For those who do not know me my name is Hugh Gallagher and I ran Draculina Publishing, a successful publishing company for over 30 years producing hundreds of magazines, comics and books. When I wasn’t producing publications I was following my other interest, making movies. I am the one responsible for the infamous “gore trilogy.”
To better explain Draculina I am giving you this interview from Draculina 50. This 2006 interview is more up-to-date and gives a thorough look at my life, my publishing career and my movies. Although this interview ends with me spouting off about how Draculina will be around for another 20 years, the magazine only lasted one more issue before it folded due to the high printing costs and collapse of the printed media because of the Internet.
Draculina #50, 2006
When I first approached Hugh Gallagher about doing an interview for his own magazine he scoffed, “Yes, let’s do an ego stroking interview for my own magazine.” But with the pressure on him to actually write the history of the magazine for this 50th issue, doing this interview seemed an easy way out. So, I present to you, the history of Draculina…
D: When did you get the idea for Draculina?
HUGH GALLAGHER: It was the night before I was going into Junior High. That is a big deal when you are a kid and I was very nervous. Somehow I conned my sister, who was taking care of me at the time, into letting me stay up to watch a movie that turned out to be DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS. Hammer movies were always great when you were a young boy, you got as much cleavage as you could be legally exposed to, plus you had cool vampires. As I watched I kept thinking it would be great if you could combine some of that great cleavage with the Dracula character… I then thought, “Draculina.”
D: So it was a comic when it started?
HG: Yes. I was only 12 years old. If you had asked me what I was going to be when I grew up I would immediately say “a cartoonist.” I loved comics and I loved to draw. Unfortunately I was better at drawing cartoony things than realistic things. But nonetheless, I drew Draculina and even sold copies of it in my school. Got several kids in trouble with it when they were caught reading it, but no one ever ratted me out.
D: So you were publishing at the ripe age of 12?
HG: I was drawing comics and my friend was selling them. We were only doing 3 or 4 copies an issue. I think we used carbon paper, so you can imagine the quality. We would sell them and put the money toward a band we were supposedly starting one day. We never did. I did get involved with a few rock bands growing up, thought I was going to be a rock star up until I turned 25 when I finally figured out that it was a waste of time. I like to think that the bands I was in were ahead of their time, but we probably just sucked.
D: What kind of music did you play?
HG: We were big fans of Alice Cooper and early Kiss. But we wrote our own songs and only played a handful of covers, which was weird at the time because all bands just played top 40 stuff. None of them played originals or Black Sabbath, Plasmatics and weird stuff like that. We always put on shows where we lit things on fire and busted guitars and stabbed mannequin heads filled with blood. I have always been influenced by horror. That was all I watched, that is all I read, Halloween was the greatest night of the year.
D: So what happened to Draculina during your years as a rock n’ roll star?
HG: I turned it into a fanzine, little digest-sized comic with movie reviews and later on, interviews. I was obsessed with horror movies and started covering what I could. Half of each issue was a comic and the other half was reviews, news or interviews. I sold the comic through The Comics Buyers Guide, a newspaper publication that catered to comic book collectors. Draculina didn’t go over very well with the comic collectors because she wasn’t a superhero and Draculina was very violent.
D: So you began to mass-produce issues?
HG: Yes, I actually printed a few hundred copies at a time. But this was after I got out of school. I didn’t really start doing any business with it until I was in my early twenties. I had a lot of weird things happen in my life as a kid, my only goal was to turn 18 and get the hell out!
D: What kind of weird stuff.
HG: My mom and dad fought a lot. My dad was a truck driver and was only home a couple days a week, but when he was there they fought. I think that is probably the saddest thing is I cannot remember one pleasant time between my mom and dad… everything ended in a fight. My mom would periodically leave for a few days and we would get calls from hotels. It was weird. I had no idea what was going on, still have no idea. I just know one day they found her dead in a hotel room and nobody talked about it. I think I shutdown a lot of my emotions at that time, I was only 11 and I only remember being upset for a few hours and then just sort of adapted the concept that you shouldn’t become dependant on anyone. I always set myself up with the theory that it didn’t matter who left me I would be able to maintain. Although I can get close to people, if they leave me I am not going to fall apart because of it. I will survive.
D: How was life after you mom died?
HG: My mom was very protective over me. I have great memories of just her and I, you just couldn’t put my dad in the mix. She loved movies. Sometimes she would keep me out of school just to lie around and watch movies all day. After she was gone, beyond the solitary, the next two years were pretty good. My dad was on the road most of the time and I was on my own. Came and left as I liked, watched what I liked… up until I was 14 I pretty much did as I felt. It was great. My closest sister was 18 and my brother was 21, so they really didn’t know what to do with me. My sister blames herself for corrupting me. Her and a bunch of her friends took me to see THE GRUESOME TWOSOME at the drive-in. I didn’t know who the hell Hershell Gordon Lewis was, but I remember seeing that movie! My brother took me to see SWINGING STEWARDESSES when I was only 12. I remember him arguing with the manager of the theater when they didn’t want to let me in. My brother said, “It says on the poster that anyone under 18 must be with a legal guardian, I am his legal guardian!” They let me in. It was rated R but it was a definite hard R! I think the exposure to these two movies at the age of 12 probably did warp me.
D: What destroyed your freedom after 14?
HG: My dad got remarried. We moved and I had to start over again. I was always looking for ways to make money so once I started the new school another kid and I used to go to the store and buy Playboy’s and Penthouse and take them home, cut out all the pictures and sort them into bags. We would then take the bags of photos to school and sell them to other kids. We’d buy a $1.50 magazine and make $20 off of it. My friend was somewhat of a bully and he would rough the kids up that didn’t pay… we extended credit. It was a weird time.
D: So you didn’t like your step mom?
