On this episode, we’re going to do something we haven’t done in nearly a year and a half. Dedicate a show to films for whom their release was the only release ever done by a particular distributor.
The Orphans.
Since it’s very hard to do a full show on a distributor that only ever released one movie, I collect these orphans like a crazy cat person collects felines, and every so often unleash them grouped together so they can have their moment in the spotlight.
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Edward
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From Los Angeles, California, the Entertainment Capital of the World, it’s The 80s Movies Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today.
On this episode, we’re going to do something we haven’t done in nearly a year and a half. Dedicate a show to films for whom their release was the only release ever done by a particular distributor.
The Orphans.
Since it’s very hard to do a full show on a distributor that only ever released one movie, I collect these orphans like a crazy cat person collects felines, and every so often unleash them grouped together so they can have their moment in the spotlight.
But before we get to that, a quick shout out and thank you to listener Matthew Martin, who found something I wasn’t able to find for our last episode. On our MPM episode, I mentioned I couldn’t find a single playdate for the 1982 Ulli Lommel movie Brainwaves starring Kier Dullea of 2001: A Space Odyssey fame. Well, Matthew found one for me, and ironically found it in a place I was searching for it. The Friday, November 19th, 1982 edition of the Cincinnati Enquirer has a quarter page ad for Brainwaves, showing it playing at three theatres in Cincinnati, the Eastgate, the Erlanger, and the Springdale. So thank you, once again, to Matthew for that find.
Our first movie of today’s episode, The Last Fight, was the eighth film directed by the legendary Fred “The Hammer” Williamson, who also wrote, produced and starred in the film as his most iconic character, Jesse Crowder.
Quick primer if you are unsure of who Fred Williamson is…
After a successful football career in the American Football League in the 1960s, Fred Williamson would quickly become one of the top stars of Black cinema. He would become such an important figure in Black cinema that within five years, he was writing and/or producing and/or directing his own films. He was so big, he was able to get Paramount Pictures to release not one but two movies with The N Word in the title into theatres.
To help get the film made and released, Williamson would turn to film industry veteran Mel Maron, who had recently left World Northal Pictures, a company he started in the early 1970s to handle Godzilla and Bruce Lee movies before the turned to global arthouse films like Peter Weir’s The Last Wave and Nicolas Roeg’s Bad Timing, A Sensual Obsession, who was starting up a new distribution company called Best Film and Video.
Filmed in 1981, a pre Crossover Dreams Ruben Blades stars as Andy “Kid” Clave, a singer who has turned to boxing to pay the bills. He signs a contract with a shady boxing promoter, who kills Kid’s girlfriend when the promoter thinks Kid is about to back out of his contract. Kid soon discovers there’s a blood clot in his head that could kill him, so he teams up with Williamson’s Jesse Crowder to try and finish off the promoter and win a major title at the same time.
Also featuring boxing promoter Don King as himself, the legendary Joe Spinell and a pre-To Live and Die in L.A. Darlanne Fluegel, The Last Fight would open on 79 screens in New York City on September 9, 1983. The reviews were not good. In fact, they were brutal. Brutal much like the fate of practically every character in the movie. But Williamson was still a marquee name, at least in New York City. The first three days would see the film bring in $430k, the second best new opener in town and fourth best performing movie overall.
But that wasn’t enough for most theatre operators. By the following week, most New York theatres had dropped the film for other movies, and the only theatre still playing the film in Manhattan, the RKO National Twin, saw its second week grosses drop from $30k to just $8k. By the third week, it’d be out of The Big Apple completely.
All those prints had been moved to other markets to open on September 30th. Three in Charlotte. Two in Greenville, SC. One in Anderson SC, Beauford SC, Durham NC, and Myrtle Beach SC.
The next stop for the film would be Chicago, where the film played on 24 screens starting October 7th. Williamson would fly in to The Windy City to make an appearance at the famed Chicago Theatre, where the prime show would be proceeded with a “prizefight” on the street in front of the theatre. This promotion would help the Chicago Theatre do $15,500 for the opening weekend, but the other 23 theatres in Chicago could only manage $29k between them.
The following week, October 14th, The Last Fight would open on 31 screens in Los Angeles, including 14 drive-ins. As always, there were no reported grosses, but Variety did track nine of the theatres playing the film in Tinseltown, where it would earn $45,000. In its second week in Los Angeles, the film would be relegated to B movie status at the theatres and drive-ins still playing it, including one drive-in in Carson, where a Pepsi bottling plant is now set up, supporting Eddie and the Cruisers.
