Dark Force Entertainment Discussion Thread

[kraven]

Originally Posted by Ruined

SRS Cinema gets $25-$35 for much larger standalone turds all the time. There are people who really enjoy bad SOV movies.

Yeah man. Not being able to sell out 100 copies is pretty impressive. Tons of demand there.

[bsend]

Originally Posted by kraven

Yeah man. Not being able to sell out 100 copies is pretty impressive. Tons of demand there.

I bought a used copy of Meat Market and couldn't sit through it. I am older, wiser, and can purchase alcohol since I last tried. I might be ready to give it a spin again.

[Jope]

Originally Posted by Ruined

https://srscinemastore.com/collectio...-the-movie-dvd

I think I got you beat.

looks smelly.

[miribeau]

Originally Posted by Cinema84

Enough people ask for Heavy Metal Massacre and they'll dust it off, slap a glow-in-the-dark condom on it and make you buy it by bundling it with something you REALLY want. They'll make thousands of $$ on profits on it, since it'll be overhyped as a "collectible" and grossly overpriced. My nightmare scenario is they'll hold Mirror, Mirror hostage with this scam.

First, they were able to sell out the limited edition VHS of Heavy Metal Massacre... in 2016, so, yes, a lot of people want it. But, as to Mirror Mirror, they told us a while ago that the person who was working on the interviews was taking a little longer, still working to see if they could get Rainbow Harvest and a few other things. They're not holding it hostage. They are delaying for features because they have a once in a lifetime opportunity to get some of these interviews with people, whether in person or over the phone, and fans love features. They are delaying on the release specifically for us, to give us more value for the money.

Originally Posted by bsend

Bundling from a retailer should benefit the customer and not the business....

The company being able to make enough money that they have made the profit they need, to stay in business, the profit they want, to make it worth being in business, and the profit they must have, in order to license new and better titles, absolutely benefits the customers of that company. Bundling benefits us by offering a discount but it also benefits us by helping them move more copies of films that aren't selling as well, which allows them to make the money to continue doing what they do for all of us, releasing more films.

[xXx$uicide_Ma$terxXx]

Originally Posted by kraven

We are not buying collectibles. We are buying blurays.

Heavy metal massacre should not have a stand alone release. It should be a double feature or an extra. Putting it as an extra on Point Doom would have been the best thing.

Nah, it should be a DVD release for 20 bucks or under but we know it's gonna be some ****ing $35 blu with a glow in the dark slip that nobody buys except scalpers.

Originally Posted by Ruined

SRS Cinema gets $25-$35 for much larger standalone turds all the time. There are people who really enjoy bad SOV movies.

Yeah and barely anybody buys that shit. Killing Spree was limited (LOL) to 666 units and 4 years later they still have plenty in stock.

[bsend]

Originally Posted by miribeau

The company being able to make enough money that they have made the profit they need, to stay in business, the profit they want, to make it worth being in business, and the profit they must have, in order to license new and better titles, absolutely benefits the customers of that company. Bundling benefits us by offering a discount but it also benefits us by helping them move more copies of films that aren't selling as well, which allows them to make the money to continue doing what they do for all of us, releasing more films.

The company needs to make money, but consumers don't need to buy products that they don't want in the hopes that the company reinvests that profit into releasing products they do want. You need to focus on what's profitable (horror movies with some name recognition) and then reinvest some of that profit into a pet project that might not make you money but is important to you.

If there needs to be more capital to release a movie that more people want, then a Kickstarter campaign makes the most sense. There is no guarantee that buying bundles will lead to a reinvestment in future releases. It could just as easily go to covering any number of personal living expenses (the purpose of a business is for the owner to make money. Using profits for living expenses is what you need to do. That being said a customer buying a product they don't want doesn't ensure any effect on future releases).

[miribeau]

Originally Posted by bsend

The company needs to make money, but consumers don't need to buy products that they don't want in the hopes that the company reinvests that profit into releasing products they do want. You need to focus on what's profitable (horror movies with some name recognition) and then reinvest some of that profit into a pet project that might not make you money but is important to you.

