Rent increase
The Hunt for Red October — coming in October from
Paramount Home Video — will have one of the highest price tags for a
movie on cassette. While Paramount won't give a suggested retail
price, the wholesale figure for some stores will top $70 per copy. At
standard markups, that would translate to $99.95 at retail for Joe
Consumer. But the vast majority of viewers who plan only to rent the
movie may also face a price hike. Bart Story, market research
director at Video Store Magazine, predicts rental fees for new movies
will climb from an average of $2.47 to $2.75 a night this year, in
part because of rising wholesale prices. ''A lot of small video stores
have been shaken out by big chains, so price competition isn't as
intense as it was,'' he says.
The Horror, The Horror
Cassandra Peterson, the real woman behind
cable-queen Elvira, had to watch more than 60 frightful movies to
choose 15 that qualified for her new Midnight Madness video series,
coming from Rhino beginning Aug. 9. ''My husband
screened some that I couldn't bring myself to watch,'' says Peterson.
She didn't choose any slasher flicks because ''horror to me is
fantasy. It's about a monster who doesn't exist.'' Most of her
favorites, which include The Mask, Frankenstein's Daughter, and
Missile to the Moon, date from the late '50s to the early '60s.
''It's a great campy era — girls with pointy bras and big butts.''
Strength of caricature
In their new documentary An Illustrated
Guide to Caricature, Britain's satirists Roger
Law and Peter Fluck reflect on the cartoonist's art and the part it
has played in putting politicians and royals in their place since the
18th century. The pair is best known for creating the BBC-TV show
Spitting Image, starring grotesque puppets based on the rich and
famous. (NBC has run an occasional American version of Spitting
Image, and Law and Fluck are developing a series for the U.S.) In
Spitting Image, the puppet of Dan Quayle (right) spends most of his
time in outer space, Steven Spielberg is trailed by trucks full of
money, and Madonna reinvents herself every three minutes. Law says
making the Material Girl puppet is ''a pain in the ass. All those wigs
and costumes are expensive.''