There’d be a few more playdates after that, including four screens in St. Louis for Thanksgiving weekend, but a grim $6k in five days would kill off the film once and for all. The final box office take would be around $600k.
Best Film and Video would cease to exist after that, and every Fred Williamson-directed film afterwards… that’s eleven and counting… has gone direct to video.
Our next movie is the third movie in the quote unquote Howling series, which, like the previous Howling quote unquote sequel, has almost nothing to do with the 1981 Joe Dante classic and takes place in a completely different setting, although the one thing it does have in coming with the second Howling movie is that they were both directed by Australian journeyman filmmaker Phillipe Mora.
Mora left the production of The Howling 2 after having a difference of opinion with the producers about the direction of that film, with the producers adding in additional nudity into the film. Mora would actually finance the $1.5m movie himself, as he wanted to make amends to the fans of the first Howling movie for how bad the second Howling movie turned out.
Filmed in Australia during their spring of 1986, remembering that in the Southern Hemisphere, our fall is their spring, the film would star popular Aussie actor Barry Otto as Harry, an Australian anthropologist who gets caught up in a pack of werewolves in the Outback, including one, Jerboa, who becomes a movie actor after a film director spots her on a park bench near the Sydney Opera House after she flees her sexually abusive stepfather. And then it gets crazier.
After seeing several dozen young Australian actresses, including a then nineteen year old Nicole Kidman, Mora would hire sixteen year old Imogen Annesley to play Jerboa, which makes parts of the film where Ms. Annesley is almost completely naked with only a sheer wet negligee or fur covering her rather uncomfortable.
Gary Brandner, the author of the Howling novels of which the films are somewhat based on, approved of Mora’s idea to satirize Hollywood and filmmaking inside a werewolf movie, although some Howling dogmatics will point out that, because of one scene in the movie, the werewolves aren’t actually werewolves, but no one really cares. It’s a silly movie that doesn’t take itself or its audience too serious.
Square Pictures, not to be confused with, as one Chicago film critic did, Circle Releasing, the 1980s American independent distributor started by indie film legend Ben Barenholtz who released movies like The Coen Brothers’ first film, Blood Simple, and John Woo’s The Killer, or Square Films, the production company started by Square Enix, the creators of the Final Fantasy game series for their 2001 film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, would pick up American distribution rights to the film.
Who was Square Pictures? I have no freaking clue. They never released a movie before The Howling III, they never released a movie after, and as far as I can tell, they never filed for a business license in California, Delaware, Nevada, or New York. But whomever they were, they had some money to give the film a somewhat proper release.
With ad support in the major newspapers, Square would open The Howling III on ten screens in New York, 25 in Los Angeles and 10 in Philadelphia, as well as screens in Allentown PA and Wilmington DE. And, like you’ve heard so many times recently on this podcast, the distributor did not report any grosses, but the film would do a dismal $30k in its ten New York theatres, an okay $21,500 in the five Los Angeles theatres, and $3,500 in the one Philly theatre tracked by Variety that week.
The following week, The Howling III would only be playing in one of those theatres, the State Theatre in downtown Los Angeles, as the B title in a triple feature along with The Running Man as the A title and Prom Night 2: Hello Betty Lou as the C title.
On December 4th, the film would open on four screens in Atlanta, three in Fort Worth TX, and three in Vancouver WA. No reported grosses. One theatre in Atlanta tracked. $3,400.
December 11th, there were two new bookings in Akron OH, and three in Phoenix. No reported grosses between these five theatres and the one in Atlanta still being tracked, a dismal $9,500.
December 18th would see two new screens in Chicago, six in Detroit, and five in Miami. No reported grosses. The two screens in Chicago did $10k.
By Christmas Day, only two theatres would be playing the film, one in Miami and one in Sacramento. And by New Years Day 1988, it was all over. Final grosses from the theatres tracked by Variety: $77,943. But it’s probably more like $125-150k once you add in all the theatres that were never tracked.
