Summer of Blood: A Look Back at 1963, Part 2

As part of our ongoing celebration of the 50th anniversary of Blood Feast, more blurbs from BoxOffice magazine about regional horror happenings from that seminal summer.


From the June 10, 1963 issue:

Dave Friedman is making a cross-country tour on behalf of "Scum of the Earth" and "Blood Feast," produced by Friedman and Stanford Kohlberg. "Scum of the Earth" had its initial opening at the Bellvue Drive-In, Peoria, with healthy gross.

Chicago producer Bill Rebane has resumed shooting his "Terror at Half Day," science fiction film, starring June Travis Freidlob ...

Note in the Friedman item that Scum of the Earth was previewed at the very same drive-in where Blood Feast would premiere a month later in July 1963.

There were also more updates about the Flamingo production of Miami Rendezvous, which we earlier established was released as Passion Holiday.

From the June 10, 1963 issue:

21 Miamians Play Roles in 'Miami Rendezvous'

MIAMI -- Shooting on the new full-length color film, "Miami Rendezvous," is under way at Crandon Park, with some interiors being made at the Barcelona Hotel on Miami Beach.

Gloria Izzo, who is handling casting and coordination for producers Irwin and Herb Myers of Flamingo Productions, said camera crews were expected to be working here for a couple of weeks.

Girls in bikinis have been flitting about the Barcelona pool area, strippers have been cavorting in the Bravo Room, and men and women dressed in evening wear have been parading before the camera.

The cast is composed mostly of Miamians, and among those "makng the scene" were Peg Rayborn, Sharon Lee, Virginia Horn, Bobbie Shaw, Lanita Kent, Connie Crump, Harold Richter, Ludovic Huot, Owen Negrin, Pearl Rubin, Gertrude Dean, Monroe Myers, Lou Horn, Ed Bell, Sid Katz, Marion Webber, Eva and Charles Bartfield, John Wentz, Frances Glick and Bob Krantz Jr.

From the July 1, 1963 issue:

Nine Movies Are Planned By Flamingo Productions

MIAMI -- Flamingo Productions completed shooting on "Miami Rendezvous" and already is preparing for its next motion picture here.

At least nine movies are in the planning stage by the newly formed company, headed by Herb Meyer, producer, and Irwin Meyer, producer-director. Their next film will be a horror picture with a psychopathic theme.

Gloria Izzo, casting director and production coordinator, announced that casting for the new picture will begin this month and that shooting will be started in mid-July. 

"Miami Rendezvous" is a full-length suspense-adventure feature, with mostly local talent. All scenes were made in the South Florida area.

The producers cite the following conditions as being favorable to the output of low-budget pictures:

"Excellent filming weather 12 months of the year; many expert technicians available, already skilled in their trade, who prefer living in the Miami area; a wide variety of locations within a 100-mile radius, such as dense jungles, barren beaches, unspoiled islands, cattle ranches and horse-breeding farms, modern metropolitan cities, fabulous hotels, Seminole Indians and villages, a huge modern airport complex and Caribbean settings, plus excellent facilities such as studios, sound stages, etc., for processing film."

Summer of Blood: A Look Back at 1963, Part 1

This summer will mark the 50th anniversary of H.G. Lewis' groundbreaking gore film Blood Feast. I'll be posting a number of trade press items about the film from that period over the next few months, leading up to the "official" anniversary date in July. In the meantime, I thought I'd post some other items related to regional horror film production in 1963 as well.

It was that year, for example, that a number of tax incentives went into effect that helped spur independent film production in general (and regional film production specifically), and you can see a steady increase in indie film output from that year forward until the tax breaks were eliminated in the 1980s. 1963 also marked the debut of key early works from the likes of Larry Buchanan, William Grefe, Bill Rebane, and other regional horror stalwarts.

Below I've gathered a few items from BoxOffice magazine's May 1963 issues that are related to some of those filmmakers. To put things in context, in 1963 Hollywood was facing declining attendance numbers as television gained a greater foothold in American households. Films deemed too violent or racy were still subject to bans from local censor boards and attacks from women's groups and the Catholic Legion of Decency. Many theaters (particularly in the South) were still segregated. Blood Feast arrived at a time when the American horror market was dominated by low-rent Psycho knock-offs and Roger Corman's Poe series, but far from Hollywood a new group of filmmakers was starting to emerge that would take the genre in new, and often exceedingly odd, directions.

