The New Poverty Row: A history of low-budget hustling for film dollars

Review by Doug Gibson

I enjoyed Fred Olen Ray's book, "The New Poverty Row: Independent Filmmakers as Distributors," McFarland, 1991. Published 25 years ago, it's still for sale by its distributor. 

FOR is a very talented writer. I always enjoyed his articles and letters in my old Cult Movies magazines. When he wrote this he was still a low-budget filmmaker, with a decade-plus of experience, trying not so much to break through as a director, but as a filmmaker who could take his product and make money. Hence his efforts to distribute with American Independent Productions.

FOR feels a kinship with his subjects, and for the era, a few years before the Net changed research, what we have are seven superbly researched, of various essay lengths, profiles of FOR and six other low-budget filmmakers who tried to increase profits through self-distribution. They are:

-- Jerry Warren, Associated Distributors Productions, Inc.

-- Roger Corman, Filmgroup

-- David L. Hewitt, American General Pictures

-- Sam Sherman, Independent-International Pictures

-- Lawrence H. Woolner, Dimension Pictures

-- and Fred Olen Ray with AIP

Much has been written about Corman, but FOR manages to provide the future legendary low-budget filmmaker's struggles to create his own distribution dollars. Filmgroup lasted a few years but the margins, even for the most minutely budgeted films, were tiny or non-existent. The best parts of the Corman chapter are the accounts of making tiny-budgeted films in Puerto Rico. It's also interesting to learn that many films grabbed for revision by low-budget directors/producers came from behind the Iron Curtain. Queen of Blood was one.

Warren, as FOR explains with affection, was the type who just wanted a film in the can; forget the quality, sell the sizzle. What's most interesting about Warren is that the films he cobbled and mangled for release, usually with the stately Katherine Victor, were likely better in their original versions.

Sherman and Woolner represent the types of filmmakers in the last decade of big-screen-only features. Like Herschell Gordon Lewis and David Friedman, they were interested in pushing the boundaries of what could be shown on the big screen. Whether it was a mix of gore and sex, such as Blood Island films or Al Adamson's horror opuses, or just plain sex, with nurses or stewardess films, they were sold to drive ins with teens and young adults glancing at the screen in between make out sessions. Sherman and others were also great at mixing movies, taking Movie A, adding much of Movie B, and throwing in a dash of Movie C. Not surprisingly, they would often remix the movie, change the title, and presto, have a new release. Dracula Vs. Frankenstein, which played on TV last Halloween season, is a great example of a blended movie. The Shermans and the Woolners, or their successors, finally threw in the towel when the majors begin to mimic them; think Friday the 13th and Porky's.

Hewitt was my favorite chapter, maybe because even today there's so little out there about the guy who helmed The Mighty Gorga, The Wizard of Mars, or my favorite, Gallery of Horrors, and a couple of other films. He also distributed the neglected gem, Spider Baby. (Only in this world could Spider Baby be the second big-screen offering to micro-budget bores Gallery or Gorga!) It's fun to learn that Gallery's ineptitude is partially caused by producers with financial pull nixing Hewitt's idea to film it as a type of comic book -- and this was at least 15 years before Creepshow!

FOR's chapter is very personal and describes how he learned the basics of filmmaking just by doing it and learning from mistakes. From the first, one learns that you almost always won't make money from distributors if you're a low-budget filmmaker. FOR understands that and recounts his experiences without pity, and sometimes with wry humor. His first film cost about $12,000 and featured Buster Crabbe. I really enjoy FOR's passion for the old genre stars, and his efforts to have them in his films. He's been so prolific the past 35 years, directing in just about every genre.

FOR has many, many anecdotes, and they make for great reading. The old "stars," Carradine, Chaney Jr., were used by so many poverty-row directors for a day and later hyped on ads with promises that the films can never live up to. The New Poverty Row is filled with old movie stills and ads of distinct marketing pitches. It's amusing to see one film's ads under different titles. FOR also is very frank in his assessments of many of the films. He's quick to pan the films he feels deserve that label.