Ironically, the film would get some decent pull quotes from some major critics. Vincent Canby, the lead film critic for the New York Times, gave faint praise for the film, with the statement that if someone were only going to see one werewolf movie that year, they might as well make it this film, a not-altogether straight-faced howler on behalf of lycanthropes’ liberation. And Leonard Klady of the Los Angeles Times noted in his review the film was a campy recycling of familiar fangoria that was fitfully entertaining.
Our third and final film of this episode I saved for last because as I was researching this film and its filmmaker, I started to wish I had heard of him more while he was making films, because he was the epitome of what independent filmmaking was all about.
Also, Fred G. Sullivan and I happen to share a birthdate.
Fred was born on November 14th, 1945, in Glen Falls NY, at the base of the Appalachian Mountains that extends from Newfoundland Island in Canada to Central Alabama. As Sullivan grew up, graduated from high school and moved into adulthood, his heart never really left the region. He would receive a B.A. in history from Fordham University in New York City in 1967, and receive a masters in filmmaking from Boston University five years later.
Like Steven Spielberg, he had grown up using his town and his friends and family to make 8mm films, but unlike his slightly younger comtemporary, Sullivan returned to upstate New York, where he’d marry, have four kids, and work a variety of jobs while he worked on his first movie, a 1981 adventure drama called Cold River, which would be the first movie in several decades to be completely shot in the Appalachians. Based on a novel by William Judson, Cold River would feature such Hollywood actors as Richard Jaeckel, Robert Earl Jones, brother of James Earl Jones, and Brad Sullivan from Slap Shot and The Untouchables, who was no relation to Fred Sullivan. Jaeckel plays an Adirondack guide in 1932 who takes his daughter and step-son on a camping trip, only to find themselves separated during a ferocious and unexpected winter storm. The two kids must fend for themselves to get back home, without food or protection from the elements.
Naturally, Cold River would open at the Route 9 Cinema 5 theatre in Glen Falls NY on May 15th, 1981, and play for five weeks to sold out crowds. And while Fred G. Sullivan had incorporated The Adirondack Alliance Film Corporation in New York State in the early 1980s to make the movie, and that he would book the film in his home city theatre himself, deliver the print, and collect his portion of the ticket sales, Adirondack Alliance didn’t actually release the film. There is no credit for the company in the opening or closing credits, and what prints there are out there on the interwebs have Pacific International Enterprises, who would pick the movie up from Sullivan for general distribution, as the distributor. Outside of their logo, the film’s credits look otherwise untouched from when it played in Glen Falls. This is an important distinction because if they had released Cold River, the film I’m going to be talking about in a moment wouldn’t qualify as an orphan.
But to get back to Cold River really quick, Pacific International would open the film first in Boise ID on November 27th, 1981, the day after Thanksgiving, before starting 1982 in Biloxi MS in early February. And then it would disappear again until arriving in Tallahassee FL and Victorville CA in early October. And it’d disappear again until it opened in Burlington VT on Christmas Day.
And then it was gone. Until it started showing up on cable television in late July 1983. There seems to be a lot of fans of this movie that I had never heard of until I started researching this episode, probably because they were the right age when cable movie channels were starting to show up in homes across the nation, and the ability for a movie like this to get a lot of plays because there weren’t a whole lot of movies available on cable yet. But because Sullivan owned the non-theatrical rights to his movie, he would soon find himself earning enough from it to start thinking about his next movie.
And the idea Sullivan would come up with was a maybe autobiographical documentary about himself, his family, and his life as an independent filmmaker. Fred would play Fred G., or, as some in the film call him, Adirondack Fred, who spends most of the film with his wife and kids, dodging creditors, and talking to locals about him. Sullivan would often dramatize his life as a filmmaker to comic effect, such as dressing up in a loincloth and wandering the wastelands carrying a couple cans of film to show what it was like to be an independent filmmaker trying to sell their movie to a distributor. The film would start out as a personal treatise on whether Fred G. Sullivan was cut out to be a filmmaker, but it would slowly turn into a home movie that captures the Sullivan family, the four kids under the age of six but especially Fred’s ever-loving and far smarter wife, Polly.
Filmed in and around his home in Saranac Lake NY, about an hour north of Glen Falls, Sullivan’s Pavilion would make its world premiere at the 1987 United States Film Festival, better known today as the Sundance Film Festival, where the film would be nominated for the Grand Jury prize, and be awarded a Special Jury Prize for, and I quote, “originality, independent spirit, and doing it his own damn way.”
