Yeah, we've sacked one and five. Yeah. We jumped to part five, but the whole like two, three and four are also, they're all straight to video. Yeah. Right. Yep. Yeah. Best of my memory. Do you guys remember Croc's new groove? Do you remember that? Disney was doing a lot of really fun stuff. I liked to lie. So they had what we're called and they mentioned it here. Yeah. The Croc thing is hilarious, but Disney was doing a lot of these things where they were doing these, what these articles called Midquels, which was like what happened in this space span of time. And now we're going to send that straight to video like Lion King one and a half. I think was one of the most popular ones of those. And Lion King too. Lion King was the king of straight to video crap and it's the king of cynical stuff. Like Disney is just getting the band back together, putting a bunch of content in a row on a tape, you know, right? There's not, it's, I'm not saying it's bad, but it's not good. It's just cynical. But sometimes they throw all your stuff at it and you think it's, you think it's going to be the full deal. Like in Croc's new groove, the reason I liked it is they brought really the entire voice acting crew back. It's got Patrick Warbright. There's your main character, Eartha Kit, David Spade, John Goodman, Wendy Malek, Brian of it. Oh, John Mahoney, you know, like it is a really great voice cast and it's just like, she was just the example. That's true. It's just the example. She's just come up a lot lately for. She has come up a lot lately. Yes. Oh gosh. Take care of yourself, Wendy Malek. Yeah, no kidding. But the, the movie, so I think the story is good. The voices, voices are great. It's funny, but the animation is shit. So this is one thing where I think the Disney stuff sets itself, not maybe apart in a good way, but their feet, their follow-up directed video stuff is often big savings on the animation front. They just go cheap and there's less frames. It looks kind of ugly. It's more Saturday morning level, you know, quality or whatever. Clearly it made a money. They did well with it. It was a smart, it was a smart formula. What you do is you pick your B tier characters, would your B pay scale voice actors, and you pursue the story through that way. And it makes a pretty big impact. Like the Lion King one and a half was this essentially the Lion King, but told through Tomona Pumba's eyes. So you know, you didn't have to stretch too far for the story. And you probably already have a lot of assets already there. So it was a smart, it was a smart, was what it was. They also sequelized everything, like literally everything. There's a Mulan two, there's a Pocahontas two. There's a Cinderella three with a time travel apparently, but I need to see. Time traveling one thing? Yeah. Wow. It's like one good one though. It knows an extremely goofy movie, the goofy movies were good in an extremely goofy movie. I think some of these are really good. And I think Lilo and Stitch two should have been a tentpole. Yes. Yeah. Lilo and Stitch two is amazing. But it's another example of really poor animation though. It's not in anywhere near as good as the first one quality wise. And that throws me. No, can't do that. You know? It's just funny that they know early enough to say, all right, let's do sequel when let's not make it a theatrical release, we're going to just, you know, go cheap on the animation. And it turns out to be really good. And you think maybe in hindsight, they'd say, you know what, all right, let's maybe consider theatrical uses for some of these sequels, and they didn't until just recently. I mean, this year we're getting, by gosh, we're getting Malana two, we're getting. Yes. Something that's got like a prequel, is it a 101 Dalmatians or something? It was a 99 down, they did already to the 102. They did the 101 boy. You want to talk about getting confused 101 Dalmatians, 102 Dalmatians, 101 Dalmatians two, it gets confusing. I don't need any more Dalmatians. Maybe it's not that. Oh, Mufasa. That's the one we're getting the prequel explaining how Mufasa got his, his group. But inside out to Zootopia two, how did it scar, we're going to find out that? Yeah. I mean, the, the one area you don't see this happen as much, there were some, but early, but the, the Pixar stuff usually, you know, sequels would make it to theaters, like proper sequels. Right. You might have a little extra thing here or there. The Detroit stories of the world or whatever. But then there's some examples of where they should have, like maybe cars too should have been. Or planes for that matter. Or planes. Oh, planes. I shouldn't complain. I shouldn't bitch about it. I