Caroline Distribution is best known as a music distributor but over the last few years they've branched out into DVD. For two years they've been distributing the meticulously restored discs from Fantoma which include a series of gorgeous DVDs from Japanese director Yasuzo Masumura (BLIND BEAST, RED ANGEL, MANJI), and about two months ago they took on the UK cult label, Mondo Macabro, which resurrects sick and perverted international exploitation movies that the world long considered lost. In addition to classics like LADY TERMINATOR ("First she mates, then she terminates") and VIRGINS FROM HELL, Mondo Macabro recently produced their first movie, Pakistani zombie flick, HELL'S GROUND.

Matt Kiernan, the DVD Label Manager for Caroline, spoke to Kaiju Shakedown from somewhere deep within Caroline's mountain fortress in midtown New York.

Is it hard out there for a pimp?
It’s certainly tough. There’s a niche now for Asian films, which is great because 15 years ago that niche wasn’t there. But the fact of the matter is that now there’s oversaturation. It’s a wonderful thing that you have easy access to the Yasuzo Masumura films from Fantoma like BLIND BEAST or GIANTS & TOYS but unfortunately you’re competing for shelf space against Dragon Dynasty, Tartan, Synapse and a lot of other labels, some of whom are putting out new release Asian films. Unless there’s something really distinctive about your title or unless you get very high profile reviews it’s tough to stick out too much from the crowd. And I think that on top of that there’s a certain amount of burn-out, partially among retailers but mostly among fans. It’s wonderful that on a given month there are a glut of major Asian titles, but a fan can only buy so many.

Mondo Macabro and Fantoma specialize mostly in older, catalogue titles. Are those a harder sell?
If it’s a classic title that people have been waiting for and it has a reputation, like HARD BOILED, it’s not so tough. But then you’ve got a movie like BLACK TEST CAR which the fans may not know so well, so even though it’s a terrific film it’s difficult to get their attention. And with the press, you’ve got Dave Kehr at the New York Times and he seems to be a Masumura fan, but with a lot of other outlets you have a hard time getting reviews. Catalogue is difficult in general, whether it’s an American major studio classic or a less-well-known Asian title, because a lot of the accounts managers [at the major retailers] are only looking for newer titles.

Is it harder to sell Asian titles in the North American market as opposed to Western titles?
I don’t think there’s a particular prejudice against Asian titles. But one of the things about selling titles is that it doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to sell to an individual store or to Best Buy, the issue is: how well does the buyer know the title? A retailer is more inclined to take titles they view as more mainstream. It’s easier for them to sell a samurai or a martial arts movie than, say, WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS. Fantoma has a lot of Fassbinder, and certainly in America a few more people know who Fassbinder is than Masumura, but the Fassbinder titles sell only slightly more to retailers than Masumura because they’re still seen by the buyers as the same thing: an older foreign film.

There are times when you have a title that, if a retailer picked it up, it would sell. Synapse has two Japanese titles that streeted this week, SNAKE WOMAN'S CURSE and THE HORROR OF MALFORMED MEN, and there’s a lot of excitement about them because they’ve never been available before, even in Japan, and Synapse is a great label. If Best Buy stocked those titles then people would buy them. People would see them, the covers look cool, they may know Synapse. If the buyers got that and understood that and it was more to them than just “another Asian title” along with all the others they consider every month that would be a big help. There are certain retailers that this audience likes going to and they go frequently and they like to pick up everything on Tuesday when the new titles come out. They just walk out with their DVDs for the week. And your title has to be on those racks for it to make a difference.

What do you think the size of the Asian fan market is in the US?
Honestly, I couldn’t tell you.

Do you think it’s more than 100,000 people?
Yes, I do. Some of these titles have sold extremely well and for newer stuff you can easily go over 100,000. But the retailer has to take a chance on it. And the market can change fast. Not a lot of people in America knew who Stephen Chow was, then along came KUNG FU HUSTLE and suddenly you’ve got a Stephen Chow market.

Is building a brand identity important?
It’s absolutely important. If it wasn’t important then the Weinsteins wouldn’t build Dragon Dynasty, they’d just release their titles as Weinstein Company DVDs. Fans recognize the brand names, not unlike in the music industry. The Asian crowd knows their labels. They go by the label names to the same extent that hip hop fans go by the hip hop labels. Labels are setting themselves up as a brand name that can be recognized and followed.

Is there a market for Asian film in America that’s outside the fan market? Can these movies cross over into the mainstream?
There is a market outside this niche market but it depends on a lot of factors: has your movie played in theaters? Has it been on TV? If it’s on the shelf at Blockbuster that can help make or break a lot of these movies – there are so many Asian movies released in a given month and Blockbuster will only take so many. If somebody sees your title on the shelf at Blockbuster that gives them an indication that “Blockbuster says this movie is okay.”

For us, HELL’S GROUND is a perfect example. First off, it’s a new film, which is different for Mondo Macabro. It’s gotten a huge amount of press, it’s Pakistan’s first horror film - I don’t think TIME Magazine would have covered it if it were from Hong Kong or even from Bollywood. But because it’s new that's completely set it apart from the crowd. If OLDBOY hadn’t won the Grand Prix at Cannes it would have been lumped in by retailers as “just another Asian movie,” but it got a huge ringing endorsement with that win.

So are you guys handling HELL’S GROUND differently?
Absolutely. We don’t pitch Mondo Macabro to Best Buy or to Blockbuster because they’ve made it very clear that they don’t want older titles. But we will pitch HELL’S GROUND to them because it’s brand new and they might have heard of it from all its coverage and festival exposure. Contrast that to another Mondo Macabro title, MYSTICS IN BALI, which is a terrific title, long unavailable, but it can only go so far because it’s an older movie. They’re both crazy, funny, insane movies, but MYSTICS is 25 years old. HELL’S GROUND is from this year.

Has there been anything in this business that ever really surprised you?
You sort of know what the hits and flops are going to be, even the label usually knows, so there’s nothing really that’s surprised me too much in any of the Asian titles I’ve dealt with. In most cases, they hit their mark. The only thing that’s surprised me is how some retailers will embrace a title and then just as quickly dump it due to a change in their way of buying product. One retailer got out of older catalogue titles even though a lot of these titles had sold consistently for them and were constant revenue generators. They could count on selling x number of units in any given month and now they’ve jettisoned that, saying, “These movies are too old.” If retailers are making money on your product and they still don’t want it, that’s surprising to me.