“For years, Cecil wouldn’t let anyone touch his masters,” Sutton said. “He is vehement about keeping the quality, so he never allowed anyone to make DVDs from the originals.”
As a result, Sutton said, the masters have been preserved in pristine quality.
“The preservation of these masters has never been seen before in adult,” he said. “They were able to do a great-quality scan and come up with full-screen editions of the titles. They look and sound like they were shot on digital. When you see them, you would swear they are new movies.”
Both movies were originally slated to be distributed exclusively by mainstream company Media Blasters, but VCX President David Sutton told XBiz that both Media Blasters and Howard felt his company could do a better job of getting the DVDs into adult retail locations and, ultimately, the hands of fans.
Media Blasters will continue to handle distribution to mainstream video stores that carry adult product.
Last year, Media Blasters Gary Conner told XBiz that his company was taking a Criterion Collection approach to the Command Cinema titles, referring to the Merchant Ivory series of Hollywood classics on DVD. The company pulled the 35mm negatives out of the vaults and repackaged them for the digital age with cast interviews, director’s commentaries, never-before-seen footage and other extras on a separate bonus disc.
1979’s “Babylon Pink” stars Samantha Fox and Vanessa Del Rio, while “Neon Nights” stars Lysa Thatcher and Veronica Hart.
VCX also released the first five volumes of its “VCX Porn Stars Collection,” with compilations featuring Kay Parker, Seka, Annette Haven, Dorothy LeMay and Serena.
Sutton said his company has avoided star comps in the past because the market is flooded with so many low-grade dupes that the genre has gotten a bad name, but said requests from customers, including video-on-demand sites, prompted him to take the plunge. He couldn’t be happier with the response so far.
“These titles have done about 300 percent of our normal sales out the door,” he said. “The great thing about it is, it will be the first time fans get to see these stars in comps of this quality because they’re coming from the actual owners of the intellectual property footage, not some duper.”
Sutton said VCX is already working on a second set of volumes for the collection, scheduled for release later this spring, but he will be selective about how frequently the company puts out new volumes to avoid flooding the market.
The company also is creating a no-boys, all-lesbian comp series at the request of customers.
“We even let one of our buyers choose segments to include,” Sutton said. “We sent them Windows Media files and let them choose scenes by time code, then we identified those segments on the masters, and we’re putting them together for this summer.”