didn't like cars. So I never saw any of the sequels or spin offs. So, but maybe those are good and I just don't want to give them a chance because. Well, and for, before we get emails, planes is not, uh, Pixar planes is pure Disney. Oh, is it? Okay. Right. Yeah. I mean, they obviously were capitalizing on vehicles, have eyeballs and they talk. Oh God, I thought, I thought it was much more of a connection than that. So there's not even, it's not even in the cars, cinematic universe kind of thing. It is. No, it is definitely in the same universe. Is it? I don't. Yes. I remember he. Yeah. It won't point time. Mater is flying around. I was forced to be flying. I was forced to watch all these movies because of the year of the birth of my child. But, um, I wanted to, I wanted to ask you guys a really fun question. Uh, can, can you do you know instantly when I say there is an actor who is the king of direct to video movies? Do you know who, who that is? Um, Taylor Thomas. No, I don't, I don't know. You know what? I like that. Yes. That's a strong one. That's a good, that's a strong, that's a really good guess. Yeah. Um, it's got to be some kind of, um, oh, you know what? Can I say, um, uh, Steven Segal, no, no, although that's not bad because this is recent like his second act right has been all direct to video, but this actor is not only in the most I found by a lot, but there was a time for this actor where every movie he was in for like 10, 11 years went direct to video at like he could not get onto the theater screen to save his life. Is it? Was it Bruce Willis? Is it Bruce Willis? Oh, yeah, I was not all this dude on the stuff that he released in his later years. I am talking about Dolph Lundgren. Really? Dolph Lundgren is credited with 37 direct to video movies. We've seen one of them. Everyone else is great. Yeah. We've seen it. Retrograde. Yeah. Retrograde. Retrograde. Retrograde. We're going to make it to the theater because I was actually wondering about that. Hell no. It barely made it to video. Yeah. That thing sucked. It had been further from the desired. That is, by the way, near the end of the decade for 10 years. His movies, The Shooters, Silent Trigger, The Peacemaker, The Minion, Sweepers, Bridge of Dragon, Stormcatcher. These are all direct to video and it's amazing that he kept doing it, that he kept coming back for it. Wow. Money, baby. Yeah, money. You guys arrived. Not a lot of money, but some money. And I love his current stage. I love Dolph Lundgren. Lunggren. Old Dolph Lundgren is my favorite. You are pretty grisly. Yeah. All those guys. He's him, Arnold, and not Stallone, because Stallone looks like a puffy tomato. I don't know. Something's wrong with that. Yeah. It doesn't look right on him, but those other guys, Van Dan maybe a little bit, but mostly I guess it's Lunggren and Stallone, or sorry, Arnold looked just so cool on their own age. And I don't know if it's because they didn't do any work. They both looked like normal, like just old guys that are big. And I like that. I respect that. But I like the idea of Schwarzenegger. He does his own facial reconstruction. Like he's in the bathroom with a knife. Nah. Yeah. That's it. It just seems like what he would do. It doesn't look it. He doesn't need a doctor. Is there a thing today? So, so let's just shift the camera a little bit and say if today this was still a thing, I think you would see more direct video and if there was no streaming, let's just take us out of the current internet streaming age from it. Yeah. Right. But the MCU was still a thriving property thing. I think you would see all of these sequels though. A lot of them would end up that way in the way that they make a TV today's way of doing this is let's make a TV series about WandaVision and right or she, Hulk or whatever, right? In a way, those things are their version of that now and they do with their animation as well. They make a series. And you get the one offs too, like rule of by night, you know, that would have been that would have been a direct to video, a direct to tape, direct to VHS. Yeah. Because you can see how that one would not be a thing you'd see in theaters because that just wouldn't track well, but it would do, it would be well thought of as a home release in the Snowpiercer way, right? So, yeah. I think you're big use like your sequels to things like Iron Man, Thor, Captain America. Those would be your, your movie tent poles, but then yeah, I think you would get coming to video guardians of the galaxy. You know, you'd get those little side, the Eternals, those would be because they're untested properties and they don't want to risk a big theatrical budget when, you