Episode 121: The Orphans 6

This week, we look back at another three films for whom their releases would be the only theatrical release for their respective distributors.

It’s Part 6 of our ongoing series, The Orphans.

Would you like to know more?

This week’s films are:

Heartbreaker (1983, Frank Zuniga, from Monarex)
Hells Angels Forever (1983, Leon Gast and and Kevin Keating and Richard Chase, RKR Releasing)
Mother Lode (1982, Charlton Heston, Agamemnon Films)

I really want to hear what you think, both positive and negative. Please leave your notes below. If you really like the show, please consider rating and reviewing the show on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Amazon Music, or the podcatcher of your choice.

Thank you again.

Edward

Goodpods Top 10 Film History PodcastsListen now to The 80s Movie Podcast

You can also listen to The 80s Movie Podcast on most other major podcatchers.

 

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 continue with the orphan films we occasionally highlight, movies that were the only theatrical release from the companies that distributed them.

Our first movie this week is called Heartbreaker.

Shot on the streets of Los Angeles during the summer of 1981, Heartbreaker stars Mexican actor Fernando Allende in his first English-language movie as Beto, the leader of an East Los Angeles car club called The Golden Knights, who falls in love with Kim, a new girl in the area who has also caught the eye of Beto’s rival, Hector.

If you don’t know Dawn Dunlap, who plays Kim, you’re forgiven. Her two roles of note were as one of the prostitutes working out of Henry Winkler’s morgue in 1982’s Night Shift and as one of the female warriors fighting alongside Lana Clarkson in 1985’s Barbarian Queen. She would quit the film industry after finishing Barbarian Queen, when she married a British billionaire. Peter Gonzalez Falcon, who played Hector, played the young Federico Fellini in the director’s 1972 film Roma, but hadn’t worked in five years before making this film, playing a small role as “The Latin Lover” in Burt Reynolds’ 1978 suicide comedy The End.

Watching the movie today, it’s interesting to see actors like Pepe Serna, Apollonia Kotero and especially the late, great Miguel Ferrer so young before their careers took off, but far more fascinating are the cars featured in the movie. Director Frank Zuniga and producer Chris Nebe visited more than 3000 car clubs in California, Nevada and Arizona, selecting more than 200 customized cars to be featured in the film. They were able to secure most of the cars for free, in part because they only had a $1m budget to work with, and it would be good for recruitment for the car club enthusiasts to be able to say “Hey, our cars were featured in this movie.”

Producer Nebe was looking for Heartbreaker to launch his American theatrical distribution company, which he named Monarex. In the early 1960s, Nebe had created distribution companies in Austria, Germany and Switzerland, importing American movies from Roger Corman’s various American distributors over the years. In 1978, Nebe would start Monarex in Los Angeles, with the hopes of cutting out the middle man by making and distributing the movies himself.

After nearly two years of editing and post-production, Monarex would debut Heartbreaker on Thursday, May 3rd, 1983, at the Commerce Theatre in Commerce, CA. More than 100 cars from the movie drove the stars and invited guests, including Oscar winner George Chakiris, Phyllis Diller, Beverly Sassoon and Connie Stevens, to the premiere, which was preceded by a champagne reception hosted by popular novelist Harold Robbins.

“He’s a lover. He’s a fighter. He’s a winner. But it’s not enough for her,” screamed out the tagline from the poster and the newspaper ad for the film, which opened at 25 theatres and drive-ins on May 4th. Monarex didn’t report grosses, which should not be of any surprise to listeners of the most recent episodes, but the nine theatres playing the film that were tracked by Variety that weekend reported a nice $64k worth of ticket sales. In its second week, the film was still in the same 25 theatres, but only six of them were tracked. Its reported $43k gross from those theatres was an 8% increase from the previous week’s numbers on a per screen average, which almost never happens. Week three would see the film move to less prestigious theatres in the area, but overall it would only lose one screen. And again, Monarex did not report grosses, and Variety didn’t track any of the moveovers. But by the following Friday, May 27th, with all the new openers for the start of the summer movie season, including Return of the Jedi, Breathless, Tex, and The Evil Dead, Heartbreaker would be down to one single theatre, a drive-in in San Pedro.

On July 1st, Heartbreaker would open in two theatres in Watsonville CA, and one in Salinas. All three playdates would only last one week.

July 22nd would see the film arrive on eight screens in New York City, but only one in Manhattan, the RKO National, which Variety would report as having grossed $10k.

And that’d be pretty much it for the film, save an occasional playdates as a B or C title for a Downtown LA triple feature. But to the best of our knowledge, the film only grossed about $150k.

But unlike most of these one time only distributors, Monarex is still around. The company would do dormant for nearly twenty years, but Chris Nebe would start it back up in the early 2010s to distribute a series of documentaries about China on home video. Nebe would pass away in 2021 of cancer, and his protege J.J. Osbun now leads the company.

Our second film today had a long road from production to distribution.

Hells Angels Forever got its start in 1973, when Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead approached his friend Sandy Alexander, the President and Founder of the Hells Angels’ New York City chapter, and offered $500k to produce a documentary about the history of the the motorcycle club, from its roots as the name of a Howard Hughes movie that was adopted by American bomber squadrons in World War II, to those same servicemen starting up a motorcycle club after the end of the war because they were having trouble acclimating back into society, to their mythic rise in the world imagination thanks to American movies, to where the club was at that time.

This sounded great to Alexander, because, let’s face it, the Hells Angels were still suffering an image problem thanks to the murder of a concertgoer at the hands of a Hells Angel working as security during a Rolling Stones concert in Altamont CA that was captured on camera. 

Shooting would begin in 1973 with Leon Gast, a young up and coming documentary filmmaker, at the helm. Filming would stop and start sporadically based on the availability of the crew members. When Gast needed to leave in late 1974 because he was already contracted to shoot footage of a Muhammed Ali/George Foreman heavyweight boxing title fight that was happening in Zaire, Kevin Keating, the cinematographer, would add “director” to his job description to continue filming until Gast returned in early 1975.

A number of famous fans of the Hells Angels would also talk about the motorcycle club on camera and/or lend their music to the project, including Garcia, Willie Nelson, Bo Diddley and country star Johnny Paycheck.

Garcia’s money supporting the project would run dry sometime in 1977, and the film footage would sit in limbo for four years, until the spring of 1981, when Richard Chase, a producer and director who had made a documentary about the Irish Republican Army in 1973, bought the uncompleted film from Garcia. In May 1981, Chase purchased a full page ad in the Hollywood Reporter stating the film would be completed for release in December 1981, with the title Angels Forever, Forever Angels. And even though the film was completed in time for release in December, no one was buying. The film was a true testament to the Hells Angels, and that would make the Hollywood studios very nervous. Amongst the additions Chase would make it to have Morgan Paull, a character actor from movies like Patton and Mitchell who would become somewhat famous in 1982 as Deckard’s former partner Holden in Blade Runner, to handle the narration.

Finally, in March 1983, Richard K. Rosenberg, a producer on the 1976 Brooke Shields movie Alice Sweet Alice, would purchase the American theatrical rights to the film, which he would retitle Hells Angels Forever, and created RKR Releasing to handle the distribution of the film. At first, Rosenberg was hoping to have 70mm prints of the film with six track Dolby Stereo due to the artists who had contributed music to the film, but because the movie had been shot in 16mm, the quality of the film resolution was too grainy at 70mm, so the prints were only blown up to 35mm and sound mixed down to four track Dolby Stereo.

Hells Angels Forever would make its world premiere in San Antonio on April 15th, 1983. A number of Angels from New York City featured in the film would ride down to south Texas to attend the first screening. At the screening, a member of the press asked Sandy Alexander why San Antonio for the premiere.

“I don’t know” was his response.

A few weeks later, on Friday, May 13th, RKR would give the film its first official theatrical  release with 45 playdates in Corpus Christi TX, Detroit, Miami, Orlando, and Tampa/St. Petersburg. Only 8 of these 45 theatres would report grosses, with a not very impressive $19,416. But by May 25th, all 45 theatres would have dropped the film, mostly for the new Star Wars movie, Return of the Jedi.

Playdates in June would include Atlanta, El Paso, Minneapolis and Pittsburgh on the 3rd, Albuquerque and South Bend IN on the 10th, Allentown PA, Cincinnati, Dayton, Philadelphia, Wichita KS and Wilmington DE on the 17th, and Kansas City MO on the 24th.

On July 8th, the film would get a big West Coast push, hitting 54 theatres in the Los Angeles metro region, Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area. 13 theatres in Los Angeles would gross $116,500, while 7 theatres in the Bay Area would gross $41,400.

RKR still hadn’t released any grosses for the film, and by July 13th, Variety was reporting a gross of $245,364. However, an RKR Releasing ad in the June 22nd Variety claims the film had grossed $764,118 in its first four weeks of its release.

There would be small playdates in second and third tier markets throughout the rest of the summer, but the next big push for the film would be its New York City premiere on October 7th. To prepare film goers in the area, RKR would go all out with their promotions. Sandy Alexander and Sonny Barger be made available for interviews with the press, and on the night before the film opened, the pair would lead more than 400 members from headquarters in Lower Manhattan to Broadway and 47th, the middle of Times Square, where the local premier was being held at the Movieland Theatre. And despite the animosity that usually existed between bikers and law enforcement, a dozen NYPD police cars would escort the group the entire way, and then to the after party that was being held at Studio 54 a few blocks away, where the Angels partied until the place closed at 4am.

The film would open in 70 theatres that weekend, and gross a cool $340k in its opening weekend in the Big Apple. The following week, the film would lose most of its theatres, but would still gross another $120k from 32 theatres. It would continue to play in the area well into November, but only on a handful of screens in the outer boroughs.

The film would open small in Boston on November 4th, only three screens, but it’s last big push would be in Chicago on December 2nd. $80,000 from 25 theatres would be the final nail in the coffin for the film, and for the distributor. RKR would close shop soon after the start of the new year, after a slightly bizarre twist involving our next film, and Hells Angels Forever would hardly be seen after its 1984 VHS release.

It’s rather easy to find copies of the movie on the internet today. If you Google Hells Angels Forever Full Movie and go to the videos, you’ll see a very good looking 87 minutes version in English with French subtitles on YouTube, or a very poorly copied 90 minute version from that 1984 VHS release. I’d chose the first one, because the second one literally looks like someone was holding a camcorder near a television when they made their copy.

Our third and final movie this week was a family affair.

In June 1980, Academy Award winning actor Charlton Heston signed on to star in two films for an upstart Canadian production company looking to take advantage of new rules by the Canadian Film Development Corporation that were meant to help Canadian film workers and the industry as a whole. As long as any film that has a Canadian producer shoots in Canada with a mostly Canadian crew, it would qualify for special discounts and incentives to make a lower budget movie look more like a Hollywood production through a series of tax credits that would stretch the budget to appear larger than it really was.

The first film movie in the deal was a family adventure film called Mother Lode.

Heston would make sure his hands were all over the production. It would be produced by his son, Fraser Heston, through the elder Heston’s production company, Agamemnon Films. The younger Heston would also write the screenplay, making sure to give his dad’s character, Silas McGee, a crazy old Scottish gold prospector who’s been living in the remote high country of British Columbia for thirty years looking for gold, less screen time than one would expect from an Oscar-winning star like dear old dad, because, surprise surprise, Charton decided he was going to direct the film as well. Oh, and Mrs. Heston, Lydia, would act as the set photographer. Much of the budget would be going to the Hestons. Charlton would earn $400k to star, $177k to direct, and 20% of the net profits, while Fraser would earn $129k for his writing of the screenplay and $118k for producing the film, along with 11% of the net profits.

The story would involve a man who is missing after he goes on a personal vacation to look for gold in the mountains of British Columbia. Kim Basinger, in her second movie role, plays the lost man’s wife, who is convinced by one of her husband’s co-workers, played by Nick Mancuso, to go looking for him together. After their plane crashes into a lake, they find themselves at the mercy of Heston’s character, who will stop at nothing to keep his expected mother lode of gold to himself.

Production on the $4m film would begin at Lake Lovely Water near Vancouver on September 21st, 1981, after two weeks of rehearsal in the woods where much of the film would be shot. Charlton Heston had directed one film before, 1973’s Antony and Cleopatra, and that experience would help him guide the production smoothly, finishing up its eight weeks of production one day behind schedule, just before Thanksgiving.

After the Thanksgiving break, Fraser Heston would supervise editing in Los Angeles while Charlton Heston would go on a mini-tour of Canada, making a series of personal appearances in Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto and Vancouver, to promote the sale of investor shares in the film. 1,200 shares were being offered at $5,000 each, in the hopes of raising $6m. While chatting it up with potential investors and signing autographs, Heston assured everyone that the Canadian government was offering a 100% tax deferment for investors, which was true, and they would sell all 1,200 shares.

Editing continued throughout the winter and early Spring of 1982, while Charlton Heston continued with the publicity tour on behalf of the film. He would help open the 1983 American Film Market in Santa Monica on March 25th and would be the guest speaker at a black tie closing gala for AFM a week later. But post on the film was not yet complete, so both American and foreign distributors interested in picking the film up would have to settle for a 20min presentation reel. Heston and his foreign sales agent, Manson International, would get $3m in commitments from foreign buyers, but no interest from domestic distributors.

After spring and most of summer came and went without any interest from American studios, Heston and son decided to release the film themselves through dad’s company, Agamemnon.

Their first stop would be Kansas City, MO, which PR and distribution consultants to the Hestons recommended as having the most idea demographics to test the appeal of the film for the rest of the country. After a world premiere at the Fox Theatre that included the Hestons and Kim Basinger, who had been all over the local television and radio airwaves all week promoting the film, the film would open locally on ten screens on August 26th, where it would gross $51,244. Manson International, gearing up to promote the film at the Deauville Film Festival in France in three weeks, would purchase a full page ad in Variety to boast about the gross. The ad would also note the film would be opening on 80 screens across France on September 15th.

In the film’s second week in Kansas City, it would add a screen, and do better than its first week, $52,600. Third week was still pretty good, $32k from ten screens. And the film would continue to play to decent crowds in Kansas City through October, when Agamemnon, who had originally seen that first release as a test release, decided to open the film in more markets. On October 8th, they would open the film on 120 screens in Austin, Corpus Christi, El Paso, Fort Worth, Santa Fe, St. Louis, and Tulsa OK.

An article in the October 20th issue of Variety would note the company planned on spending $5m to release and promote the film, and that its next round of openings would be in Dallas, Houston, Oklahoma City, and San Antonio in the coming weeks. Oklahoma City would open the film on October 29th, and Dallas on November 12th, but other locations would arrive before Houston or San Antonio. Boise, Phoenix, Salem OR and Salt Lake City, for example, would get the film on November 19th. In December, it would open in Charlotte, Memphis, Miami, Orlando, Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area. And all the while, the company never released grosses for the film, and every theatre playing the film was not a showcase theatre and thus wasn’t being tracked by the trades.

Agamemnon would make their first big market push on February 4th, 1983, when they’d open the film on 36 screens in Los Angeles. This time, they’d book the film into two of the biggest showcase theatres in the city, the Mann Bruin in Westwood and Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. The eight theatres tracked by Variety would report $65k, which doesn’t seem like a lot until you see David Cronenberg’s Videodrome made twice as much on three times as many screens. After a second week that saw the film lose half its screens and 75% of its ticket sales, the film was gone from the second biggest American market.

The film would never open in Chicago or New York City, but by late April 1983, the film would have grossed $7.2m, according to a short article in Variety.

Now, here’s where it gets tricky.

In late April 1983, Richard K. Rosenberg of RKR Releasing, who released the Hells Angels movie we just spoke about, announced he had acquired the theatrical distribution rights to the film from Agamemnon Films, and that he was changing the title to In Search of The Mother Lode. But he wouldn’t release the film until November 18th, when he opened the film on one screen each in Chillicothe and Zanesville OH, both towns of less than 15,000 people each about an hour from Columbus. The following week, the film would open on 15 screens in Dayton OH, Lexington KY, Louisville, Martinsville IN, and Troy OH. There were two screens in Munster IN, and one each in South Bend IN and Springfield OH on December 2nd, and one theatre in McHenry IL on January 6th, 1984.

Then, for unknown reasons, Rosenberg changed the title of the movie again, to The Search for the Mother Lode, where it played on one screen in Alexandria LA on March 9th, 1984 before being released on home video and cable television the following month.

Since Agamemnon did more than 95% of the release of the film, I’m considering RKR to be nothing more than a subdistributor of the film, which keeps my timeline intact.

And with that, we end this episode. Thank you for joining us.

We’ll talk again next week, when Episode 121, The Orphans 7, is released.

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.