If there needs to be more capital to release a movie that more people want, then a Kickstarter campaign makes the most sense. There is no guarantee that buying bundles will lead to a reinvestment in future releases. It could just as easily go to covering any number of personal living expenses (the purpose of a business is for the owner to make money. Using profits for living expenses is what you need to do. That being said a customer buying a product they don't want doesn't ensure any effect on future releases).

He took a chunk of the bundle-profits from back during SoaWN and immediately turned around and licensed a group of films. He announced it back then, around a month or two after making that profit. As to Kickstarter, those fail far more often than they succeed.... RIP Nerd HQ.

[WaverBoy]

Originally Posted by miribeau

He took a chunk of the bundle-profits from back during SoaWN and immediately turned around and licensed a group of films. He announced it back then, around a month or two after making that profit. As to Kickstarter, those fail far more often than they succeed.... RIP Nerd HQ.

Forced bundles are bullshit, Miribeau, despite your desperate claims to the contrary. Unbundling them is not an act of charity, despite your desperate claims to the contrary. And, opening an online store for longer than a few hours at a stretch really shouldn’t be asking too much. All the ire directed to Darkforce because of their ridiculous business practices is richly deserved. Also, Kickstarter’s project failure rate is only 9%, so you’re bullshitting again. You look more foolish with each successive post. Are you typing these with a straight face?

[van1]

Originally Posted by Dark Force

Hello, this is Tom the acting General Manager of Dark Force. I have been out the last few weeks attending a film course at USC. I did want to comment on this post to clarify some of the information here. The Dead Pit Collector's Edition with customized slipcover has continued to be an enormous seller at the Dark Force Superstore. As of the last listing of remaining inventory which had individual units and 5 bundles available everything sold out very quickly and as of tonight only the 3 highest bundles remain available with only 1 of each. Meanwhile Dead Pit continues to sell for much higher than our MSRP on Ebay and very likely will skyrocket even higher when we are officially out of units for sale which will be very soon. We have no plans to do a second run of the present Collector's Edition. Only in discussion would be a run without the slipcover and alternate wrap at a standard price. We are expecting to have Breeders and The Gates of Hell Collector's Editions available any day now.

Hi Tom,
Thanks for posting. Quick question on whether Dark Force has any copies of the cut-throats nine blu ray for sale
Thanks

[miribeau]

Originally Posted by WaverBoy

Forced bundles are bullshit, Miribeau, despite your desperate claims to the contrary. Unbundling them is not an act of charity, despite your desperate claims to the contrary. And, opening an online store for longer than a few hours at a stretch really shouldn’t be asking too much. All the ire directed to Darkforce because of their ridiculous business practices is richly deserved. Also, Kickstarter’s project failure rate is only 9%, so you’re bullshitting again. You look more foolish with each successive post. Are you typing these with a straight face?

https://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats?ref=hello

You got me curious with your random number generator, there, and how very angry you seemed that I would point out the illusion of Kickstarter, so I checked, for the first time in few years. Their success rate is still below the 50% I remembered. Actually, it is down to just over 37% now, worse than it was before.

As to the issue of a company opting for less profit in order to satisfy customers, I stand by what I said before. David shouldn't have done it. Giving up profits on unsold, un-bundled blu-rays, that would have sold eventually, if left in bundles, in an effort to satisfy those who insisted they needed the single-title option, for whatever reason, when those same people then turned around to complain about how much they hate Dark Force, was a waste of kindness, most especially when you consider that some of those bundles were with Bill's unsold Zombie Nightmare nightmare-to-unload release.

No one seemed to care that he did this for them. In fact, it seemed only to lead to more complaints and more anger. If people don't appreciate the effort, then nothing has been gained. Still, it remains an unappreciated kindness, even with me pointing it out. Often times, this board reads more like a hate group than a fan board where people gather to talk about past and upcoming releases and all the developments at the label. Again, one person has shown interest in the announcements concerning upcoming releases of Breeders, The Banker, Drive In #6, Drive In #7 and Ator, other than Ruined and myself. One additional person occasionally references Mirror Mirror as a title they want. And, of course, somewhere out there, I'm pretty sure there's a Mugaboo thinking on ordering a couple of those titles.

Where is the appreciation for the company? It's Bill 2.0, Necromancy all over again. These label owners are literally working to serve our interests and David has to be "Tom", or work with a guy named Tom, I don't even know, just to placate his label's "fans".

