BCI builds Grindhouse double-feature line

Company hopes its series benefits from Tarantino/Rodriguez theatrical

By Susanne Ault -- Video Business, 4/9/2007

APRIL 9 | BCI is launching a double-feature DVD series dubbed Welcome to the Grindhouse, which it hopes will benefit from the awareness surrounding Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s double-feature Grindhouse, released in theaters last week.

Through early 2008, BCI expects to release under its Grindhouse banner more than 15 titles, each holding two similarly themed B-movies. Navarre Corporation, which operates BCI, will distribute the series.

Many of the featured films will hail from BCI library Crown International Pictures, which includes about 100 campy movies spanning the ’60s to ’90s. Titles consist of remastered prints and are priced at $12.98.

The first two releases are Welcome to the Grindhouse: Pick-Up/Teacher and Welcome to the Grindhouse: Evil Eye/Black Candles. Both street July 3 (prebook May 25).

Both thrillers, Pick-Up chronicles a momentous hitchhike ride, while Teacher is about a fatal student seduction. Horror flicks Evil Eye and Black Candles each explore puzzling deaths.

“We have a huge library that can be used, and we are trying to give consumers more value for their money,” said Cliff MacMillan, BCI director of acquisitions. “I think the timing is perfect for this.”

Directed by Tarantino and Rodriguez as a back-to-back movie release, theatrical Grindhouse grossed about $11.6 million in the U.S. That totals less than half the opening weekend grosses for each of the directors’ last films—Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Vol. 2 ($25.1 million) and Rodriguez’s Spy Kids 3 ($33.4 million). Grindhouse was distributed by The Weinstein Co.

But BCI is encouraged in its own endeavor by the fact that DVD sales of Tarantino and Rodriguez movies are known to outdo their initial theatrical revenues.

BCI’s Grindhouse series represents a follow-up to several B-movies released last year under the banner Starlite Drive-In Theater.