Around this time, there was an independent British production-distribution company called Planet Films which was owned by Tom Blakeley and Bill Chalmers, whom I knew well. Blakeley had been producing low-budget movies in Manches- ter for several years and Chalmers was running a distribution company called Butcher’s Films. I was selling their films in America and finding product for them to distribute in the UK. Planet had just finished a vampire movie, DEVILS OF DARKNESS [1965], which I sold on their behalf to 20th Cen- tury Fox for distribution in America. Blakeley had a script called THE NIGHT THE SILICATES CAME [later retitled ISLAND OF TERROR] sent to him by two writers who were then living in Spain, Edward Andrew Mann and Allan Ramsen. Ramsen was an American expatriate who had tried to become an actor at Universal in Hollywood with no success. Blakeley wanted to film THE NIGHT THE SILICATES CAME as his next production but it was a much more expensive project than his usual films and he needed a partner. He brought the script to Gerry
and me and asked if we would like to participate in it. The idea was that Planet would distribute the film in England and we could have the rest of the world rights.
When I read the screenplay, I thought it was exactly the kind of thing that we were looking for, and as close to being “ready to go” as any script I had ever read. However, I was hesitant to say yes because, as I explained to Gerry, programming in the UK and America, and most of the rest of the world, was still double feature and if we did not have a second film to go with it, we would end up as someone else’s second feature and get the short end of the deal. We would have to have another film to make up our own double pro- gram—especially for the American market, where I had done a deal like that with MGM a few years earlier for THE HAUNTED STRANGLER and FIEND WITHOUT A FACE. Gerry agreed. My brother Alex was then working in Hollywood and very much involved with Jim Nicholson and Sam Arkoff at American International. He used to
“They Must Suck Your Bones To Live!” promised the UK ads for ISLAND OF TERROR.
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