know, they could do that with a little, a smaller budget, have to go direct to video and, and not have as much risk. Right. I'm a little disappointed that, I don't know, it's a little bit of a mixed bag. There's more scripted TV shows than there ever been, but I don't feel like the same has happened for movies. And that kind of makes me sad. And yeah, I just wish there was more like, what do you think we could see that? Maybe that can happen on the two B's of the world or Pluto's or something. Right. I mean, even like the Netflix, like that, the Netflix exclusives and stuff. Now it's all about let's make a movie and it's going to be exclusive to our streaming service. And then later on, we're going to reselect other streaming services that kind of seems to be the model, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of other things. Like, but I do say that, but then again, there's stuff like Shutter that kind of does provide some of that stuff. Just, I don't know. I don't know. I probably wrong. I probably just need to go a dig deeper. It's just more inaccessible. Yeah. Well, it's certainly new things, right? Because you can get a lot of the old crap. It's like to be alone has so much trash, like direct to video trash. It's awesome. It's an amazing treasure trove of garbage, but you kind of do have to know what you're looking for. And you don't see a lot of stuff that's new. You know, they tried to Sharknado like it feels like an attempt, that whole series feels like an attempt to dominate that space and never going to go to theaters or, you know, tremors was kind of this in its day, tremors won theaters, everything else not, but well, still well regarded people like the series. So I don't know what that would be today. What I feel like people don't have a taste for mediocre crap or maybe they do and it's all reality TV, I guess. Yeah. There's too much choice. I think when you're kind of circling around, what are we in right now? It's really hard to know, right? You can like see the lines of demarcation. You can see where the home video market creates straight to video, right? And you can see where streaming ends it, right? But it's hard to know what people are doing with all of their entertainment time at any given time. And like, I can't stop thinking about how earlier this year on TikTok, there was a series of videos by a woman named Risa Tisa called Who the F did I marry? And everyone I know watched this series of videos, it was over eight hours long. And so some people are watching it in like 2X, right? But so much entertainment time was taken up by a series of TikTok videos, right? And so I want to go, oh wait, is that an era? Are we in the era of people doing that or is that just a one off? It's just, it's really hard to know when you're in it. Yeah. And I, you know, there are things like, oh, I know what I was thinking. And I was thinking of Dunnoise, old buddy, Snyder making his stupid moon movies on Netflix. And I'm thinking, yeah, there's more of a chance for me to give you a hard time. But Zack Snyder's two Rebel moon movies and a third, I guess, come in. Those are resoundingly and universally not like, like even Snyderverse fans, but you don't like it. Somebody likes it, nothing to keep making more. And that's, and that's my point. Like, right. Those are it, right? Those are those, those are these. And that, and so we do have modern versions of this. It's just what service wants to sellie themselves by having them. I love that in, in June, someone from Variety asked Netflix, hey, is there going to be a Rebel moon three? And Netflix said no, and then they asked Zack Snyder and he said, it's going to be four or six movies. Oh my God. You need to talk to your people, dude. Yeah. No kidding. I still haven't seen, I've seen none of those yet. I feel like maybe Film Sack needs them, you know? Yeah. That's what I think we were waiting, right? We were, at least that's my impressions, and we were waiting for Film Sack to do Rebel moon, at least the first, well, I watch the first one. Most the first one. That's another thing about straight to video. You often just check out, like because of the fact that it didn't go to theaters for some reason, you're like, oh, this isn't good, and you just stop. It feels disposable kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. So, I'm sorry. I just know, I didn't know this before. I knew there were two sequels to Stitch that went straight to home. Right. Yeah. Or yeah. But I didn't know there was one called Leroy in Stitch. Yeah. Leroy in Stitch. The third one with a red, with a red Stitch, a red evil Stitch, and I didn't know about this one either, as a matter of fact. Okay. Well, now