HG: We fought like cats and dogs. I guess my dad figured he screwed up his first marriage so he let his second wife get away with murder; he always gave her what she wanted. We ended up moving onto a pig farm of all places and I had to work my ass off. I never could understand, when we lived in the city I got an allowance for taking out the trash, when we moved into the country I had to shovel pig shit, clear acres of weeds and garbage, plow fields… just continuous work and I never got a cent for it. I think that pissed me off. We just didn’t get along at all and when I fell in love with her niece Paula, well that put some weird slant on everything. She was obsessed with breaking us up, which probably made this whole taboo relationship between Paula and I that much more tantalizing. I don’t think there was any doubt that Paula and I would stay together, it was pretty much love at first sight and we’ve been together ever since.
D: This sounds like a weird backwoods soap opera. And you did Draculina through this?
HG: Yes, it was a periodic fanzine. I really don’t know how many I made between the time I was 14 and 17… but I was still doing it. I was pretty busy. I would get up in the morning and go to work at a grocery store, go to school for 3 hours in the afternoon and then go home and shovel pig shit. On the weekends I had a job cleaning out the theater, so Paula and I got to go the show every week for free. That was always great. But my step mom and I would continually fight to the point it became physical. She hit me, I would push her… one time I was walking away from her and she hit me in the back of the head with shovel. That might explain a lot of my problems too. I could fill a book with all the stories… I ran away from home several times, would stay at friend’s houses until their parents would get sick of me and kick me out. I finally left home when I was 17 and never went back.
D: Do you get along with your step mom now?
HG: I guess you could say that… she put a gun to her head and ended her life when I was 20 years old. If the experiences of your youth determine how you are going to do in life, I am fucked. My youth was really lost to continuous tragic episodes.
D: So what did your family think of Draculina?
HG: I don’t think they ever knew about it. Even now, they know I do something called Draculina but they never ask to see it because they know they would be totally horrified by the content. Draculina was always my own secret world, to escape family and life in general.
D: When did Draculina move out of the fanzine world and into the magazine world?
HG: As I said before, before I got sidetracked, The Comics Buyer’s Guide people never really took to the comic, but sometime during the early 80s I ran into a magazine called Fangoria. This seemed like the perfect place to advertise Draculina so I took out a small display ad in the back and suddenly the fanzine took off. It was selling better than I ever had before and I was introduced to a lot of people in the movie biz and made a lot of connections. After a few issues of continued success, albeit success meant I was covering my costs and no longer having to pay to do this out of my own pocket, I decided to take Draculina to the next level. In 1985 I had plans to make a full size magazine with color pages. Bobbie Bresee, who at the time had just starred in the movie MAUSOLEAM, agreed to do an interview and supply me with full color photos I could use in the issue. I was excited. Using a credit card I took out a large display ad in Fangoria announcing the release date of Draculina #1. I had already checked with a printer and thought I had everything lined up. I worked on the theory that the ad would announce that Draculina #1 would be released on such and such date allowing me enough time to collect orders and make enough money to pay for the printing. The response to the ad was great but the whole printing process went to hell.
D: What happened?
HG: That is when I found out that the things in Draculina weren’t acceptable with the majority of the public. I had an article on ILSA THE SHE WOLF with a bunch of photos from the movie, the comic was pretty graphic, I had photos from the FACES OF DEATH movie and Bobbie Bresee was a little too revealing for mainstream. When I took the magazine to the place to get printed, the guy was flipping through the pages and suddenly turned white. He put his hand on the phone as if he was going to make a call to the police. He simply told me, “We don’t print pornography.” This was the first time I was slapped in the face with this statement and it always pissed me off. When was nudity suddenly considered pornography? I found that anyone that was not exposed to anything sexual always related it to pornography… and most every printer I came in contact with must have lived the life of a monk. Color printers weren’t as abundant as they are today and the few I did find were 10 times higher than the price I was originally quoted, so I worked my way down the line hoping to find someone that would just print the thing, even in black and white. I finally got a small print shop to do it. I tried to beef it up by going to glossy paper and a two color cover, but it ended up looking like someone printed something off of a Xerox machine on really nice paper.
D: How did the readers accept it?
HG: There was a lot of complaining about not delivering the color that was advertised, but at that time the magazine was so different it was accepted as an oddity. When I did the second issue the readership didn’t drop off. The printing wasn’t any better and the paper quality was worse, but the magazine soon got picked up by Capital City Distribution and started getting into comic shops. Also, the mail-order division of Fangoria started selling it and it wasn’t long before the first two issues sold out.
D: So you made a lot of money.
HG: No. I didn’t make any money. It paid for itself and what little profit I did make went right back into the magazine. It was still more of a hobby at that point. I was working a full time job at an ammunition factory supplying the government with 20 mm shells! I hated my job, Draculina was my distraction from the normalcy everyone was living through. I find most people get a job and live for vacations and retirement, hoping that they might luck out and hit the lottery. Most of the people you meet don’t enjoy what they are doing, but you get sucked in. You get married, buy a house, buy a couple cars, have a couple kids… pretty soon you are just treading water. It is like that great line in FIGHT CLUB, “The things you own end up owning you.” That is so true.
D: So when did Draculina become your full time job?
HG: Not for quite a while. I kept trying to build the circulation. The Fangoria mail-order company, I think they are called Fanataco, cleaned out the first 2 issues and kept trying to talk me into reprinting them, but I didn’t want to. Suddenly, after issue 3, they cancelled their orders with me. I think some young kid got a hold of an issue and their parents made a complaint… whatever it was, Fantaco went from begging me to reprint issues to dropping me. I could not get Diamond Distributors or Bud Plant Comic Art, the other two big direct distributors at the time, to pick the magazine up. So it was basically Capital City and I selling it a copy at a time. It was like this for the first 13 issues. But I kept changing the magazine. I was interested in making a movie and kept doing more articles related to movie making and the people behind it. Although the magazine was called Draculina and it should have been about the comic, the artwork was always rushed and pretty much sucked, yet the articles were getting rave reviews. So issue #5 was the last full length Draculina comic featured in the magazine. By issue #6 it was nothing but interviews, reviews and pictorials… still very badly printed. I guess I should have changed the name of the magazine, but I loved Draculina. She grew up with me, she would continue on, if only in name.