An underlying, subtle theme to this book is its featuring the low-budget filmmakers-cum-distribution hustlers who were in the business during the quarter century before VHS became big and basically threw low-budget filmmakers away from the big screens and into living rooms with the direct-to-video labels. (I know that was a very cumbersome sentence. I may edit it some day). That sell-it-for-home-use strategy still exists today with DVDs and online/cloud video, which now threatens the existence of the DVD market. The cycle of film challenges for dollars continues. 

FOR's book, already detailing a now-gone era of low-budget filmmaking, is a treasure for genre film fans. Read it. If you don't want to pay $25, it can be purchased used. I bought mine for a few dollars. It was an old copy that was once in The City University Library in London!

Six Jerry Warren classics on DVD from VCI Entertainment!

By Steve D. Stones

If you thought Ed Wood made ridiculously bad films, it’s likely you’ve never sat through a Jerry Warren Z-movie bomb. VCI Entertainment and Kit Parker Films teamed up in 2013 to release six Warren classics on two DVDs. Each DVD has three films with trailers, deleted scenes and interviews with cast members – such as Katherine Victor and Geraldine Brianne Murphy – the women who wore the Yeti costume in Man Beast (1956).

Volume One contains The Wild World of Bat Woman (aka She Was A Hippie Vampire - 1966), Curse of The Stone Hand (1964), and Man Beast (1956). Volume Two contains Attack of The Mayan Mummy (1964), Creature of The Walking Dead (1965) and House of Black Death (1965) – starring horror icons Lon Chaney and John Carradine.

Three of the films on both volumes are chopped up Mexican imports that Warren cut then added scenes with padded, long dialog and boring voice-over narration. The added scenes combined with the existing Mexican footage are confusing and do not add much to the finished product. Attack of The Mayan Mummy, Curse of The Stone Hand and Creature of The Walking Dead are all examples of this.  Creature of The Waking Dead is the most watchable of the three, but may still test your movie watching attention span.

Warren makes better films when he does not rely on cutting existing footage from imports. Man Beast is a good example of this. The film has a simple, easy to follow plot concerning an expedition that sets out to find the existence of Yeti creatures in the Himalayan Mountains. The film may look cheap, but at least it does not confuse the viewer, as his chopped up Mexican imports do. It may be his best film ever.

I’m hopeful that VCI Entertainment and Kit Parker Films will release a third volume on DVD of Warren’s films that includes three more of his beloved drive-in fodder  classics– such as The Incredible Petrified World, Teenage Zombies and Invasion of The Animal People. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.  Happy viewing. 

MAN BEAST!!!!

MAN BEAST: Covered with hair!

By Steve Stones

Every cult movie director has a “masterpiece” film that they are known for. Ed Wood has Plan 9 From Outer Space. Ted V. Mikels has The Corpse Grinders. Russ Meyer has “Faster Pussycat, Kill! . . . Kill!” Claudio Fragasso has Troll II, and Andy Milligan has Torture Dungeon. If Jerry Warren ever created a “masterpiece film,” I would have to say Man Beast is it. If you compare Man Beast to most of his other efforts, such as Teenage Zombies, The Wild World of Batwoman or The Incredible Petrified World, you will see that from a technical and acting standpoint, Man Beast ascends above all his other films. That’s not to say that Man Beast would ever make the American Film Institute’s 100 Best Films of All Time, but neither would 99.9 percent of all films ever made or will be made in the future.

Because Warren’s films are low budget, they have a very amateurish and hokey feeling about them that is comparable to a seventh grade stage production. Man Beast is amateurish, but it is not hokey by and sense of the word. This is also what makes it a much better film than most of Warren’s other efforts.

Connie Hayward is desperate to find her brother Jim, who is on an expedition in the Himalayan Mountains. With the aide of her boyfriend Hud and guide Steve Cameron, she sets out on a long journey into the Himalayas to find her brother. Along the way they encounter Dr. Erickson, an anthropologist, and a man named Varga. The group finds the remains of Jim Hayward’s sabotaged camp. Apparently someone or something invaded the camp and destroyed the cabin tents. The group arrives at the conclusion that Jim Hayward must now be dead, attacked by a Yeti.