your work is cut out for you. You got to watch that. If we make it sound like Lilo, then it'll still be the same. For listeners who don't understand the point, Brian is a gigantic Lilo and Stitch fan. And so he's got to catch them all. Yeah. So see them all. Exactly. If it's not spice grills, it's Lilo and Stitch. Yeah. And see you. It's all, it's all those. It's weird that Disney, for some things, Disney is like we are absolutely putting these in theaters. And for other things, it's not like I'm thinking of Pirates of the Caribbean. Oh, if you're making the 18th Pirates of the Caribbean movie, it's going to theaters. And I don't understand why that's so different than the 7th Lilo and Stitch movie. Well, they're also bad in that same way. Sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. Do they do try to think of Disney scrolling through this list really quick? Have they done live action straight to video? Or is it always animation much cheaper? That's another good question. Great question. I've got to think something's in there, but I don't know what. Yeah. Like a nutty, like an early, you know, their early attempts at live action stuff. Yeah. The whole dumpling game, too, we're back at it straight to video. Got you, right? Got to be. There has to be stuff like that. Yeah. Let's see. I'm seeing it in this list. But all right, I found a list on. Okay. Boy, you're right about a lot of these. We can count on. We can count on. Yeah. Well, yeah, but what's the home? What's the home? Tron thing? There's a home Tron thing. No, I'm saying it's live action. Yeah. But it's not. I'm worried about live action direct to video for Disney. Yeah. Because that was theaters. I saw that twice in theaters. Okay. Are you sure? Oh, yeah. Hell yeah. I remember being so blown away that we turned right around and watched it again. I'd love that. That thing hit 45 years or something the other day. 45. Oh, wow. I'm like that. Let's see here. These are all animated. Recess Cinderella hunchback, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup. Oh, live action. It was a whole list. I found it. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Those. Okay. I forgot about those. Okay. So they did do some. Yeah. Inspector Gadget 2. Georgia the Jungle 2. Yes. Airbuddies. That's right. Snowbuddies. Oh, my gosh. How do we forget all of those? Oh, sure. Yeah. How about Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2? Yeah. Good point. I mean, some of these are right up until... I can't even connect those with Disney, really. It's just like, yeah. Oh, in fact, okay. Interesting. They're the final... They did all his buddies movies. No one Disney did. There's no other since then. It has been 2013 around the time we talked about super buddies. That was the last one. Oh, yeah. Super buddies. I never saw any of those stupid buddies movies. I never did either. I figure anything I needed to know I got in the trailer and I was... Yeah. You know, it's funny, though, but when we talked about this as a subject, it didn't hit me how I was going to feel some nostalgia for a thing I actually don't like. You know what I mean? Yeah. Because it's just gone now. It's not going to come back, but it's not like I enjoyed that period. It's not going to come back. My kids. Because my kids, especially the Disney stuff, because that's a fun time for me to remember for that. Nostalgia-wise. Yeah. Yeah. Well, my favorite straight to video movie is super nostalgic for me because I knew people who would get it on Netflix when Netflix sent you DVDs and then get together and watch it because it was straight to video and that was the way to watch it, and that is Black Dynamite. Uh-huh. Black Dynamite is a legit good movie. It just didn't find distribution to theaters, and it'd be like, "I remember going to a friend's house to watch Black Dynamite." They had gotten it on, you know, in the mail. Right. In the mail. It'd come to mail. Yeah. No, I don't remember that one at all, but we're like, you know, in the case of Snowpiercer, we're all going to have something, even if we don't know it, that we are fond of, especially if we were, you know, kids. I just feel bad because kids today, not that I feel bad, I mean, they just don't aren't going to know this, I guess, but they will know, they will know like the trappings of like, "Oh, if I got on Netflix and dig deep enough, I'm going to find, you know, killer bees from outer space," or something like that, or just, you know, anything that they really like on Disney Plus, they're like, "Oh, they made a sequel to that. Oh, this is horrible." Yeah. Yeah, I assume. I'm looking at this list. I assume this is all up. They're now