D: So the first 13 issues were pretty much hand to mouth.
HG: Yeah. I really had no goal to make money with it, I just wanted it pay for itself and help me get closer to making my own movies. It was fun, I got to meet people I would have never met, and I really liked the magazine. If I was some guy looking through a magazine rack and I saw Draculina, I would buy it. I would be ecstatic. The magazine is great entertainment and informative. And I think the fact that it wasn’t money motivated made it so entertaining in the beginning. Its sincerity overcame it bad production values.
D: So… once again, when did it become a money making venture.
HG: Paula got moved up in the company she worked for and was taking a management position in a town that was an hour and a half away from where we lived. She told me, “You can make the commute to work everyday, or you can take this opportunity to quit your job and pursue your publishing and turn it into a money making deal.” By now I had worked at this ammunition factory for 13 years… I didn’t have to think twice. I quit. Issues 12 and 13 had the worst print jobs to date, I knew I had to improve the printing quality or the magazine would never go anywhere. I decided if I wanted something done right I had to do it myself, so I bought a printing press, plate maker and all the material needed to print Draculina on my own. Big mistake. I had ink and paper all the over our new house. The press kept jamming, I would spend forever trying to get a decent plate off this antique equipment I was working with… it was a nightmare. I never printed a single issue. I threw in the ink stained towel early on that venture… but I caught a break. I found a guy interested in taking my printing equipment, but he wanted to pay me some cash and a bunch of computer programs… imagine, laying out a magazine on computer! Up to this point I had been cutting and pasting every issue together. I thought I hit the high-tech when I purchased a Brother typewriter for $500 that actually could justify the columns and hold a whopping page and a half of text in its memory! I purchased my first PC… I won’t count the Commodore 64 I had … and spent somewhere around $2,000 for this piece of crap that you couldn’t give away today. But it did allow me to layout Draculina #14. I finally hooked up with a printing company in North Dakota, of all places, that was not only not offended by the material but also allowed Draculina #14 to be the first issue with a full color cover! Suddenly Diamond Distributors decided to pick it up, Bud Plant picked it up, and several small newsstand distributors also took on the newly revised Draculina. The magazine still had a long was to go, but suddenly it was making money! Issue #14 was the launching pad for a very promising future.
D: Is this when you started other publications too?
HG: Things were going well. I was in close contact with many Scream Queens of the time and I started a little digest publication called Focus. Each issue focused on one Scream Queen telling her story written in her own words. I didn’t think you could get any more personal that that. And the women were so proud of the results. Melissa Anne Moore was in the first issue, then Brinke Stevens, Debra Lamb, Monique Gabrielle and Julie Strain were in the others. It was a great idea and we all made decent money with it.
D: Who was your favorite Scream Queen?
HG: I think it was different back then. These women were doing mostly films, not direct-to-video stuff. There are a lot of women doing this stuff today, but back then these women had more of a star quality to them. So it was great it get to meet them and collaborate with them on these projects. I can’t say I ever had a favorite because they were all great people, no prima donnas. Well, maybe Monique Gabrielle was somewhat of a prima donna, but I think that came more from training from her boyfriend. If he wasn’t around she could be pretty normal, and actually quite funny. Melissa Moore was one of the nicest people I ever met. She was just a regular girl who happened to be a 6-foot tall blonde beauty. Debra Lamb was very enthusiastic and a lot of fun, she did a convention with me in California once. She always had a lot of ideas and was very upbeat. Then you have Brinke, Linnea Quigley and Michelle Bauer, who did a convention with me posing as Draculina… who isn’t going to love them? I have collaborated with all of them and we all made money and had some fun in the process. It was a better time for the B-movie biz back then. This isn’t to say anything bad about the women who are stars today, it just had a different feel back then.
D: What about the other publications?
HG: I read a couple fanzines that I thought were interesting, Oriental Cinema and She. I really can’t remember how I got hooked up with Damon Foster from Oriental Cinema, I think he was looking for money to keep his fanzine going. Instead, I told him to let me start publishing it and we would split the profits. He really had nothing to lose because he couldn’t afford to do it any more. I was handling all the costs and giving him better circulation that he had ever seen, and he was making money with it. OC was very successful. So when I saw the magazine She by Cameron Scholes, who lived in Canada at the time, I offered him the same deal. Cameron wasn’t as quick to jump on the bandwagon. It took me several months to convince him to do it. I really liked She, I knew other people would too.
D: And they instantly went into profits?
HG: Yes. I really went on roll. I did comics, magazines, books… I really don’t know how I produced as much as I did because I worked mostly on my own. I collaborated with a lot of people, but all the layout work, business, everything involved with getting a magazine out and into the stores I did myself. When I think about those times now I feel very lazy. I could never do what I did back then today. I was very motivated then, I literally worked all the time. I would start around 10 in the morning and work until 3 or 4 the next morning. I would just walk in and out of it to eat, or take care of my kids or, whatever. That was the great thing about working for yourself; you set your own hours. But I easily put in 14-hour days and didn’t think twice about it. I loved what I was doing and felt like I was accomplishing a lot. I attempted to hire people to help with the layouts but I never liked what they did. I would get their stuff and then completely rework it. I was always working then.
D: What was your most popular publication?
HG: Draculina was always the breadwinner. It was always the most successful. Oriental Cinema and She tied for second. The other publications were mostly one-shot ventures back then. I would say that the Linnea Quigley book Skin was one of my favorites. It did well and I thought it looked great. It took a lot to get that made but I think it was worth the effort.
D: With issue #22 you finally added more color pages to Draculina, along with nicer paper. What inspired that expensive change?
HG: My goal was always to make it better at a decent price. Most people tend to dump all their money in something and then when they find it doesn’t work they are broke and can’t continue on. Draculina made a slow progression to the glossy paper and additional color. The printer in North Dakota couldn’t get me the glossy paper or color I wanted so I kept shopping around. I finally took the magazine to Texas where I found a company in which I could layout the whole magazine on computer and deliver it to them on an optical drive. This was before CD burners were around, computers were still growing. I had to spend a bunch of money on more computer equipment to make this all happen, but it was well worth it. Draculina 22 sold out fast. Issues from then on look great, the color was fantastic and the sales went through the roof!
