probably going to cost you as much money as they owe you to fight ’em.’” As far as Crown’s business practices
go, opinions are mixed. While Cardi and Stromberg weren’t happy with the com- pany, Grefe asserts, “Red Jacobs was a tough old guy, but he was the type of guy who shook your hand and it was as good as any contract.” John H. Burrows, a producer for Crown
during the early ’70s, remembers Jacobs as a fair but by-the-books businessman. “If you made a picture and went to Crown for distribution, the deals were very tough. Red’s contracts were ironclad. Some of the producers, after they saw their first cheques, would go back to him and say, ‘Is this all we’re getting?’ Red would say, ‘Of course! You read the contract. We’re doing all the work. We’re out there push- ing your picture.’” And Crown certainly pushed some
strange pictures, including one of the kookiest horror films in its canon: Drac- ula’s Dog (1978). Directed by Albert Band (I Bury the Living), and starring Michael Pataki (Grave of the Vampire), José Ferrer (Blood Tide) and Reggie Nalder (Salem’s Lot), the canine in question is a Doberman with long fangs, designed by Stan Winston in one of his first makeup gigs. Business was booming, and Crown
dabbled in a variety of niches. For exam- ple, the boogie van craze led to the com- pany releasing teen comedy The Van (1977), featuring a kid trying to get lucky and make money racing his customized Dodge. Raunchy T&A comedies were also in, and the company put out a number of classics in the horny teen category, includ- ing Weekend with the Babysitter (1970), The Pom Pom Girls (1976) and arguably the best of the lot, Van Nuys Blvd. (1979), which were surprisingly much less raunchy than the competition. “Mark Tenser didn’t like dirty, smutty
movies,” explains David Baughn, the for- mer executive vice-president of distribu- tion at Crown. “He liked a very clean image, and light T&A comedy.” However, the Crown formula took a
sleazier, darker turn as the decade drew to a close, with 1979’s Malibu High, about a troubled high school girl who first be-
“ B “
LOOD FEAST IS A BLIGHT ON THE AMERICAN FILM INDUSTRY. IN EVERY DEPART- MENT – ACTING, CASTING, PRODUCTION, CAMERA WORK, DIALOGUE – IT IS AMA- TEUR NIGHT. ONLY THE MOST PUERILE READERS OF COMIC BOOKS WOULD DARE GO SEE THIS PICTURE,” wrote Kevin Thomas for the Los Angeles Times. However, this “amateur” film, made for $24,500, grossed over four million dollars and was the highest earning drive-in picture
of 1964. It remains one of the top cult movies of all time. On Valentine’s Day of last year, we lost one of the driving forces behind it, producer
David Friedman. He was an exploitation pioneer known as “King of the Trash Film,” who, along with Herschell Gordon Lewis, invented the gore film. Raised in the carnival business, Friedman brought that P.T. Barnum school of showmanship to his movie campaigns, with taglines such as “Nothing so appalling in the annals of horror!” and “Gruesomely stained in blood color.” A wordsmith and master promoter, he gave up a prominent position at Paramount to take on a life producing and distributing exploitation films. Conducting interviews for my 2013 documentary, Exploit This!: The Complete History
of Exploitation Cinema in America, a few summers ago, I had the honour of visiting Fried- man in his home in Anniston, Alabama, where I was greeted in a den of old carnival relics, circus posters and memorabilia, and exploitation posters from the early days. Surrounded by this ephemera, he told me the following story of the night Blood Feast opened at the drive-in. Here it is, in his own words...
Stan Kohlberg owned the drive-in. So we’d fin- ished the movie – as you know, Bob Sinise cut the
picture, the father of actor Gary Sinise. ... Bob called me and said he’d just seen this scene where Fuad Ramses pulls the tongue out of the girl’s mouth. He says, “Where are you going to play this?” And I said, “Bob, don’t worry about where I’m going to play it. You just cut it. And by the way, we don’t want it good, we want it Thursday, so get to work!” So, the picture’s finished and nobody’s
seen it. Herschell says, “You want to screen it?” “Yeah.” So, I said to my [wife] Carol, “You wanna see this thing?” She said, “Not really, but I’ll go with you.” So it was us, Herschell, Kohlberg of course, and one other guy that was asleep or drunk or something in the screening room. On the drive home to our apartment, I said,
“Well, what d’ya think of it?” And she says, “In one word: vomitous.” So the next day, I ordered half-a-million vomit bags and sent them out to every theatre that it was gonna play. Now the picture’s finished, Kohlberg says, “Where do
you wanna play? Do you wanna open here in Chicago?” I said, “No way, no way!” I said, “If it dies in Chicago, every- body in the world will know about it.” He says, “So, what about Gary?” – he had a drive-in in Gary, Indiana. “No, that’s too close to Chicago.” He said, “Oh, wait a minute. Let’s go down and open it in Peoria.” I said, “Okay. That’s
fine. If it doesn’t work there, nobody will know the difference.” Kohlberg was a showman and he had a pretty good
manager down there. He put up the one-sheet and gave out the barf bags and everything else. [On the night of the premiere], we get about five miles out from the theatre and suddenly there’s a funeral [procession] ... Inching along, in the distance I can see the top of the screen tower of the Bel-Air Drive-in. I said, “Herschell, they’re going to see Blood Feast!” We get up there and there’s an Illinois state
trooper turning people away: “Full up! Full up!” And Herschell says, “Let me see you square him up.” Well, I get out and I said, “Hey sergeant, I’m the producer and this is the di- rector of the picture and we’d like–” “I oughta run you guys in! You’ve got my whole section clogged up! Well, get on in there, if you can find any room.” I think we parked at the projection booth.
The picture unreels and I’m standing there and some good ol’ boy, in overalls and a white shirt,
he’s watching this scene where Fuad Ramses is skinning the girl. He says, “They sure do make it look real, don’t they?” I said, “I heard those people in Hollywood really did that to those girls!” He said, “No shit!” That was so funny! On the way home, Carol says, “All the places are
closed. I’m starving!” But after that one night, that one screening in that one theatre, I knew my wife would never go hungry.
27RM
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