Invasion of the What?

The May 13, 1963 edition of BoxOffice included this nugget, which refers to two early Del Tenney features (Invasion of the Zombies was actually the working title of Horror of Party Beach). The same issue indicated that Tenney's partner, Alan Iselin, was expanding his theater chain, snapping up drive-ins in Florida and New York.

New Company Turns Out Two Horror Attractions

NEW YORK -- A new company, Iseling-Tenny Productions, has been in existence about four months and has turned out two feature films, "The Curse of the Living Corpse" and "Invasion of the Zombies" at Stamford, Conn.

The company is headed by Alan V. Iselin, an upstate New York and Florida theatre owner, and Del Tenney, a former stage and television actor, who serves as producer-director.

Complete merchandising manuals rather than the usual press books will be prepared for each picture and combination, Iselin said.

Ted Spiegel, former advertising-publicity director for Kingsley International Pictures and for Union Film Distributors, has been named vice-president in charge of advertising, publicity and merchandising for the new company.

Approximately two pictures a year are planned by Iselin and Tenney. In preparation are "Airlines Stewardesses" and "Ski Weekend."

Larry Buchanan Makes a Splash

1963 was the year of PT 109, Cleopatra, Bye Bye Birdie, The Great Escape, The Birds, How the West Was Won, and From Russia With Love. But one of the films nabbing BoxOffice headlines (and raking in a lot of cash) was Larry Buchanan's controversial Free, White and 21. The film, distributed by American International Pictures, was a courtroom drama (based on a true story) about a black man accused of raping a white woman, and was successful enough to establish an ongoing relationship between Buchanan and AIP that eventually resulted in the production of a slough of cheap made-for-TV monster movies.

A key part of the promotion of the film involved providing paper ballots to audience members so that they could serve as an ad hoc jury. Part of the film's ad campaign in Boston included call-in voting. The number in the Boston advertisements led to an answering service that was soon swamped with calls. According to BoxOffice May 20 issue:

"So great was the curiosity that the Copley exchagne in downtown Boston was inoperative due to the preponderance of the calls. At one time the load was so great that the telephone company had to change the downtown office exchange to a 'Devonshire' number.

"A count revealed 5,572 calls on one day, a record for such a device ... the machines broke down twice and had to be repaired due to the curiosity aroused by the subway posters and billboard posters."

A Romantic Adventure

BoxOffice June 3, 1963

Flamingo Productions Has First Picture Under Way

MIAMI -- A new motion picture company has been formed here under the name of "Flamingo Productions, Inc.," with Irwin and Herb Myers as producers. The two brothers have been in the construction and real estate development business here.

"Miami Rendevous," a romantic adventure, will be their first picture, and shooting has started on locations in Miami and Miami Beach. It will be a full-length feature in color, with Hal Carrington as camerman. 

Gloria Izzo is handling coordination and casting and the lead roles will be announced soon. An all-Miami cast is being assembled.

As far as I can tell, this film was released as Passion Holiday, and featured Christy Foushee (a.k.a. Blood Feast's Toni Calvert), Linda Hall, Yanka Mann (who appeared in several Florida-lensed horror films), and Stella Palma in the cast.

Also in the news on June 3:

Producer-director Bill Rebane, with a revised script, is trying to get police cooperation from superintendent O.W. Wilson in shooting Loop scenes for his sciece fiction movie, "Terror at Half Day." Hollywood producer Doc Stanford is Rebane's new partner.

The June 3, 1963 issue also lists Carnival of Souls as a current release from Herts-Lion International, even though that film was already a year old at the time.

Trailer of the Week: Monster a Go-Go (1965)

Two years in the making! What do you get when Bill Rebane starts a film and Herschell Gordon Lewis finishes it? You get this.

Regional Horror Hit Parade: Track 3

No 1970s bigfoot film was complete without a dance sequence. From Bill Rebane's The Capture of Bigfoot (1979), here are The Friends singing "Sensuous Tiger."