D: You said you originally got into the magazine to make movies, you did make four? Why didn’t you put all your effort to movie making?
HG: It was hard to do. It took so much work to make even a cheap movie and the pay off, at least financially, wasn’t that great for the amount of effort you put into it. My first movie, DEAD SILENCE, just plain sucked. I don’t count it. GORGASM was a small step up, it looked a lot better and Gabriela, the star, was the real selling point. The movie was supposed to have full nudity in it, but it was that time of the month so Gabriela asked to skip out on the full nude scenes. What could I say? She was great, I was lucky to work with someone who was so easy to be around. She was very enthusiastic about being in the movie and she got a lot of publicity for it.
D: That was the start of the “gore trilogy.” How did the other two movies go?
HG: Without Draculina none of these movies would have ever been made. I met Gabriela through Draculina. The executive producer of both GOROTICA and GORE WHORE, Robert Walters, was a Draculina reader who approached me with ideas and a lot of great stuff for the magazine. I met Mike McCarthy, who was instrumental in getting the locations and most of the actors in GOROTICA and GORE WHORE, through Draculina.
D: Did McCarthy contact you?
HG: He saw Draculina and saw GORGASM. He lived in Memphis and was doing comic art and also had an interest in doing movies. He contacted me and said if I came to Memphis he would help me make my next movie. I came up with GOROTICA, which is probably the weirdest video ever made that had an actual story. I went to Memphis to a party at Mike’s house where everyone was watching GORGASM. He had all the locations and all the actors with the exception of the lead. I found Ghetty Chasun through Donald Farmer. I met Farmer when Draculina was a digest-sized fanzine. At that time he put out a great fanzine called Splatter Times and he went onto to direct a ton of movies. Donald was always helping out with Draculina in the early years. I can remember when Ghetty showed up to the shoot I thought, “Oh my God, she is not going to work at all!” I had seen pictures of her and spoke with her on the phone, but when I actually met her… she was very tall and very different looking. But as soon as we started talking to each other I knew that things were going to be fine. She was great, very professional and very good at what she does.
D: Many think GOROTICA was the best of the three movies, although it may have looked the worst.
HG: I don’t even remember why it looked so bad. It was shot on s-vhs like the others, but the picture quality wasn’t as good as the other two. But I think it may have added to the story. If you haven’t figured it out, all the actors used pseudonyms. I don’t think anyone thought the movie was going to go over, or they just didn’t want to be associated with it. Ghetty got a ton of work from her appearance in GOROTICA. I always figured she had to have really regretted going with the name Ghetty Chasun because she has used it in every movie since and kind of got stuck with it. She was always a very confident person, but I remember sitting with her at the Underground Film Festival where they were screening GOROTICA and she seemed like a little girl. I’m always very uneasy when I am with a group of people watching my movies, but Ghetty was just as nervous as I was sitting in this room packed to the max for the viewing. We were both on pins and needles in the back of the room. When it was over everyone came over to congratulate us, it was really funny. I think the movie made an impression on a lot of people. I still get new directors telling me that that movie is what inspired them to make movies. That is pretty cool.
D: McCarthy went onto to make a lot of movies.
HG: Yeah. Mike is a very talented guy but he was difficult to get along with. He has a very big ego. We had a real falling out when we made GORE WHORE. I went back to run camera for him on DAMSELVIS as part of a trade off for him working on GORE WHORE, and I was going to edit it, but I just couldn’t take it any more and we had a major falling out. We just clashed. He had a lot of great ideas, he is very focused on his visions, which is always good, but you pretty much had to be a follower to be in his group. He had this whole entourage and you worked in his shadow. I wasn’t used to that and really didn’t enjoy it. I’m a hard person to get along with too, I know I am weird, some people get it and click with me, others think I am a psycho. But with Mike and I, some times it is better just to walk away. He is a talented guy, he has a shit load of good ideas.
D: What happened with your movie EXPLODING ANGEL?
HG: That was going to be my big breakout action movie. Besides horror I absolutely love action movies and the script that I wrote was great! Robert Walters and I made a considerable amount of money off of GOROTICA and GORE WHORE and we decided to dump it all into EXPLODING ANGEL. Robert got access to a complete studio with top of the line cameras, editing equipment, lights… pretty much everything you needed to make a top of the line movie that had much bigger possibilities than our horror movies did. I had lined up Amy Lindsay, which would have been her first movie before going into a long career in soft-core cable movies. I also had Gunnar Hansen from TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, Scott Shaw, another great actor I met through Draculina… just all this great talent. But, the problems came with the guy who had control over the studio and equipment. He worked very slowly, we’d spend a day setting up a shot that lasted maybe five minutes. We just wasted so much time gathering everything together and setting it up. It also didn’t help that he was gay and he was constantly hitting on me. I’d rather take a bullet in the head than one up the ass, so I was always on the defensive and the whole situation literally made me sick to my stomach. This atmosphere accompanied with his complete control over all the equipment we needed just destroyed the movie. We could not make a move without going through him to get what we wanted. We shot for over a week and ended up with maybe 20 percent of the movie shot. What we had looked great, but there were too many holes, and it was going to take a lot more money and time to finish it. Neither Robert nor I wanted to deal with it anymore. We decided to cut our losses and it was never finished.
D: Are you anti-gay?
HG: No. But I am anti gay people coming on to me when I say I’m not interested. Let’s face it, men are disgusting. If I were a woman I would be gay. I don’t see how women can stand to be around us… what is the joke? “The quickest way to fill a room is to put two women together, the quickest way to clear a room is to put two men together.”
D: You also were producer on several Jess Franco movies.