in no longer in the quote-unquote "Disney Vault," right? Can I get all this? Right. Well, everything but Song of the South, too, back in the south. Oh, man. Yeah, no kidding. Doing it again. Doing it again. Exactly. Slightly less racist. It's like Larry and Stitch. The song. Who asked for this? Right. Well, there you go. It's a look at, you know, a brief look at the world of tomorrow today. No. Direct a video. The world of yesterday. The world of yesterday. The world of yesterday, yeah. What I like about these episodes primarily, one is I always like our topics, but two, I always love to hear what people think their favorites were in the areas we talk about. So in this case, were there things that came straight to video that you were like, "Oh, yeah, baby." And maybe you count things like the Ewok Christmas special, or maybe you can't-- Oh, sure. --you know, things that are more direct to TV and not necessarily-- We're going to get a lot of love for Boondock Saints, which I know is-- Yeah. Yeah. It ended up being one of the highest rated straight to video movies ever. Yeah. And spawned a sequel that I think went to theaters, right? Boondock Saints, too. Oh, did it really do the sequel go to theaters? Boondock something. What was it called? Boondock something other. Saints. Something called-- Boondock centers. --all Saints Day. That's what it was. And it came out in-- let me just check. Was this theaters? Yeah. Box office. It went to theaters. Interesting. Wow. There you go. And is arguably a much worse movie than the one that went to the home. Yeah. Really? Yeah. I don't think it's very good. I think it's kind of bad. 23% of rotten tomatoes. Whereas the first movie is like way up. Oh, wow. Yeah. Don't waste your time. Did the people come back for that? Yeah. Rita's did? Yeah, Rita's did. The whole thing. Yep. It's all prior. What year was this? Oh, no, 2009. 2009. Almost 10 years later. Crazy. Wow. Well, anyway. To Sean Plack, Patrick Flannery. What's he up to these days? Nothing? No. He's not doing shit. He's just hanging out. Well, anyway. There you go, everybody. We'd love to hear your feedback. Your thoughts, your comments. Keep those coming. And you can all find all that stuff over at the website, frogpants.com/filmsack. Or evenfilmsack.com. Either one gets you there. All right. It's going to do it for us. And we'll be back next week with what was the movie? RoboCop3. RoboCop3. RoboCop3. No, yeah, forget it. RoboCop3. PG-13 rated RoboCop film, so get ready for that. I don't think Nuke is in this one, the drug Nuke. We'll see. That was in two, but I don't think Nuke made it to three. I could be wrong. We'll find out together, though, in one Earth Week. Thank you all for watching, for listening, and hanging out with us. We'll see you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Yes. Get more at frogpants.com. We did it. Planning for your next trip? Elevate your travel style with Quince. Quince has all the jet setting essentials you'll want for your next getaway, like European linen, premium luggage options, buttery soft Italian leather bags, and so much more. And it's all priced at 50 to 80 percent less than similar brands. Plus, Quince only works with factories that you save in ethical manufacturing practices. Pack your bags with high quality essentials you'll be wearing for vacations to come with your next trip. Heycast powers the world's best podcast. Here's a show that we recommend. You go to San Diego Comic-Con every year, or at least follow the updates. You were, slash still are, on Tumblr. You've read fan fiction, hamped out in a line for over 12 hours, attended a meet and greet, vividly remember where you were when Zane left one direction. I'm Amanda. I'm Amber. We're sisters. And the co-hosts of Fan Girl Central Podcasts, where we discuss what our fandom say about us as super passionate black and queer artists. We've ranked Glee songs, dissected the neuro-divergent to fandom pipeline, and amended our pair of social relationships with two of the three Spiderman. We've covered fandoms like Avatar The Last Airbender, Disney Channel, Arby, Degrassi, anything at Comic-Con. Or whatever our guest is currently hyper fixated on. So watch or listen to Fan Girl Central Podcasts on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. As being a fan girl, essential to our identity. Fan Girl Central, Fan Girl Central. ACAST helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. ACAST.com (bell dings)
Time to talk about the lost art of direct to video releases. The good ones, few they may be, and the terrible ones. And where did this method of distro go? We get into it!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.