Like with Cold River, Sullivan would premiere his film in his home town of Glen Falls on April 17th, 1987, at the same theatre, the Route 9 Cinema 5. The film would play for five weeks to sold out crowds, which would give Adirondack Fred the courage to release the film himself this time around.
After screening at several other film festivals in America, Sullivan’s Pavilion would open at the AMC Century City 14 in Los Angeles on November 13th. There would be a one-sixth page ad in the Times on opening day featuring pull quotes from several critics including Jay Carr of the Boston Globe, but maybe a single screen opening of an independent movie at the start of the holiday movie season wasn’t the best move. Despite a great review from the Times’ Sheila Benson, the film would only earn about $1500 in its opening, and eventually, only, weekend in Los Angeles. Audiences were stilled enraptured with Fatal Attraction, and there were so many other new movies to see that weekend. The Running Man. Hello Again. Suspect. Less Than Zero. Baby Boom. The Princess Bride. The Hidden.
Rather than realize that maybe he wasn’t meant to be a filmmaker, Fred G. Sullivan doubled down on himself. He watched the film again, and tried to figure out a better title for the film. It would take a few weeks, but he’d finally come up with the title that he felt best encapsulated the film and its spirit.
The Beer Drinker’s Guide to Fitness and Filmmaking.
You gotta admit, that’s a catchy title, even if it is quite a mouthful.
He’d spent another $4k to have the lab print up a new copy of the film with the new title, and he’d send that copy to Burlington VT, where the film would open on June 3rd, 1988.
Whether it was the sweetness of the PG-rated film or that title, Burlingtonians fell hard for the film, and it would play there for seven weeks, earning more in its first week in this town of 38k people than it did in Los Angeles and its 3.2m citizens.
In fact, the film proved so successful in Burlington that Sullivan would have to send the print of Sullivan’s Pavilion to the theatre in Ithaca NY that was already booked to play the film on July 1st. Sullivan would even need to create a special ad showing both titles of the film, so that anyone who went to see it wasn’t confused, which would actually make it more confusing.
After the Burlington playdate was complete, Sullivan would swing for the stars, booking the film into the legendary Bleecker Street Cinemas in New York for a run starting August 19th. Janet Maslin’s review in the New York Times on opening day was perhaps the best review the film had gotten to date, which would help the film gross $8500 in its first weekend. The film would earn another $5700 in its second weekend, in an auditorium that only sat 80 people per show. The film was originally only supposed to play for two weeks at the Bleecker, but the numbers proved successful enough to extend the run a third week.
There’d be a few more playdates for the film. Salem OR on October 21st. One show at the Broward County Main Library in Miami on October 28th. Two shows with Sullivan in person talking about the film when it played in Binghamton NY on December 9th. A full week in Tampa starting February 10th, 1989. A few shows in Honolulu in late March. Detroit in mid-June. Des Moines in late July. The film would even make its way down to Melbourne, Australia. But the bookings would stop in August, when the film was released on home video.
While never a big film in theatres, The Beer Drinker’s Guide to Fitness and Filmmaking would find a cult audience on home video.
Today, you can watch the movie for free on the video sharing website Vimeo, thanks to Fred’s son Kirk, who would grow up to become a filmmaker himself. I’ll have a link to the film on this episode’s page at our website, the80smoviepodcast.com.
After the release of the film, Fred G. Sullivan would retire from filmmaking and devote himself to his family and to the preservation of the local Adirondack Park. In 1992, the college Sullivan had been working at, Paul Smiths, would make him their Director of Development. Sadly, he would pass away from heart failure on April 18th, 1996, at the age of 50, while playing in one of the weekly pickup basketball games on campus that made him popular with students.
At the time of his death, Sullivan was planning on making a sequel to The Beer Drinker’s Guide to Fitness and Filmmaking, on how his life and the life of his family had changed after he had quit filmmaking.
Fred G. Sullivan had many dreams and goals, and while he might not have completed some of them, he wanted to be a filmmaker and he went out there are did it. And even after he lost more than a million dollars making his first film, he went out there and did it again. That takes some real guts, and I would like to think hearing stories like this as a teenager wanting to be a filmmaker himself might have given me more courage to go out and do it.
Thank you for joining us. We’ll talk again soon.
Remember to visit this episode’s page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about the movies we covered this episode.
The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.
Thank you again.
Good night.