HG: Actually, only TENDER FLESH. My name is on a couple others, but TENDER FLESH is the only one I put money into. Kevin Collins is another person I met through Draculina. He contacted me once about something he saw in the magazine and we kept corresponding to the point that we ended up doing a lot of projects together and became very good friends. I was in his wedding party a couple years ago. I have made some really great friends over the years, like Michael Shuter, another person who just wrote in to me and we clicked. Michael has worked the Draculina table with me at 95% of the conventions I have done. We always have a great time.
D: So, what did you think of Franco?
HG: He knows what he wants. We gave him X amount of dollars to make TENDER FLESH and he made it with the money we gave him in the time allotted to him. I don’t think anyone in the U.S. could have shot a super 16mm film for the money he shot TENDER FLESH for. He is a real character, I was lucky to get to meet him and spend a lot of time with him and Lina Romay in Spain and England.
D: You are traveling to different countries, producing several magazines, comics and books. Did you become exceedingly wealthy?
HG: I think if I had to do it all over again I wouldn’t have done so many one-shot things. I should have concentrated on just Draculina and maybe a couple other magazines. Most of things I have done made money, but some did better than others. The comics were marginally successful. My real goal was to give rebirth to the Draculina comic. We did Draculina’s Cozy Coffin, which was like a Tales From the Crypt comic. But I had signed a great artist, Edwin Neives, who was set to do the Draculina comic, he did the Sheila Trent: Vampire Hunter comic for me, which was doing very well. Just as a side note, Edwin was gay too, I didn’t have any problems with him… Anyway, we did some promotional stuff together and were gearing up for the first issue of the new Draculina comic when Neives, who lived in New York, got mugged. He was hit so hard in the head that he actually got amnesia. He was going to doctors and doing therapy to try and remember his life. The weird part was he could no longer draw. He had to re-teach himself how to draw! It seemed too weird to believe, but the last time I talked to him, which was several years ago, he barely knew who I was. We’d start talking about the comic and he would just start crying… he just couldn’t draw anymore. It was a shame because he really was a fantastic artist, the best I ever worked with. It was around this time that the comic industry bottomed out, nothing was selling.
D: A lot of people in publishing went out of business then, what kept you afloat?
HG: I quit making comics, they were a death sentence. By now I had been building up my mail-order business because I could sense that the publishing boom was almost over. I didn’t expect it to plummet like it did, but I knew it wouldn’t last. The mail-order business became more of a moneymaker than any of the publications.
D: So what happened after the comics died?
HG: I had grown quite a publishing empire for a guy with no money and doing most of the work myself. I actually moved the whole operation into a building with 3 offices and a giant warehouse. My plan was to start my own distribution center for other small publications to get them into stores. There were a lot of problems with direct distributors and the newsstand distributors were ripping the little guys off. I planned to build this great network, hired a couple people, created a catalog for stores and started going to work on it. It didn’t pan out. Stores were very difficult to deal with, most would never pay. It was too difficult and too expensive to get off the ground. The distribution idea folded.
D: Financially, how were you doing?
HG: I was still doing quite well, but I lost a ton of money to crooked distributors and a lot of ideas I had that never took off. I always attempted to get into mainstream thinking that was where the big money was. I did Mean magazine, an alternative to Mad. The distributor ripped me off on that and it died after the first issue. Thunder magazine, a mainstream action magazine, it never took off and lost a bunch of money. My next big idea was to create something like Playboy, which became Pinup. This magazine did not do that bad, but never made enough money to justify the effort. There was also the sister publications Pinup Digest and Oriental Pinup, which died along with the Asian craze. I was always looking for a new avenue to take, but with the birth of the Internet magazine publishing was not a lucrative profession to pursue.
D: Which would bring up the question, why did you buy the magazine Scream Queens Illustrated?
HG: The price was right. Bob Mechuluci contacted me and told me they were selling the magazine and wanted to know if I was interested. At first I wasn’t, but then I starting thinking “If I don’t buy it, who will?” I didn’t want someone else to buy it and create instant competition for me, so I figured I would get and completely change the format. I basically made SQI into that Focus magazine I did back in the beginning. Each issue would focus on one specific girl and I would stuff it with full color photos and an interview along with other vital statistics. Of all the crazy ideas I have had, this one was actually a good one. The first issue I produced, #24, featured Michelle Bauer and instantly sold out! I made enough money on that issue to cover what I paid to buy Scream Queens Illustrated. Every issue I produced made money, although I cut the circulation down tremendously. The magazine was now produced for the diehard fans of the women. The fans loved it. It eventually became too expensive to do. Although magazine prices rise slightly, the costs of printing and shipping continually rise. Most people just don’t realize the costs involved in putting out a magazine.
D: You recently sold off your magazine Sirens of Cinema. Why did you start that magazine and why did you end it?
HG: My last futile attempt to break mainstream. I wanted to create a magazine that covered the women of the movies that wasn’t just tidbits of information. Most of the magazines out there you can read their feature articles in about two minutes and get no real info. I wanted something in-depth, that you could really sink your teeth into. I worked my ass off on that magazine and each issue was stuffed with information. Kevin Collins came aboard early on and we both put a lot into it. But, what messed me up, was the mainstream mindset. People that were buying it would complain that the $5.95 price tag was too high and that there should be more pages. The magazine should come out monthly and… blah, blah, blah. The majority of the readership was women, which totally threw me for a loop. I didn’t know how to write for women, and I didn’t want to cater to their needs. Women involved with mainstream work on some different level. They liked the magazine but they were always making little remarks, or bitching about totally pointless stuff. It was annoying. I was comfortable doing Draculina because I reported on things I thought were cool and everyone that read it thought it was cool. Women that read Draculina are my same wavelength, the women reading Sirens of Cinema were mostly annoying. It was a good magazine, but I just didn’t enjoy doing it because it didn’t become what I wanted. I had to decide whether to dump more money in to it or sell it. I chose to sell it.
D: It doesn’t seem to matter what you have done, you always come back to Draculina.
