THERE'S GOLD IN THAT THERE SCHLOCK

By RICHARD CORLISS

Jim Wynorski ain't no Krzysztof Kieslowski--though, like the late master of European angst, Wynorski directed a trilogy. Oh, you didn't catch Wynorski's Sins of Desire, Victim of Desire and Virtual Desire? Then you may not know the rest of his work, sequels (Sorority House Massacre 2, Body Chemistry 3, Ghoulies 4) to movies you also never heard of.

So O.K., we sing the low-budget auteur. The 40 or so films Wynorski has made in the past decade have snap and menace and lots of folks with their clothes off. They also have an audience. Recently the director checked his TV Guide and found that 10 of his films were on the cable channels--usually late at night, when the kids are either asleep or stealthily time shifting. Wynorski owns 4 a.m.

His business is direct-to-video, low-budget narrative features that bypass theaters and have their world premiere in your 27,000 local video stores. DTV began in the infancy of video, about a decade ago, and now has its own traditions, stars and fans.

The genres: action, horror and erotic thriller. The icons: muscular folks like Michael Dudikoff and Cynthia Rothrock, curvy sirens like Shannon Whirry and Monique Gabrielle. The plot: some nasty person is spying on and terrorizing some pretty person. The basic props: knives, candles, swimming pools, satin sheets. And everywhere bosoms--bosoms so large and preternaturally firm, thanks to the miracle of plastic surgery, that the question arises: Are they live or are they Mammorex? But for DTV, cleavage has it all over big stunts and pricey morphing tricks. Says Wynorski: "Breasts are the cheapest special effect in our business."

And remember, it is a business. DTV producers give up the prestige of an opening night at Mann's Chinese Theatre and a critical thumbs-up to sell their product straight to the consumer. They don't make blockbuster movies; they make Blockbuster movies. Somebody's got to fill the store shelves, and the major studios simply don't produce enough junk. That's where DTVs come in; they are the drive-in movies of the '90s. Says Michael Weldon, author of Psychotronic Video Guide and the guru of gross-out: "Just because most of these films are bad doesn't mean that others aren't excellent, or at least better than what's in theaters."

Last year some 300 of these low-rent films were released direct-to-video--more than the number made by the Hollywood majors--and they returned about $200 million to the producers. Those numbers wouldn't make a mogul drool; a single studio smash like Aladdin made more in video than all DTVs put together.

Which isn't to say big studios ignore the DTV market. The majors have long seen DTV as a dumping ground for films they thought might flop theatrically; recently New Line demoted Theodore Rex, an excruciatingly whimsical comedy about future cop Whoopi Goldberg and her dinosaur partner, to a video release. Increasingly, though, the majors view DTV as an attractive alternative--a place to release franchise spin-offs, avoid $50 million marketing costs, make a bundle. Sequels to such mainstream fare as Land Before Time, Darkman, Children of the Corn and the Jim Varney Ernest series have been big DTV hits. In 1994, when Disney released The Return of Jafar, a DTV sequel to Aladdin, it expected to move about 2 million copies. Jafar sold close to 11 million, earning Disney around $100 million.

So last week's DTV release of Aladdin and the King of Thieves, in which Robin Williams reprises his role as the thousand-voiced Genie, was the event of a lackluster movie month. This time Aladdin searches for his missing father and discovers that Dad is a sort of Darth Vader, but nicer. The songs are wan, and the animation (done in Australia and Japan) isn't as spiffy as the studio's theatrical style. But Williams works harder than ever to create a bazaar of bizarre impressions: Woody and Sly, Hope and Crosby, Groucho and Chico and Brando, instantly repackaged into clever parody.

Disney plans to release three or four DTV features a year, including sequels to The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast and 101 Dalmatians, maybe Toy Story, and the live-action Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Other majors won't be far behind. Fox is readying a prequel to Casper.

So where does this leave the DTV pioneers? In trouble. Ask Roger Corman, who has thrived directing and producing B, C and Z movies for four decades and now runs New Horizons, a DTV factory. "We're seeing a slippage over the past two years of about 25% in our total video rentals," says Corman. "Just as the majors once crowded the independent producers out of theaters, now they're crowding us out of direct-to-video."