Hud eventually discovers a cave that he leads the entire group to. In the cave, a giant Yeti, played by actor Rock Madison, attacks the group. The Yeti pushes Hud over a cliff to his death. Steve begins to suspect that Varga has something to do with the Yeti attacking the group and begins to mistrust him. Erickson thinks Steve is jittery and paranoid.

Varga is able to get Steve and Erickson to follow him to another cave location. While on route to the cave, an avalanche separates Steve from Varga and Erickson. Varga demands that Erickson follow him to the cave and forget about Steve. In the cave, Varga reveals that he is part Yeti by showing his hairy chest. He claims he must kill Erickson for discovering his secret of the Yeti.

After killing Erickson, Varga goes after Connie in an attempt to breed with her to perpetuate his Yeti blood strain. Steve comes to the rescue, and a fight ensues between the two men. Varga eventually falls off a cliff to his death, and Steve rides off into the sunset with Connie as his new lover.

In most Warren films, the costumes look fake and hilariously unconvincing. This is not the case with Man Beast. The Yeti creature looks quite convincing, yet not hokey in any way. The scenes of mountain climbers in Man Beast could very well rival any seen in big-budget Hollywood films, such as The Eiger Sanction or Cliffhanger.

My only criticism of this film is that the mountain explorers carry very small lightweight packs into the Himalayan Mountains. Every time they stop to set up camp, the camp magically appears to have very large cabintents set up with foldable sleeping cots inside. Any one who is a camper knows that you have to use very large, metal-framed packs to hold all your food, tents, sleeping bags and other necessary supplies. How someone could survive several days in the Himalayan Mountains with small packs that cannot hold many supplies, let alone full sized cabin tents with foldable cots is beyond me. I’m a camper myself, and I know from experience that camping for even a couple of days requires that I use a large, strong pack to carry all my necessary items.

Man Beast is one of many in the science fiction sub-genre of Bigfoot and Yeti films. Hammer Studios in England made the excellent The Abominable Snowman of The Himalayas in 1957, starring Peter Cushing and Forrest Tucker. Low budget director and producer W. Lee Wilder made The Snow Creature in 1954 to double bill at drive-in theaters with his Killers From Space. If you have never seen a Jerry Warren film, I recommend that you start with Man Beast, just to see what his best film looks like before you jump into many of his other low budget efforts. This one won’t freeze up your DVD player.

An Incredible Petrified Movie

THE INCREDIBLE PETRIFIED WORLD: An Incredible Petrified Movie.
By Steve Stones

This is certainly not Jerry Warren’s worst effort, but it’s also not his best. I give my vote to Warren’s Man Beast as his best. Like all his films, it suffers greatly in budget and runs short in length. It helps that veteran actor John Carradine is cast in the film, and Robert Clarke, star of The Hideous Sun Demon and The Astounding She-Monster. Carradine was known as one of the busiest and hardest working actors in the entertainment industry. Somehow he was able to squeeze this turkey into his busy schedule.

Although the film has an interesting plot, it is full of unintentional humor as a result of its hampered budget. For example, oceanographer Carradine launches a diving bell from his boat near the Florida Keys. The bell contains four ocean explorers who are former students of Carradine’s. As the bell is launched, it’s obvious that the bell is too small to hold a five-year-old child comfortably, let alone four grown adults who are supposed to be inside the bell. When the bell breaks from the chain that connects it to the boat, the four explorers leave the bell in scuba gear. The bell is so small that the divers have to pretend as if they are leaving the top of the bell, but actually they are swimming up from behind it. A much larger diving bell should have been
used.

Another ridiculous scene shows Robert Clarke inside the bell dressed in his scuba gear sharpening the ends of three spears by rubbing them on the top of the radio gear. The spears are to be used to hunt for fish. Anyone who was ever a Boy Scout knows that the only way to sharpen something is to use a sharpening stone, or to carve a sharp point on the end with a pocketknife. Why Clarke is using the top of the radio gear to sharpen the spears is a bit odd, yet funny and typical of a low budget movie.