HG: I have made a full circle. I started out with Draculina, built a modest publishing empire, then dwindled back down to where I began. I really don’t think there is any shame to it. There are highs and lows in all markets and publishing had its moment and it is now gone. The Internet has destroyed so many things, and publishing has been one of the casualties. There are so many publications that have bit the dust, very few have survived. It is a much tougher business than it was ten years ago.
D: Looking back on the last 20 years, what would you have done differently if you could do it over?
HG: I kept trying to branch out and should have focused my attention solely on Draculina. Maybe just did a few one shots instead of dumping a lot of money into mainstream projects. Should have saved my money. But, you live and learn. Hindsight is 20/20.
D: What were the best things that have happened over the last 20 years?
HG: The people I have met. I have met a lot of famous people, been to a lot of places that I would have never been exposed to had it not been for Draculina. I have made lifelong friends that started out as fans of the magazine. It has been a wild ride that hasn’t ended yet. I think most people think of me as Draculina, my name and hers are intertwined, you don’t think of one without the other. It is cool, I am happy with that.
D: What is the future of Draculina?
HG: Well, I am finally concentrating all my efforts on just Draculina. I plan to have a Draculina book published before 2006 is out, and naturally, a feature length movie will undoubtedly follow. I will probably be looking for someone else to actually publish the book, I don’t think I want to tackle that myself.
D: What would you like to say the fans of Draculina?
HG: Thanks. It is hard to believe I have been doing it this long, and the only reason I have is because of everyone that is holding this magazine in their hands right now. I like to think we are the ones that have bucked the system and not fallen into the grips of the media driven drivel that lines our magazine racks. Draculina fans are the greatest and I appreciate the letters and support. We are all a little weird, but that is what makes it fun. It has been a fun ride and with your continued support I am sure it will last another 20 years!
To better explain Draculina I am giving you this interview from Draculina 50. This 2006 interview is more up-to-date and gives a thorough look at my life, my publishing career and my movies. Although this interview ends with me spouting off about how Draculina will be around for another 20 years, the magazine only lasted one more issue before it folded due to the high printing costs and collapse of the printed media because of the Internet.
Draculina #50, 2006
When I first approached Hugh Gallagher about doing an interview for his own magazine he scoffed, “Yes, let’s do an ego stroking interview for my own magazine.” But with the pressure on him to actually write the history of the magazine for this 50th issue, doing this interview seemed an easy way out. So, I present to you, the history of Draculina…
D: When did you get the idea for Draculina?
HUGH GALLAGHER: It was the night before I was going into Junior High. That is a big deal when you are a kid and I was very nervous. Somehow I conned my sister, who was taking care of me at the time, into letting me stay up to watch a movie that turned out to be DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS. Hammer movies were always great when you were a young boy, you got as much cleavage as you could be legally exposed to, plus you had cool vampires. As I watched I kept thinking it would be great if you could combine some of that great cleavage with the Dracula character… I then thought, “Draculina.”
D: So it was a comic when it started?
HG: Yes. I was only 12 years old. If you had asked me what I was going to be when I grew up I would immediately say “a cartoonist.” I loved comics and I loved to draw. Unfortunately I was better at drawing cartoony things than realistic things. But nonetheless, I drew Draculina and even sold copies of it in my school. Got several kids in trouble with it when they were caught reading it, but no one ever ratted me out.
D: So you were publishing at the ripe age of 12?
HG: I was drawing comics and my friend was selling them. We were only doing 3 or 4 copies an issue. I think we used carbon paper, so you can imagine the quality. We would sell them and put the money toward a band we were supposedly starting one day. We never did. I did get involved with a few rock bands growing up, thought I was going to be a rock star up until I turned 25 when I finally figured out that it was a waste of time. I like to think that the bands I was in were ahead of their time, but we probably just sucked.
D: What kind of music did you play?
HG: We were big fans of Alice Cooper and early Kiss. But we wrote our own songs and only played a handful of covers, which was weird at the time because all bands just played top 40 stuff. None of them played originals or Black Sabbath, Plasmatics and weird stuff like that. We always put on shows where we lit things on fire and busted guitars and stabbed mannequin heads filled with blood. I have always been influenced by horror. That was all I watched, that is all I read, Halloween was the greatest night of the year.
D: So what happened to Draculina during your years as a rock n’ roll star?
HG: I turned it into a fanzine, little digest-sized comic with movie reviews and later on, interviews. I was obsessed with horror movies and started covering what I could. Half of each issue was a comic and the other half was reviews, news or interviews. I sold the comic through The Comics Buyers Guide, a newspaper publication that catered to comic book collectors. Draculina didn’t go over very well with the comic collectors because she wasn’t a superhero and Draculina was very violent.
D: So you began to mass-produce issues?
HG: Yes, I actually printed a few hundred copies at a time. But this was after I got out of school. I didn’t really start doing any business with it until I was in my early twenties. I had a lot of weird things happen in my life as a kid, my only goal was to turn 18 and get the hell out!
D: What kind of weird stuff.
HG: My mom and dad fought a lot. My dad was a truck driver and was only home a couple days a week, but when he was there they fought. I think that is probably the saddest thing is I cannot remember one pleasant time between my mom and dad… everything ended in a fight. My mom would periodically leave for a few days and we would get calls from hotels. It was weird. I had no idea what was going on, still have no idea. I just know one day they found her dead in a hotel room and nobody talked about it. I think I shutdown a lot of my emotions at that time, I was only 11 and I only remember being upset for a few hours and then just sort of adapted the concept that you shouldn’t become dependant on anyone. I always set myself up with the theory that it didn’t matter who left me I would be able to maintain. Although I can get close to people, if they leave me I am not going to fall apart because of it. I will survive.
D: How was life after you mom died?
HG: My mom was very protective over me. I have great memories of just her and I, you just couldn’t put my dad in the mix. She loved movies. Sometimes she would keep me out of school just to lie around and watch movies all day. After she was gone, beyond the solitary, the next two years were pretty good. My dad was on the road most of the time and I was on my own. Came and left as I liked, watched what I liked… up until I was 14 I pretty much did as I felt. It was great. My closest sister was 18 and my brother was 21, so they really didn’t know what to do with me. My sister blames herself for corrupting me. Her and a bunch of her friends took me to see THE GRUESOME TWOSOME at the drive-in. I didn’t know who the hell Hershell Gordon Lewis was, but I remember seeing that movie! My brother took me to see SWINGING STEWARDESSES when I was only 12. I remember him arguing with the manager of the theater when they didn’t want to let me in. My brother said, “It says on the poster that anyone under 18 must be with a legal guardian, I am his legal guardian!” They let me in. It was rated R but it was a definite hard R! I think the exposure to these two movies at the age of 12 probably did warp me.
D: What destroyed your freedom after 14?
HG: My dad got remarried. We moved and I had to start over again. I was always looking for ways to make money so once I started the new school another kid and I used to go to the store and buy Playboy’s and Penthouse and take them home, cut out all the pictures and sort them into bags. We would then take the bags of photos to school and sell them to other kids. We’d buy a $1.50 magazine and make $20 off of it. My friend was somewhat of a bully and he would rough the kids up that didn’t pay… we extended credit. It was a weird time.
D: So you didn’t like your step mom?
HG: We fought like cats and dogs. I guess my dad figured he screwed up his first marriage so he let his second wife get away with murder; he always gave her what she wanted. We ended up moving onto a pig farm of all places and I had to work my ass off. I never could understand, when we lived in the city I got an allowance for taking out the trash, when we moved into the country I had to shovel pig shit, clear acres of weeds and garbage, plow fields… just continuous work and I never got a cent for it. I think that pissed me off. We just didn’t get along at all and when I fell in love with her niece Paula, well that put some weird slant on everything. She was obsessed with breaking us up, which probably made this whole taboo relationship between Paula and I that much more tantalizing. I don’t think there was any doubt that Paula and I would stay together, it was pretty much love at first sight and we’ve been together ever since.
D: This sounds like a weird backwoods soap opera. And you did Draculina through this?
HG: Yes, it was a periodic fanzine. I really don’t know how many I made between the time I was 14 and 17… but I was still doing it. I was pretty busy. I would get up in the morning and go to work at a grocery store, go to school for 3 hours in the afternoon and then go home and shovel pig shit. On the weekends I had a job cleaning out the theater, so Paula and I got to go the show every week for free. That was always great. But my step mom and I would continually fight to the point it became physical. She hit me, I would push her… one time I was walking away from her and she hit me in the back of the head with shovel. That might explain a lot of my problems too. I could fill a book with all the stories… I ran away from home several times, would stay at friend’s houses until their parents would get sick of me and kick me out. I finally left home when I was 17 and never went back.
D: Do you get along with your step mom now?
HG: I guess you could say that… she put a gun to her head and ended her life when I was 20 years old. If the experiences of your youth determine how you are going to do in life, I am fucked. My youth was really lost to continuous tragic episodes.
D: So what did your family think of Draculina?
HG: I don’t think they ever knew about it. Even now, they know I do something called Draculina but they never ask to see it because they know they would be totally horrified by the content. Draculina was always my own secret world, to escape family and life in general.
D: When did Draculina move out of the fanzine world and into the magazine world?
HG: As I said before, before I got sidetracked, The Comics Buyer’s Guide people never really took to the comic, but sometime during the early 80s I ran into a magazine called Fangoria. This seemed like the perfect place to advertise Draculina so I took out a small display ad in the back and suddenly the fanzine took off. It was selling better than I ever had before and I was introduced to a lot of people in the movie biz and made a lot of connections. After a few issues of continued success, albeit success meant I was covering my costs and no longer having to pay to do this out of my own pocket, I decided to take Draculina to the next level. In 1985 I had plans to make a full size magazine with color pages. Bobbie Bresee, who at the time had just starred in the movie MAUSOLEAM, agreed to do an interview and supply me with full color photos I could use in the issue. I was excited. Using a credit card I took out a large display ad in Fangoria announcing the release date of Draculina #1. I had already checked with a printer and thought I had everything lined up. I worked on the theory that the ad would announce that Draculina #1 would be released on such and such date allowing me enough time to collect orders and make enough money to pay for the printing. The response to the ad was great but the whole printing process went to hell.
D: What happened?
HG: That is when I found out that the things in Draculina weren’t acceptable with the majority of the public. I had an article on ILSA THE SHE WOLF with a bunch of photos from the movie, the comic was pretty graphic, I had photos from the FACES OF DEATH movie and Bobbie Bresee was a little too revealing for mainstream. When I took the magazine to the place to get printed, the guy was flipping through the pages and suddenly turned white. He put his hand on the phone as if he was going to make a call to the police. He simply told me, “We don’t print pornography.” This was the first time I was slapped in the face with this statement and it always pissed me off. When was nudity suddenly considered pornography? I found that anyone that was not exposed to anything sexual always related it to pornography… and most every printer I came in contact with must have lived the life of a monk. Color printers weren’t as abundant as they are today and the few I did find were 10 times higher than the price I was originally quoted, so I worked my way down the line hoping to find someone that would just print the thing, even in black and white. I finally got a small print shop to do it. I tried to beef it up by going to glossy paper and a two color cover, but it ended up looking like someone printed something off of a Xerox machine on really nice paper.
D: How did the readers accept it?
HG: There was a lot of complaining about not delivering the color that was advertised, but at that time the magazine was so different it was accepted as an oddity. When I did the second issue the readership didn’t drop off. The printing wasn’t any better and the paper quality was worse, but the magazine soon got picked up by Capital City Distribution and started getting into comic shops. Also, the mail-order division of Fangoria started selling it and it wasn’t long before the first two issues sold out.
D: So you made a lot of money.
HG: No. I didn’t make any money. It paid for itself and what little profit I did make went right back into the magazine. It was still more of a hobby at that point. I was working a full time job at an ammunition factory supplying the government with 20 mm shells! I hated my job, Draculina was my distraction from the normalcy everyone was living through. I find most people get a job and live for vacations and retirement, hoping that they might luck out and hit the lottery. Most of the people you meet don’t enjoy what they are doing, but you get sucked in. You get married, buy a house, buy a couple cars, have a couple kids… pretty soon you are just treading water. It is like that great line in FIGHT CLUB, “The things you own end up owning you.” That is so true.