[kraven]

Clearly it didn't learn its lesson. Can we get another ban?

[TripleHBK]

Wouldn't it make more sense to simply offer poor selling titles at a discount? I'm not talking about bargain bin prices of sub $10 but how about dropping the price a bit first? As one user mentioned recently, offer codes or %off discounts based upon the more you buy. I don't want to be forced to purchase a title I may or may not want, however if presented with an opportunity to purchase a title for around/slightly under $20 when bundled with another title I will likely consider that option. In the end the total received by Dark Forces is still pretty much the same, but I feel much better about things as 1) I didn't feel forced into a bundle and 2) I may have gotten an actual deal on titles I was considering or wanting.

There will always be poor selling titles. If the end goal is to try and move these units then why not just set up a section on site which identifies these titles and provides a discount on them when purchasing other titles in the same order?

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by TripleHBK

Wouldn't it make more sense to simply offer poor selling titles at a discount? I'm not talking about bargain bin prices of sub $10 but how about dropping the price a bit first? As one user mentioned recently, offer codes or %off discounts based upon the more you buy. I don't want to be forced to purchase a title I may or may not want, however if presented with an opportunity to purchase a title for around/slightly under $20 when bundled with another title I will likely consider that option. In the end the total received by Dark Forces is still pretty much the same, but I feel much better about things as 1) I didn't feel forced into a bundle and 2) I may have gotten an actual deal on titles I was considering or wanting.

There will always be poor selling titles. If the end goal is to try and move these units then why not just set up a section on site which identifies these titles and provides a discount on them when purchasing other titles in the same order?

Dark Force used to do sales like that.

The main problem is if you frequently offer a lot of titles on sale for say $15 then it devalues the brand and people wait for everything to hit $15 before buying.

[rdodolak]

Originally Posted by AKNewbie

Tell us that you've fixed the process(es) at DF for the next super-duper-must-have, glow-in-the dark collectible cover [w/ free movie included with the cover].

Pay attention Newbie! Tom "the acting general manager of Dark Force" had no time to fix the DF process(es) as he was too busy attending a USC film course.

[miribeau]

Originally Posted by TripleHBK

Wouldn't it make more sense to simply offer poor selling titles at a discount? I'm not talking about bargain bin prices of sub $10 but how about dropping the price a bit first? As one user mentioned recently, offer codes or %off discounts based upon the more you buy. I don't want to be forced to purchase a title I may or may not want, however if presented with an opportunity to purchase a title for around/slightly under $20 when bundled with another title I will likely consider that option. In the end the total received by Dark Forces is still pretty much the same, but I feel much better about things as 1) I didn't feel forced into a bundle and 2) I may have gotten an actual deal on titles I was considering or wanting.

There will always be poor selling titles. If the end goal is to try and move these units then why not just set up a section on site which identifies these titles and provides a discount on them when purchasing other titles in the same order?

If I were David, that's one of a number of ideas I'd be weighing, including simple pre-orders and releasing more than one title at the same time, to maximize sales. If you feel strongly about the idea, that is the kind of thing you should summarize and email to them directly.

Still, when it comes to what is happening now, regardless of what options he decides are right for his store, including simply continuing with the same model for a while, appreciation for the Dark Force label and, by extension, for Code Red, has been sorely lacking in recent weeks, with criticism greatly outweighing compliments. I genuinely can't understand why people who hate the label so much come in here to crap on it.

And I do understand that it is the popular solution to silence fans of a label rather than those who are overtly attempting to turn a label-specific board into a hate-thread, because there are so few fans and so many haters, and the mods can't be expected to filter out every single hateful or hazing comment directed at the label when there just so many. But, when it gets to the point where too many on this board are focusing the conversation away from the label and releases and discussion of possible new releases, back in the direction of endless complaints about how much they hate the label and the label owner, it is a lot less fun for all of the people who genuinely like the label or both labels. I know I am not the only one here who loves Code Red and is finding that Dark Force is also a genuinely cool label with great potential.

