There have always been direct to shelf movies. But they used to be called TV films. And would go to TV first then you could buy them in the DVD bargain box. Now they are releasing them to the "new releases" section in the dvd shop and will charge full price.

All they are doing is remaking old ideas(cheep), making low budget(cheep) films with terrible cgi*(cheep) and instead of releasing them to TV, they are "films" which go DVD first then released to TV. CHEEP. puk puk puk puk-keek, cheep.

* NOTE: Just because other films have CGI in them doesn't mean you have too. Crap CGI RUINS THE FEKING MOVIE SO DON"T DO IT. arghghghhgghghhg. and relax.

I agree with Pablo. There was lots of these TV cheapo sequels and it looks like due to the success of the DVD market, things have migrated over that way. There have been a lot of 'em lately for sure, I usually try to pretend they don't exist, but when you see 25 copies or more of Roadhouse 2 at the local conglomerate Video Rental store, you know the apocalypse is nigh

my perception of straight-to-video shifted in the last couple of years though, i can see shades of possibilities which aren't entirely to do with dumping things that wouldn't stand up elsewhere - more, creating an alternative form of cinema where films of higher stature than older s-t-v stuff can find a good audience without latching onto the cinema process. see japans v-cinema craze or trend of the 90s, films made on limited budgets solely for sales of rental VHS tapes to provintion towns unlikely to have their own cinema, has done great things for a different aspect of filmmaking and feeds into traditional projects too. as for 'goonies 2' (i saw the original at the cinema, still love it), its perhaps a little more reminiscent of the disney debacle, where sequels for video sales have actually managed to cheapen or devalue the perception of the original classics. its a shame, but i think there's something slightly different at work here, perhaps we're about to have a new alternative direct-to-DVD scene in blockbusters?!

"its perhaps a little more reminiscent of the disney debacle, where sequels for video sales have actually managed to cheapen or devalue the perception of the original classics. its a shame,"

I believe the industry term for this is Cheap-quels, and I thought that the PIXAR/DISNEY merge and John Lassiter being more involved in the business decisions at the new Pix-ney was going to phase this practice out, but I see they keep coming....I saw Cinderella 2 (or was it 3?) just got released on DVD.