I work in the marketing department at Facets Multi-Media in Chicago. Part of the Facets operation is a vast videotheque, or video rentals store, which features thousands of foreign, indie, documentary, and classic films for viewers seeking something beyond contemporary Hollywood fare. As such, we are besieged with announcements from all manner of straight-to-DVD production companies, who want us to buy their titles for our rentals service or to sell via our online catalogue. The sellsheets for these films boggle my mind on a regular basis, either because the films being touted are ridiculous, or because the sell copy to promote the films is so badly conceived and written. Leafing through these sellsheets sparks many unanswerable questions: Who makes these movies? Who writes the copy for the promotional material, and do they ever crack open a dictionary or grammar book? How many copies of their product do they think they can sell when they can’t even describe what it is about? I thought I would share a few examples so all of you could get an idea of what I am talking about. It would be easy to crack jokes at the expense of these titles and their promotion materials, but nothing I could say would be funnier than the titles and sellsheets themselves.

The title for this post is actually the tagline for a film called Born Into Sh*t. I kid you not. Produced by Seminal Films, Born Into Sh*t seems to hail from the Czech Republic, though the sellsheet offers no indication of this. Instead, the sellsheet lists the features of this film that make it noteworthy for movie fans: “Flashbacks, Bondage, Teenage Sex, Embezzlement, Bullet Point of View, Religious Offering,” and much more, though I am sure you have already lined this one up in your Netflix queue. Those of you who need more persuading might be enticed by this description of the characters, which I have copied word for word: “The slacker Bosnian War veteran father is really an assassin for hire who is targeted for extermination, the evangelical church leading mother lets herself be seduced and used by a homeless lesbian opportunist and the thirteen-year-old son who is afraid of being homosexual.” Despite the lack of a verb in the last phrase and the writer’s obvious disdain for punctuation (because there is so little of it), I am sure you will agree that Born Into Sh*t truly is “Crash meets In Bruges and Juno . . . in Prague.”

Zoe Saldana’s costarring role in Avatar made her a hot property in Hollywood as evidenced by her recent turns in Death at a Funeral and The Losers. Unfortunately, her newfound high profile means that anything poor Zoe appeared in on the way to stardom will be dug up by the straight-to-DVD market. Diehard Saldana fans will surely want to catch The Curse of Father Cardona, released by UHE in both English and Spanish versions. If you are unsure, then take the word of Claus Freck of the New Media Monitor, who is quoted on the sellsheet. Claus assures us that “Zoe Saldana is on fire in this film . . . .” (From my own experience in marketing, I could write volumes on the fine art of mining a positive quote on almost any film, but perhaps that’s a story for another post.) The storyline for The Curse of Father Cardona sounds like a soap opera—if you can read between the bad grammar and misspellings. The sellsheet notes: “Father Cardona (Anthony Alverez) is re-assigned to a small village were strange things are happening. He must regain faith back into his parrish that is convinced the church has a curse on it.” Three misspellings in the brief opening paragraph must be some kind of record: “Were” should be “where,” “parrish” is misspelled, and the actor’s last name is Alvarez, with an “a.”

SHOOTING 'BUFFALO BUSHIDO' IN BUFFALO MAKES SENSE, I GUESS.

I wonder what Buffalo Bushido from Cinema Epoch is about? I really can’t tell from this unintentionally puzzling passage on the sellsheet: “Davis is a man trying to come home against all odds. Seeking to reconnect with his friends, Davis takes on the role of samurai. Home takes on a different meaning as he finds he can no longer escape his past and his present becomes even more unclear.” Wow, poor Davis’s present can’t be more unclear than this plot description. All of us trying to reconnect with old friends should stop using Facebook and, instead, become samurais. Apparently, that is the way to do it, at least according to the writer of this sellsheet. The copywriter for the promotional materials for this film definitely has a problem with modifying phrases and clauses. The tagline on the website is a lesson in misplaced modifiers. “Honor to the man who finds his way home with the heart of a child” suggests the man found his way home by using the vital organ of some kid.  Buffalo Bushido features a couple of prominent character actors in secondary roles; I will not embarrass them by calling them out.

If the description for Buffalo Bushido is puzzling, then the one for Supranova, also from Cinema Epoch, is downright cryptic. I assume they are the work of the same copywriter, because they are written in a similar “style.” According to the sellsheet, Supranova is a 127-minute, “future cult masterpiece,” so you will want to “be the first to witness its power.” Discerning what movies will become cult classics in the future is a unique gift. I guess the copywriter was tipped off because the movie is narrated by “cult icon” Lydia Lunch. What is Supranova about? If you can figure it out from this description, which I note here in its entirety, let me know: “An experimental film that is the examination of the soul, the body and of the impossibility of conjoining these two entities which constitute the civilized form that is called man.” The descriptions of both Cinema Epoch titles violate the first rule of DVD sell copy: Tell the viewer what the film is about.

Some made-for-DVD films are intentionally tongue in cheek, and the promotional materials for those movies can be fun. While none of the titles mentioned above fall into that category, another movie from Seminal Films—the people who brought us Born Into Sh*t—does. Mutant Vampire Zombies from the Hood! had me at “Mutant.” And, the tagline for the film enticed me further: “It’s the End of the World, Yo.” But, the body copy really clinched it: “An unlikely group of inner-city survivors fight to flee a city of gang-bangers, but infested with blood-sucking sex-starved zombies instead.” Despite the misplaced comma after “gang-bangers,” I can at least ascertain what the story is about after reading the sellsheet. This movie actually stars a name actor, C. Thomas Howell, whom I enjoyed in such popular 1980s hits as The Hitcher and The Outsiders. He plays “the last man standing in the L.A.P.D. who must team up with the survivors of two rival street gangs as they fight their way across the city.” Of course, the author of this sellsheet can’t resist the inevitable comparison—something the marketers at Seminal Films seem to think is so important to viewers. Mutant Vampire Zombies from the Hood! is “Zombieland Meets Shaun of the Dead in the ‘Hood!”

By the way, Seminal is also keen on the exclamation point. I am sure that accounts for thousands and thousands of dollars in sales!!!!!!!!!

* Special thanks to my cohorts in crime at Facets, Brian Elza and Phil Morehart, who save these type of sellsheets for me.