Andrew Stevens is even more emphatic. "Video is a wheezing, gasping, last bastion of collectors and a dwindling number of renters!" he roars. As a DTV icon, Stevens got candle wax dripped on his chest by Tanya Roberts in Night Eyes and got smothered in fruit by Shannon Tweed in Night Eyes 2 ("Nice use of raspberries," notes the invaluable Bare Facts Video Guide, which catalogs nude scenes in R-rated movies). But as the co-owner of Royal Oaks Entertainment, which produces a dozen or so action-adventure titles a year for the foreign market, he's pleased to say R.I.P. to low-budget DTV. "The studios increased their output of theatrical films, the mom-and-pop video stores got squeezed out by the major chains, and the advent of satellite and DirecTV alleviated the necessity of driving to a corner video store. In short, the novelty of video has worn off."

Many DTV veterans are frustrated. "The market has gotten tougher and tougher," says superhack Fred Olen Ray (Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, Bad Girls from Mars), who last week started directing his sixth film this year. "Nowadays, you have to do more for less money to make less money. Genres like vampire films and erotic thrillers and cyborg takeoffs of Terminator are all dead."

The medium used to be a refuge or a launching pad. As Maitland McDonagh writes in her excellent book Filmmaking on the Fringe, "Direct-to-video movies are made by people who once made--or, in the case of the younger generation, would have made--theatrical features." But that thrill is evaporating. "There's so much crap in the marketplace," complains Greg Brown, a Stanford grad who directed the toniest of the DTV erotomovies (Animal Instincts, Body of Influence) under the name Gregory Hippolyte. And where does he go for artistic challenges? Into porno. "With triple-X," he says, "I can explore video imaging, different film stocks and all sorts of weird underground stuff as long as I have the obligatory pornography. When I made erotic thrillers, they wanted things that look like movies of the week."

Who then should care that the DTV B movies may be lumbering from obscurity into oblivion? We do. There may be no masterpieces (possibly excepting John McNaughton's Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, which achieved theatrical notoriety after release on video), but DTVs offer a few nostalgic pleasures. They are made by clever craftsmen who for next to nothing provide professional gloss and a story no worse than most movies and TV shows. And if you're looking for strong B-movie stars, look no further. Shannon Tweed brings a sensible, almost schoolteacherish seriousness to her roles. Delia Sheppard (Mirror Images), who has retired from DTV to star in the Las Vegas extravaganza Splash, excelled as a naughty Brit on a Hollywood bender. Lysette Anthony (Save Me) promises prurience beneath the primness; her blond middle-class looks make her a natural to play Hillary Clinton in a DTV epic.

A rung below these dream and scream queens are such hardworking actresses as lissome Maria Ford, 25, who has made 40 DTVs (Burial of the Rats, Naked Obsession) in eight years but says she earned less than $25,000 last year. "You have to love to act," she says. "The food is always bad; you never get any sleep; you work 17-hour days; the scripts change at the last minute." Ford's theory of nude scenes: "I'm willing to take off my clothes for 10% of a film so I can act in the other 90%."

The male stars have other reasons. Employment is one. David Carradine, the Kung Fu TV veteran who 20 years ago won critical raves for Bound for Glory but now is more likely to be found scaring coeds in Ray's Evil Toons, says, "Doing DTV films is dangerous for me as a mainstream actor. But I like the taste of danger." Don ("the Dragon") Wilson likes the taste of money. The kick-boxing star had six films released in 13 months, and claims to make $250,000 per. "I tell people I'm not an actor; I'm an action star," he says, and banters about going legit. He answers a phone call and jokes, "It's Steven Spielberg. He wants me for his next dinosaur movie."

The real dinosaur is the DTV B. For a decade, when few people in Hollywood were listening, it roared. It stomped out tracks that would be followed by the Aladdins and the Darkmans. Now the form is nearing extinction. But on video-store shelves and on pay cable, these value-for-money thrill machines can live forever. Farewell and hail, Videosaurus rex.

--Reported by Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles

With reporting by Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles