FOR: He has his own DVD company—his own distribution company—so why should he drop down and do something for me? He was completely delighted. And not only that, we got Joel Rapp, the director of Battle of Blood Island, to come in and do a commentary track for that!

BL: And it’s the best version of Creature from the Haunted Sea and Battle of Blood Island anyone will ever have.

FOR: Well, I’ll tell ya’, it was one of those things where we really, really, really worked hard for a package that would sell for $14.95, or whatever. And people—if they don’t like it and they don’t appreciate it, then they don’t deserve it, and I’m glad that they didn’t buy it. They don’t deserve it.

BL: This is one of your great collector’s items. We were talking about Dr. Mabuse earlier. The Dr. Mabuse collection is also something because after Fritz Lang’s Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse and the remake of Testament [of Dr. Mabuse], those later Dr. Mabuse films are very hard to come by and you give us pretty good copies, I think, of three of them! How much work did that represent?

FOR: All of those were original film transfers. None of them were from tape. Some of them were from my own personal prints and again, "Oh, they’re not widescreen—oh, they’re the dubbed TV versions." They are, but you know what? You could go to your grave never seeing them if somebody like me didn’t go ahead and say, "Look. I’m gonna put these out anyway, because I think there’s an audience for them." And people say, "Well, why didn’t you take it from the negative?" Let’s take a look at the sales. The sales on these things are about 2,500 units. You could be out of business over night by lavishing money on people who believe that access to a negative or 35 mm is worth $5,000 a picture. You wouldn’t make any money and that’s why a lot of boutique DVD companies go out of business! Because they invest money in transferring the negatives of nudies from the 60s and stuff, thinking that the world is gonna come beating a path to their door. I think there’s a market for the Dr. Mabuse films. I think for the people who want to see them—they’re there. And the people who want to complain and don’t want to see them? You can go your whole life and never see them. Good for you! I hope you don’t get them. You don’t deserve them.

BL: You managed to get Christopher Lee and Edgar Wallace’s Secrets of the Red Orchid. I never even heard of that. How did you manage to track that down?

FOR: Well, I knew that Christopher Lee was in some of those. It’s not even his voice I don’t think. [The title is Sette orchidee macchiate di rosso and it’s loosely based on Cornell Woolrich’s "Rendezvous in Black"—Ed.] Again, I always like to give people more than they’re paying for. If I have one feature, if I can I generally try to get a second feature—a bonus feature. Something extra in there, which is why we go out and shoot Gordon Mitchell and Gary Graver and we put these little documentaries together sometimes. And we were offered The Monster of London City. It was 35 mm and it was widescreen…

FOR: Right. And I needed something to go with that. I already had Klaus Kinski and I thought, "You know, it would be great to get a second feature." And I knew Christopher Lee was in one of these things and I went for it. And it’s not really a horror film, but I thought it would be of some interest to Christopher Lee fans.

BL: Yeah. You’ve also released some Christopher Lee through—I don’t know if it’s part of Retromedia or not—but Kim is the hostess of the series, what is that? Graveyard Theatre? Chris Lee and Terror in the Crypt? Tell us about that.

FOR: Well, we also released it on Retromedia as Crypt of the Vampire. That was uh—Crypt of the Vampire was again, an opportunity where we were offered a film element. A film element that was in 1:85 widescreen and so I said, "Okay, here’s a chance to do a 16 X 9 of a film that no one else has done." So we went for it and I think it was pretty well done. It wasn’t from an original negative or any of that other crap. But again it’s a movie where the DVD business—they say that DVDs are almost on their way out now—so if you consider that DVDs might be in their final phase, it’s a pretty good idea that perhaps that film was not going to make it to DVD. So again, we’re simply trying to get people the chance to see something that they might not otherwise get a chance to see. If you’re upset that it wasn’t from the original negative, at least it was a 16 X 9 transfer.

BL: You and Kim had done the Fred and Miss Kim drive-in antics on a bunch of the RetroMedias and then suddenly, there she is as the horror hostess Morella on Graveyard Theatre. How did Morella come about? Also she introduces Karloff’s House of Evil. One of those Jack Hill films.

FOR: Right. DV Classics is a company that we made because Chris Ray wanted to sort of get involved in something and we thought there might be a need for a budget line. I never considered Retromedia to be a budget line.

BL: By the way, what is a budget line?

FOR: A budget line is somebody like Alpha, who copies their prints from other people’s releases and stuff. They don’t invest any real money in it and knock it off for $6 or $5 or whatever it is. You sell it cheap for the undiscriminating person. And it really wasn’t—it was too much work and too much effort. We did four releases which we’re going to bundle together and sell for maybe 10 bucks for all four of them. It was something that was just too much work to get involved in. But we took the Morella openings and we started a line of DVDs called—well the first one was called Blood Flood. It had a terrible thing happen in it. Grave of the Vampire was authored out of sync. So we’ve done a recall on that and redone it and that’s gonna go back out but we’re gonna do Blood Vision…

BL: Grave of the Vampire is a great movie.

BL: And of course you and Miss Kim did the drive-in antics on Karloff’s Fear Chamber which was the first DVD of the Fear Chamber I ever saw. Did you do that first?

FOR: Yeah. Generally we won’t tackle a title that’s been done to death unless there’s something new about it that we can do, like Last Woman on Earth where we can bring it to you in color and from 35 as opposed to the old 16 mm TV prints. And Indestructible Man which we brought out in a much better edition. We’re gonna do Phantom of Soho and some other Edgar Wallace’s because we have them in 35. We have them in widescreen—even though they’ve already been out. The Edgar Wallaces don’t do that well. I don’t know why I keep doing them.

FOR: Not really. I just think there are people out there who want them, or would like to have them and I like to stay in some of the black & white horror stuff although it’s not that profitable. What’s really profitable for us are the Hercules movies and the bikini movies. The erotic films literally outsell everything believe it or not. And the Hercules films come in second. The Gamera movies all do very well.

BL: You offer the Gamera movie where he fights the vampire bat pterodactyl thing, which means of all the Gamera movies, you managed to find the one where Gamera’s fighting the vampire. That seems to be very Fred Olen Ray-esque. And it’s double-billed with a movie I’ve heard about for years and never seen—The Magic Serpent—which includes a Lovecraftian dinosaur sort of toad thing. Where the hell did you come up with that material?

FOR: We just wanted a second feature. We wanted something to go on there. It wasn’t the best copy, but it hadn’t been on DVD and we found the best copy we could of The Magic Serpent. And we worked on it for a while. And again, really, just trying to give people something extra on top of the Gamera film.

FOR: Some people have lifted Gamera right off of our discs. We have the copyright on some of them and we’ve been very diligent about pursuing those. A lot of budget lines are pretty lazy. They’ll just go get a VHS of somebody else’s release and by the time they copy it five times off of me, the quality level just goes down.

BL: You’ve come up with good copies of foreign films of science fiction, fantasy and horror. One of my favorite discs that you ever released is the Russian The Day the Earth Froze and The Magic Voyage of Sinbad. Those are very good copies and I got to see in color what I’d only seen in black & white on TV years ago. How did you find those movies?

FOR: Again, it’s like—there’re a lot of things being offered out there, you just have to decide what it is you want, and whether or not you think you can do something with it. I spent a lot of time color correcting—I spent a lot of time working on those and trying to put that package together.

BL: There are many Italian films that are only available through you. And of course, there are also Italian films that you have the best version of. One of my favorite 1960s drive-in classics is Giant of Metropolis, which is really a damned good science fiction film. It’s not just a sword and sandal muscle film. It’s really about Atlantis and you released the best copy of that I’ve ever seen. And you also included the little parody trailer you did of Goliath and the Cheerleaders which is done as part of your film Bikini Drive-In. Can you tell us how you got involved with all of that.

FOR: Well, you know, you used the words we "put out the best edition." I’m not gonna sit here and say that the editions that we put out are the best that might be possible. They’re the best that are out there now! They could always be usurped by a better edition from a 35 Scope print or whatever. And Retromedia is a company that generally doesn’t grab another guy’s DVD and lift the movie off there and put it on our disc and then charge you $19.95 for something that I bought for $6.95.

FOR: We got a film element of Giant of Metropolis, and it had lost a lot of its color. We put color—Jim Maslon who owns Blood Feast and 2000 Maniacs, did the work for us. And we color tracked it scene by scene and we did the best treatment we could based on the print that we had and that was a film element. And again, just trying to just make the most of it for the viewer, we gave ‘em that clip of Gordon Mitchell from Bikini Drive-In. And then we went out to see Gordon again and we shot an interview with him. We put it on there. He’s passed away since. But, you know what I mean? We rarely take the lazy man’s way out of things. We’ve always tried to find something. A lot of times we don’t have extras, but I consider a second and third feature an extra! You know? If I’m selling one movie and I put a second feature on there, a bonus feature—in my mind that’s a hell of an extra.

FOR: Well, you know, that’s a title that you have to want to watch.

FOR: (Laughs) I mean, really a title of Mole Men Against the Son of Hercules—how can you not want to see that? And again, the surf & sandal films, we always try to come out now with a Scope print on one side ‘cause there’s a ton of flat print TV things that never got released in theatres here. And it doesn’t mean that people wouldn’t want to see them. And we put those on the flip side. That’s just a bonus feature. You get a Scope film, like Goliath and the Sons of Babylon—which is coming out which is a Scope print and it’s beautiful—and we put Colossus and the Amazon Queen on the other side—which I didn’t even realize was a comedy until I saw it. (Laughs)

FOR: With Rod Taylor from The Time Machine. So we put that on there because I just loved the title! Colossus and the Amazon Queen or Colossus and the Head Hunters. Who wouldn’t want to see a movie called Colossus vs the Head Hunters or something? But that’s always been the M.O. on the Hercules films. We always put a flat print on one side and a Scope show on the other. It’s just a little extra bonus.

BL: Only you would give us the double bill of War Gods of Babylon with, who is it—Howard Duff conquers Babylon for God’s sake—and War Goddess which is of course a much more interesting movie because of Luciana Paluzzi. How did you come up with that double bill?

FOR: Well, it’s funny. We were offered War Gods of Babylon and I wasn’t that interested in it except that it was in Scope. It was a Scope movie. A 16 X 9, more than that even—but it was in French. So we had to get an English soundtrack. We sat here one scene at a time—which we’ve done on a couple of occasions—and matched the English soundtrack up to the French film. And again I thought, "Well, who’s gonna pay for Hercules starring Howard Duff?" I mean, come on. So we offered War Goddess, which was a full frame print. I had the idea of a second feature—and not a scratch in it as I recall. But it did have a lot of naked chicks in it. And it was really just a matter of the fact that I had War Gods of Babylon in Scope. But I didn’t feel like it was strong enough as a release and War Goddess came along and I said—well, yeah.

BL: Evil Toons, where you proved that Barbara Dare could actually act in a movie with Dick Miller. Nobody but you would have conceived that one.

FOR: I don’t know about acting but she was in a movie with Dick Miller.

FOR: Do you know Barbara Dare’s real name was Stacey Mitnik?

FOR: It almost sounds like Seymour Krelboined from Little Shop of Horrors.

BL: What I want to know is will the ultimate, deluxe, super perfect version of Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers still have an episode of "Night Owl Theatre?"

FOR: You know? I think we probably will rerun that.

FOR: I’ve actually wondered about starting that up again, but I’m having too much fun with the Morella stuff.

BL: This seems like a perfect time to go into the erotica aspect of RetroMedia. Let’s start with 13 Erotic Ghosts because I remember that movie got an amazing amount of coverage. I mean, it was advertised and promoted everywhere and of course, Gary Graver worked on that with you. What do you want to say about 13 Erotic Ghosts? Is that one of your most successful?

FOR: 13 Erotic Ghosts was—when we first started the DVD company Kim and I wanted to own a brand new product. We wanted something that was brand new and not 20 or 30 years old and we didn’t want to spend a lot of money. I think we spent $17,000 to make that and shot it in 2 days. We didn’t realize at the time that Aria Giovanni had a pretty good-sized fan following, or the Porcelain Twinz—you know. We just kinda wanted to have a good time. We decided to shoot the sex scenes in 3D and whatever it was, the whole thing just gelled. And it did extremely well for us. It topped 11,000 units which for us it a lot. And we were very pleased and I wouldn’t be surprised to see 14 Erotic Ghosts.

FOR: I love movie gimmicks and a lot of times there were so many gimmicks that were so cheap and easy to do that it seems stupid not to do ‘em! If you look at the Retromedia line, there’re at least three or four movies that have gimmicks in them. Curse of the Erotic Tiki had the hooter horn which you could turn on or off in the menu, but it let out a submarine clag horn right when a girl was about to take her top off so that you could find your way back into the room if you were out getting a beer or paying for the pizza or something. We didn’t want you to miss anything. And The Erotic Escort Company had something called Hypno-Vista, which was subliminal suggestion. Kim comes on at the beginning and she explains what Hypno-Vista is and it’s kind of like Terror in the Haunted House where you get a flash of one frame of a message and it’ll say, "Boy, my tits are huge today."

FOR: Or something like that. And at one point while Kim’s doing the introduction, it’s flashing and telling you, "Go get your wallet and send a dollar to this address." And there were people who actually stopped it walked through it one frame at a time to read what it said throughout the film.

FOR: Never gotten a dollar! (Laughs)

FOR: I also insured people for a thousand dollar burial fund if they died of shock while watching Zombie Death House. So I’ve done insurance policies, I’ve done different visual things—I’ve done it ‘cause I think it’s fun! I’d like to put a vomit bag in there. I just can’t find a bag the right size that fits inside a DVD.

BL: To repeat myself, you have done a better tribute to William Castle than these new versions of House on Haunted Hill and 13 Ghosts.

FOR: Well, I think they were using William Castle’s name and the name of the show and whatever legacy that those titles have. But I can’t say that I—if they hadn’t remade 13 Ghosts, I would never have made 13 Erotic Ghosts. (Laughs) It’s obviously a spoof made in a timely fashion to take advantage of somebody else’s fine, fine work.

BL: Julie Strain really is the central focus of 13 Erotic Ghosts. How’d you like working with her?

FOR: Julie was incredible. She’d been in Sorceress for us—a film I produced with Linda Blair—and for me, she seemed like the perfect person. She’s kind of like the Gene Simmons of scream queens, you know? She’s imposing, she’s striking, she’s dynamic, fans love her, she’s bigger than the genre, that’s for sure.

BL: Like your casting of Nikki Fritz in Curse of the Erotic Tiki. Nikki was perfect for that.

FOR: She was, and I hadn’t seen Nikki naked in a while when we did that and I gotta tell you, it was tight. It really was. It was amazing to watch, she’s got it right where guys want it. (Laughs)

BL: (Laughs) And the other films, Bikini Airways, The Good, The Bad and the Beautiful and Bikini Academy seem fairly recent and of course, Bikini Chain Gang may be the greatest title of all time. Do these Bikini movies ever stop?

FOR: They’ll stop when people stop wanting them. I think the one that I’m most fond of is Ghost In A Teeny Bikini, because I love Ghost in the Invisible Bikini and it was a take-off of that and it was just great—and it was a musical. Most people don’t realize starting to watch it that there are three musical numbers in Ghost in a Teeny Bikini and I thought it turned out extremely well and I’m really happy with the Girl From B.I.K.I.N.I. which is our Man From U.N.C.L.E. spoof which is coming up. And the other one I like is Horrors of the Caribbean.

FOR: Well, that goes along with our Creepy Cowboys stuff where we took movies that were from the 1930s, that were pretty much overlooked but had horrific elements and they were pretty much creakers. But we thought there might be an audience again for cowboy movies or mysteries and haunted house movies that were not made by Universal and did not have Boris Karloff and didn’t really have the cachet that the others did. Dead Men Walk was thrown in there—to be honest with you there wasn’t enough room left on the disc for another movie and we said, "Oh, what the hell?" We put four movies on there and it was thrown in as a bonus or it would just have left the disc empty at that point. We tried it and I think it did pretty well and again, I mean it didn’t burn down any bridges. A lot of times I do things because I want to do them. Not because I think everybody else in the world wants them. I put out a lot of stuff because I want to personally see it on DVD and that—like The Alien Factor. We were the ones who grabbed The Alien Factor and Don Dohler’s movies and put them out on DVD.

BL: It’s Baltimore Cinema and without you we wouldn’t have the stop motion wonders of The Alien Factor and the commentary on the back of Fiend was, "Here’s a possessed character that still pays his bills."

FOR: Someone would have sooner or later put out The Alien Factor. Fiend didn’t do very well for us either but we managed to put them out together and hopefully, people who might not have sprung for Fiend as a separate feature maybe looked at it as a second feature. We’re the ones who found Queen Kong after 20-something years. Now we’re doing Planet of Dinosaurs on 35 mm and it’s not the greatest print but it’s the only print that we’ve been able to find. And we have commentary tracks from the directors and the producers and the special effects guys.

BL: Isn’t that the movie that you took some dinosaur footage from for Phantom Empire?

FOR: Yeah. It all comes around and we did Revenge of the Living Dead Girls, our first zombie film. So, there’s a rose among the thorns at Retromedia every once in awhile.

BL: Let me ask you this since we started out with Roger Corman. You have released Frances Ford Coppola’s Battle Beyond the Sun which he made out of Russian science fiction footage that Corman bought. Other Russian science fiction footage became a Peter Bogdanovich film and a Curtis Harrington film. On Coppola’s film you throw in extra features. You give us Star Pilot with Gordon Mitchell that I’ve never even heard of.

FOR: You know, Star Pilot was—somebody came to us and they actually loaned us the print. It belonged to them—maybe I tried to buy it on eBay, who knows? And I just contacted them I believe and said, "Could I have access to this?" And they said, "Yeah." And Battle Beyond the Sun, again, it was because we had a film element. If it had been on tape element I’d probably have said, "No." But it was a film element. We did an absolutely great job of Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women.

FOR: Yeah. We did a great job of that, restoring that film and coloring it from an original film element. All the other copies out there, floating around, some on old VHS with no color in it—so, you know, you try and you do what you can and there you go.

BL: Where can I find the best copy of Curtis Harrington’s Queen of Blood, which is an early Dennis Hopper film?

FOR: Let me tell you, Queen of Blood, which I believe will probably eventually come out on DVD, did come out on Laser Disc and the Laser Disc copy was beautiful.

FOR: Well, I don’t really wrestle like I used to because I’ve got kids—little ones now—and of course the last thing in the world I need as a filmmaker is to have a leg broken in three places—as I have, in fact, in the past. And at my age you know, falling down from six feet above, on my back—it wears you out a little bit. But I’m still at in, I have my hand in it. There’s probably another wrestling DVD coming out at Retromedia because we had the Alligator Death Match and Abdul the Butcher and some other stuff, and it seems it would be nice to have it out there just in order and to have a record of some of the matches I’ve done and for my kids in the future. And wrestling has sold very well. It was a very good seller for us.

FOR: Well, you know I’ll tell you the truth, there’re not a lot of guys out there who wouldn’t wrestle an alligator if Michelle Bauer would come and sit ringside and cheer for them.