Composers Mitch and Keith Irish still operate a marketing firm in Wisconsin.

BoxOffice Covers: The 1970s, Part 1

A selection of BoxOffice magazine covers featuring regional horror releases. Tomorrow, I'll post a few more goodies, in addition to covers featuring some more esoteric, non-horror releases from regional directors/producers.

Trailer of the Week: The Giant Spider Invasion (1975)

Best giant spider movie from Wisconsin ever? Maybe.

Snow Day!

In honor of the record snowfall here in the midwest, here is a selection of winter-themed regional horror film trailers:

First, from the wilds of Massachusetts and New Hampshire comes Winterbeast, filmed in 1986 and released on video in 1992 by Ohio-based Tempe Entertainment:




Next, coming at you from the snowy climes of upstate New York, the fevered imagination of the screenwriter of Invasion of the Blood Farmers (1972) and the warped cinematic sensibilities of pornographers Michael and Roberta Findlay, I present Shriek of the Mutilated (1974). In addition to a fluffy white yeti mauling college students, it has a funny song about bigfoot, a lengthy party sequence set to the song "Popcorn" by Hot Butter, and the best non-sequitor-death-by-electric-carving-knife sequence ever. Ever.



Finally, we have Bill Rebane's Wisconsin-set The Capture of Bigfoot (1979). Like almost every other entry in the short-lived but memorable sub-genre of albino bigfoot movies, this one features a ridiculous dance sequence. Ladies and gentlemen, feast your ears on the haunting strains of "Sensuous Tiger" by "The Friends."

The Giant Spider Invasion that Wasn't

We were, needless to say, bummed when we learned that the previously announced two-disc special edition DVD of Wisconsin filmmaker Bill Rebane's The Giant Spider Invasion had been cancelled by MVD Entertainment because of a long-standing dispute between Rebane and RetroMedia's Fred Olen Ray regarding the video distribution rights.

RetroMedia bought exclusive rights to both Giant Spider Invasion and Rebane's Blood Harvest several years ago. The Giant Spider DVD was released in 2002, and included an introduction by Akron horror host The Son of Ghoul, and a reproduction of the comic book originally published to promote the film. Rebane then re-sold the rights again to BCI/Brentwood (in violation of his agreement with RetroMedia), which unleashed Spider in a four-film packaged called "Invasion of Terror," alongside The Black Room (1984), Craze (1973) and Rebane's Invasion from Inner Earth (1974). Ray filed suit against Rebane, and in 2007 courts in California and Wisconsin ruled in RetroMedia's favor.

You can read Rebane's version of events here, and Ray's thoughts on the matter (and supporting legal references) here.

Rebane has been offering a special edition of the film through various channels (including Amazon.com) on a DVD-R for some time, and this material was apparently going to be used on the MVD release.

If you REALLY need a Rebane fix, you can always check out some of his other films. Rana: The Legend of Shadow Lake (1975) is on an old DVD from Troma under the title Croaked: Frog Monster from Hell. His final feature, Twister's Revenge! (1987) is on the "Drive-In Movie Classics" 50 film pack from Mill Creek, while that same company's "Chilling Classics" collection boasts no less than three Rebane epics: The Alpha Incident (1978), The Demons of Ludlow (1983) and The Cold (a.k.a. The Game, 1984). Mill Creek's "Apocalypse" 20 movie set includes Invasion from Inner Earth under the title They.

RetroMedia issued a special edition disc of the Tiny Tim tour de force Blood Harvest (1987), and Something Weird offers the Rebane-meets-H.G. Lewis classic Monster a Go-Go (1965) on a double feature disc with Psyched by the 4D Witch (1972). RetroMedia also released my favorite Rebane film, The Capture of Bigfoot (1979), on the"Bigfoot Terror" four-movie set, where it makes a nice double feature with the New York lensed Shriek of the Mutilated (1974).

You can view some clips of the bonus material from Rebane's release of the film on YouTube, including a weird segment where a guy reads portions of Stephen King's description of the film from the book Danse Macabre. Click here and here.