Fast Forward

Raiders leads a video boom

Dodging deadly snakes, poisoned darts and sadistic Nazis, Indiana Jones will dash into living rooms across the U.S and Canada this week. Paramount is releasing the eagerly awaited home video cassette of the 1981 blockbuster movie Raiders of the Lost Ark. Retailers, already besieged by Indiana Jones fans and convinced that Raiders will quickly become the alltime home-video champ, have ordered a record 420,000 copies of the cassette. The two top video cassettes until now, Jane Fonda's Workout and Flashdance, have racked up sales of about 200,000 each.

Raiders will give new momentum to an industry already shifting into fast forward. Some 8 million video cassettes will be sold this year, up 33% from 1982. Paramount has helped spark the surge by slashing videotape prices. In February the company brought out An Officer and a Gentleman at $39.95, far less than the standard $59.95-to-$79.95 price tag for hit movies. The cassette quickly sold 80,000 copies at a time when sales of 25,000 were considered the video equivalent of earning a gold record. Paramount has had several other $39.95 smashes, including Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Flashdance (the current No. 1 bestseller) and now Raiders.

Some companies are copying Paramount. Warner plans to release Risky Business at $39.98, and MCA will charge a similar amount for Jaws 3. Other firms are keeping prices high. Says Myron Hyman, president of the MGM/UA home video division, which has sold 50,000 copies of Poltergeist at $79.95: "To make a decent return on your investment, the number of units you have to move at $39.95 is phenomenal." RCA/Columbia, which also charges $79.95, has two tapes in the Top Ten on Billboard's bestsellers chart: Blue Thunder (3) and Gandhi (5).

Nonetheless, some industry experts think companies will be forced to cut prices by the brisk business in home-video rentals. Asks Chaz Austin, a cassette retailer in Los Angeles: "Who in his right mind is going to pay $80 for a movie that you can rent for $5?" Some video shops now rent 100 tapes for every one sold.

Surprisingly, the home-video craze has not yet reduced movie theater attendance, which is projected to increase 2% to 3% this year. In fact, Paramount has come up with a way to make cassette sales a boon to the box office. The Raiders tape contains tantalizing previews from a follow-up coming to theaters in May: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.