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Q. In "House on Haunted Hill" there is a scene where Giovani Ribisi is tooling around with some video hardware. Near him are some video boxes. On the Blockbuster version of this video, they have super-imposed the Blockbuster logo onto the boxes! The reason it caught my eye was the visual effect looked superimposed--these didn't look like Blockbuster videos just sitting there. They've taken the liberty of forcing product placement into the film. I was wondering if the studio knew about this, and what their opinion was. (Chris Bushnell, San
Francisco CA)
A. Oh, yeah, the studio knew, all right, although director William Malone was none too happy. He replies: "The studio made a deal with Blockbuster prior to the theatrical release of the film. An optical effect was indeed utilized in placing the Blockbuster logo onto the video cassettes, and this effect appears in all versions of the film. It's part of the commercialism in film today."