Seeing the lovely Phyllis Coates run around inside the underground ocean caverns in high heels is also very ridiculous, yet adds some unintentional humor to the film. Coates is best know as the panther girl in the 1950s serial Panther Girl of The Congo, and as Lois Lane in the 1950s Superman TV show. It’s unfortunate that Coates is not running around in her sexy panther girl outfit for this film. It would add greater interest to the film, especially for male viewers.

A question that always enters my mind every time I’ve seen this film is: If the divers have the ability to leave the diving bell after it breaks from the chain connected to the boat, why don’t they just swim to the top to get help? Why go through the effort of swimming to some underground caverns in the ocean only to be stranded for a longer period of time? This is a part of the plot that doesn’t make any sense to me.

The divers eventually encounter a man in the caverns who has been stranded there for fourteen years. He wears a phony wig and beard, and is dressed like a caveman. In Michael J. Weldon’s book The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, Weldon identifies John Carradine as the actor playing the caveman. I have great respect for Weldon, but it is obvious that he has never seen The Incredible Petrified World; otherwise he would clearly know that Carradine is the oceanographer in the film, not the caveman.

The lesson to be learned from this film: If you’re going to explore the ocean in a diving bell with several people, use a much larger bell, and take enough supplies with you to last for several days. If you leave the bell, swim to the surface for help. Don’t go swimming around looking for non-existent ocean caverns. Always carry a pocketknife in case you need to carve spears to hunt for food. And lastly, don’t allow John Carradine to design your diving bell. If a small bell that barely fits a child breaks when he launches it into the ocean, imagine what would happen if
he designed a bell big enough to actually fit four grown adults? In the meantime, don’t forget your scuba gear, and be careful not to get “the bends” from being in the water too long. Keep an eye out for those sharks too!

All about 'Teenage Zombies'!

By Steve D. Stones

TEENAGE ZOMBIES: A Jerry Warren “Schlock-ster-piece.”

Anyone who wants to climb on board the convenient bandwagon of labeling Ed Wood as the “worst director of all time” needs to spend some time sitting through a Jerry Warren film. Wood, in my opinion, is the Ingmar Bergman of low-budget filmmaking in comparison to Jerry Warren. Warren’s films are like watching a seventh grade stage production: entertaining, but extremely amateurish and very hokey. He also fills his films with lots of voice over narration that very quickly becomes annoying to the viewer. Go watch Creature of The Walking Dead or the opening of The
Incredible Petrified World and you’ll see what I mean. Although Teenage
Zombies has its share of flaws, the one thing going for it is that it
does not have any of Warren’s trademark voice-over narration in the
entire film. That is a relief for anyone who mines his films.

A group of teenagers, lead by Don Sullivan, star of The Giant Gila
Monster and Monster of Piedras Blancas, discovers a remote island. They
explore the island and are captured by evil terrorist-scientist
Katherine Victor. Victor’s dopey slave zombie Ivan captures the teens
and holds them in a cage. Meanwhile Victor and her colleagues have plans
for world domination by developing mind-controlling capsules that they
hope to drop in the waters and streams of most major American cities,
thus turning people into mindless zombies. The plot is ludicrous, but
that’s it in a nutshell.

Friends of the captured teens group together and go searching for their
lost friends. They ask the aide of the local sheriff. When the search
party and the sheriff arrive at the island and are lead to Victor and
her colleagues, they discover that the sheriff is also in on the plot by
providing Victor with drunks and derelicts to test her mind-controlling
capsules on. The teens are able to escape by the end of the film, but
not without encountering a man in a cheesy gorilla costume.
Unfortunately, George Barrows is not the man in the costume. Eventually
they arrive back in their hometown and the military awards them an award
of bravery and a visit to the White House to meet the President.

If you’ve never seen a Jerry Warren film, I would suggest that you start
with his best film, which is Man Beast, followed by The Wild World of
Batwoman, also starring Katherine Victor. Batwoman was also released as:
She Was A Hippy Vampire. Apparently Warren had some copyright issues in
using the word batwoman in the first title. The Wild World of Batwoman
is a parody of the James Bond, Batman TV craze of the 1960s. If you
don’t take the film too seriously, it is a real hoot to watch. As for
Teenage Zombies, it may take some getting use to viewing a Warren film
before you can sit through this film. Happy viewing!!!