Audrey Fox
This may come as a shock to you, but I – the person at the other end of your keyboard cobbling together a living writing about film – was very into movies when I was a kid. So when my mother received a phone call in the early ‘90s offering to send kid-friendly VHS tapes directly to our house through the mail, she jumped at the opportunity. (I know, that was a very old-fashioned sentence.) That was our first encounter with Feature Films For Families – but it would not, as we quickly realized, be our last. The company, sensing perhaps that we were the prime targets that they could easily sink their claws into, kept calling. And calling. And calling. But what even was this film distribution company that relied on a bizarre direct sales approach? And what would it take to get Feature Films For Families to, at long last, leave us alone?
Feature Films for Families was founded in 1988 by Forrest S. Baker III, a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. His goal in creating the entertainment company was to provide kids and families with films that adhered to commonly held Mormon values, without violence, coarse language, or any other potentially offensive content. These films were not overtly religious, but they definitely felt like the only thing the kid in your health class who had to sit in the hallway during the lesson on birth control was allowed to watch. And without a reliable theatrical model, they focused instead on direct-to-video releases.
To be entirely fair to Feature Films for Families, they did have some bangers amidst their collection. Split Infinity appealed to the history buff in me, revolving around a young girl who goes back in time to help her grandfather save the family farm on the eve of the Great Depression. (And it’s one of the few time travel films where someone finally takes stock advice from the person from the future.) I actually broke the tape of Rigoletto, a musical fantasy perfect for Beauty and the Beast fans, from watching it so much. Looking back, it’s interesting to think about Feature Films for Families existing in this much more innocent window of time, where an unabashedly religious production company made films for kids that weren’t about proselytizing and indoctrination. A lot of these movies had female leads, girls who stood up for themselves and followed their dreams – a far cry from the tradwive trend currently sweeping the religious right, and the profound cultural shift that has taken place since the heyday of Feature Films for Families.
Although the asserted goals of the entertainment company seemed to have had good intentions, you know what they say about roads paved with those. And the longer Feature Films for Families operated, the harder it became to ignore the shady side of its business model: the ceaseless, infuriating phone calls. The obituary of Feature Films for Families founder Forrest S. Baker III, who died in 2024 at the age of 69, cheerfully claimed that he “invented a robust system for selling his films over the phone.” That’s certainly one way of putting it. Another way, as voiced by prosecuting attorneys, was that Feature Films for Families broke the law, flagrantly violating the Telemarketing Sales Rule.
This, understandably, landed the humble Mormon entertainment company in a bit of hot water, legally speaking. And once the lawsuits started coming, they didn’t stop. In 2009, they were sued for a shady collaboration with the Dove Corporation, using the latter company’s status as a non-profit in an attempt to get around telemarketing laws in Missouri. A year later, Verizon went after them when 500,000 illegal automated calls promoting The Velveteen Rabbit were placed on their network in just 10 days. And in 2011, a complaint was filed by the Federal Trade Commission against Baker and Feature Films for Families, alleging that they had made over 100 million illegal telemarketing calls. Many of these violations were triggered by their solicitation of DVD sales from individuals with phone numbers that were on the National Do Not Call Registry. Additionally, they were found to have misled their customers regarding what their purchases were funding – although many consumers were told that the profits from DVD sales were going to the Coalition for Quality Children’s Media to create a “Kids First” recommended viewing list, evidence suggests that Feature Films for Families and their co-defendants actually kept around 93% for themselves.
The case went to trial in 2016, and Feature Films for Families was found to have committed a shocking 117 million telemarketing violations. They were initially instructed to pay nearly $50 million in damages as a result of the lawsuit, although a judge later revised this amount to $500,000, recognizing that $50 million was well outside the realm of what the company could realistically pay. Nevertheless, even this $500,000 settlement financially devastated Feature Films for Families, and they never fully recovered, especially considering how far DVD sales had fallen while they were in the midst of these lawsuits.
But the more I dug into Feature Films for Families, the weirder it got. The internet is full of wild stories from former employees who claimed that in the wake of the Columbine shootings, they were instructed to guilt call recipients into buying family-friendly films, playing on the fears at the time that the shooters had been influenced by violent media. Another claims to have been fired for not pressuring customers in New Orleans to make purchases in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. It seems like Feature Films for Families, bastion of Christian entertainment that it was, had strayed a little too far from the light of God.
Up until 2024, they seemed to be attempting some sort of streaming subscription model, complete with a Facebook page using shoddy Photoshop to promote their ‘90s classics. But the last update there came in July 2024 – less than a month after its founder’s death – apologizing for technical glitches on their streamer, which now redirects to GoDaddy.com. (If you’re interested, you can buy the domain for just under $400, which in my opinion is not an unreasonable amount of money to spend on an elaborate prank.)
And so Feature Films for Families finally faded away into oblivion – not with a bang, but with a kind of embarrassing Facebook post. With them goes a lot of memories for an extremely niche ‘90s audience. At their best, they actually lived up to their mission statement – some of their movies were decent childrens’ entertainment, and while you can see the conservative lean in how they depict traditional American families, they were a far cry from the indoctrinating propaganda that passes for cinema in right-wing circles today. But at their worst … well, if they were characters in their own movies that the earnest, virtuous children had to face, they would unquestionably be the villains.