I don't know if you saw this but whoever is running the official Dark Force Facebook page can't post updates as often as they used to, because after any update they have to sit there and sanitize the inappropriate comments that pop up, because of that reporting incident a few weeks ago. Of 20 or 40 comments, they'll keep a few, the ones that don't contain a bunch of curse words. They are now including date-stamps on updates, just to prove the store has been open the whole time, because people insist it is closed when it is open. And, again, David can't be David. He can't just be himself, the good and the bad, but, rather, has to play along with having Tom or "Tom" be the voice of his label.

If Bill couldn't be Bill, couldn't play as a banana, couldn't say what he wants, the good and the bad, would we all really take that and say it's fine? It's his business. Shouldn't he be able to run it how he wants and be himself? Shouldn't they both be able to? I say again and again I like most of the people here but lately I am wondering where the fans of Dark Force and Code Red are hanging out. In the Code Red board, for any who don't follow, people are ticked off at Bill for not moving fast enough on Conquest, while dealing with his kidney situation and a terrible, debilitating fall.

I'm switching to lurking now, at least on this board. You guys are just being to hard on the label owners, two of the only label owners who dare to come here anymore, because too many are too critical.

[cloudnine]

Originally Posted by miribeau

If I were David, that's one of a number of ideas I'd be weighing, including simple pre-orders and releasing more than one title at the same time, to maximize sales. If you feel strongly about the idea, that is the kind of thing you should summarize and email to them directly.

Still, when it comes to what is happening now, regardless of what options he decides are right for his store, including simply continuing with the same model for a while, appreciation for the Dark Force label and, by extension, for Code Red, has been sorely lacking in recent weeks, with criticism greatly outweighing compliments. I genuinely can't understand why people who hate the label so much come in here to crap on it.

And I do understand that it is the popular solution to silence fans of a label rather than those who are overtly attempting to turn a label-specific board into a hate-thread, because there are so few fans and so many haters, and the mods can't be expected to filter out every single hateful or hazing comment directed at the label when there just so many. But, when it gets to the point where too many on this board are focusing the conversation away from the label and releases and discussion of possible new releases, back in the direction of endless complaints about how much they hate the label and the label owner, it is a lot less fun for all of the people who genuinely like the label or both labels. I know I am not the only one here who loves Code Red and is finding that Dark Force is also a genuinely cool label with great potential.

I don't know if you saw this but whoever is running the official Dark Force Facebook page can't post updates as often as they used to, because after any update they have to sit there and sanitize the inappropriate comments that pop up, because of that reporting incident a few weeks ago. Of 20 or 40 comments, they'll keep a few, the ones that don't contain a bunch of curse words. They are now including date-stamps on updates, just to prove the store has been open the whole time, because people insist it is closed when it is open. And, again, David can't be David. He can't just be himself, the good and the bad, but, rather, has to play along with having Tom or "Tom" be the voice of his label.

If Bill couldn't be Bill, couldn't play as a banana, couldn't say what he wants, the good and the bad, would we all really take that and say it's fine? It's his business. Shouldn't he be able to run it how he wants and be himself? Shouldn't they both be able to? I say again and again I like most of the people here but lately I am wondering where the fans of Dark Force and Code Red are hanging out. In the Code Red board, for any who don't follow, people are ticked off at Bill for not moving fast enough on Conquest, while dealing with his kidney situation and a terrible, debilitating fall.

I'm switching to lurking now, at least on this board. You guys are just being to hard on the label owners, two of the only label owners who dare to come here anymore, because too many are too critical.

Miribeau, when do you think it's time for you to retire?

[Jlouisbarrett]

I just recently subscribed to this thread because I was curious about DF releases, but I think I’ll unsubscribe now. It’s just pages and pages of miribeau novellas.

[defile959]

Please, god, make it stop.

[kraven]

Originally Posted by cloudnine

Miribeau, when do you think it's time for you to retire?

Please stop quoting it

[mja345]

Originally Posted by cloudnine

Miribeau, when do you think it's time for you to retire?

Miribeau is like a 47 year old pitcher who's still going out there every fifth day with an 80 MPH fastball, a changeup that's the same speed as the fastball, and a cement mixer slider that doesn't do anything except sit up on a tee for hitters to swat 450 feet into the seats. She's running on fumes and may have to hang up the cleats midseason.