D: So when did Draculina become your full time job?
HG: Not for quite a while. I kept trying to build the circulation. The Fangoria mail-order company, I think they are called Fanataco, cleaned out the first 2 issues and kept trying to talk me into reprinting them, but I didn’t want to. Suddenly, after issue 3, they cancelled their orders with me. I think some young kid got a hold of an issue and their parents made a complaint… whatever it was, Fantaco went from begging me to reprint issues to dropping me. I could not get Diamond Distributors or Bud Plant Comic Art, the other two big direct distributors at the time, to pick the magazine up. So it was basically Capital City and I selling it a copy at a time. It was like this for the first 13 issues. But I kept changing the magazine. I was interested in making a movie and kept doing more articles related to movie making and the people behind it. Although the magazine was called Draculina and it should have been about the comic, the artwork was always rushed and pretty much sucked, yet the articles were getting rave reviews. So issue #5 was the last full length Draculina comic featured in the magazine. By issue #6 it was nothing but interviews, reviews and pictorials… still very badly printed. I guess I should have changed the name of the magazine, but I loved Draculina. She grew up with me, she would continue on, if only in name.
D: So the first 13 issues were pretty much hand to mouth.
HG: Yeah. I really had no goal to make money with it, I just wanted it pay for itself and help me get closer to making my own movies. It was fun, I got to meet people I would have never met, and I really liked the magazine. If I was some guy looking through a magazine rack and I saw Draculina, I would buy it. I would be ecstatic. The magazine is great entertainment and informative. And I think the fact that it wasn’t money motivated made it so entertaining in the beginning. Its sincerity overcame it bad production values.
D: So… once again, when did it become a money making venture.
HG: Paula got moved up in the company she worked for and was taking a management position in a town that was an hour and a half away from where we lived. She told me, “You can make the commute to work everyday, or you can take this opportunity to quit your job and pursue your publishing and turn it into a money making deal.” By now I had worked at this ammunition factory for 13 years… I didn’t have to think twice. I quit. Issues 12 and 13 had the worst print jobs to date, I knew I had to improve the printing quality or the magazine would never go anywhere. I decided if I wanted something done right I had to do it myself, so I bought a printing press, plate maker and all the material needed to print Draculina on my own. Big mistake. I had ink and paper all the over our new house. The press kept jamming, I would spend forever trying to get a decent plate off this antique equipment I was working with… it was a nightmare. I never printed a single issue. I threw in the ink stained towel early on that venture… but I caught a break. I found a guy interested in taking my printing equipment, but he wanted to pay me some cash and a bunch of computer programs… imagine, laying out a magazine on computer! Up to this point I had been cutting and pasting every issue together. I thought I hit the high-tech when I purchased a Brother typewriter for $500 that actually could justify the columns and hold a whopping page and a half of text in its memory! I purchased my first PC… I won’t count the Commodore 64 I had … and spent somewhere around $2,000 for this piece of crap that you couldn’t give away today. But it did allow me to layout Draculina #14. I finally hooked up with a printing company in North Dakota, of all places, that was not only not offended by the material but also allowed Draculina #14 to be the first issue with a full color cover! Suddenly Diamond Distributors decided to pick it up, Bud Plant picked it up, and several small newsstand distributors also took on the newly revised Draculina. The magazine still had a long was to go, but suddenly it was making money! Issue #14 was the launching pad for a very promising future.
D: Is this when you started other publications too?
HG: Things were going well. I was in close contact with many Scream Queens of the time and I started a little digest publication called Focus. Each issue focused on one Scream Queen telling her story written in her own words. I didn’t think you could get any more personal that that. And the women were so proud of the results. Melissa Anne Moore was in the first issue, then Brinke Stevens, Debra Lamb, Monique Gabrielle and Julie Strain were in the others. It was a great idea and we all made decent money with it.
D: Who was your favorite Scream Queen?
HG: I think it was different back then. These women were doing mostly films, not direct-to-video stuff. There are a lot of women doing this stuff today, but back then these women had more of a star quality to them. So it was great it get to meet them and collaborate with them on these projects. I can’t say I ever had a favorite because they were all great people, no prima donnas. Well, maybe Monique Gabrielle was somewhat of a prima donna, but I think that came more from training from her boyfriend. If he wasn’t around she could be pretty normal, and actually quite funny. Melissa Moore was one of the nicest people I ever met. She was just a regular girl who happened to be a 6-foot tall blonde beauty. Debra Lamb was very enthusiastic and a lot of fun, she did a convention with me in California once. She always had a lot of ideas and was very upbeat. Then you have Brinke, Linnea Quigley and Michelle Bauer, who did a convention with me posing as Draculina… who isn’t going to love them? I have collaborated with all of them and we all made money and had some fun in the process. It was a better time for the B-movie biz back then. This isn’t to say anything bad about the women who are stars today, it just had a different feel back then.
D: What about the other publications?
HG: I read a couple fanzines that I thought were interesting, Oriental Cinema and She. I really can’t remember how I got hooked up with Damon Foster from Oriental Cinema, I think he was looking for money to keep his fanzine going. Instead, I told him to let me start publishing it and we would split the profits. He really had nothing to lose because he couldn’t afford to do it any more. I was handling all the costs and giving him better circulation that he had ever seen, and he was making money with it. OC was very successful. So when I saw the magazine She by Cameron Scholes, who lived in Canada at the time, I offered him the same deal. Cameron wasn’t as quick to jump on the bandwagon. It took me several months to convince him to do it. I really liked She, I knew other people would too.
D: And they instantly went into profits?
HG: Yes. I really went on roll. I did comics, magazines, books… I really don’t know how I produced as much as I did because I worked mostly on my own. I collaborated with a lot of people, but all the layout work, business, everything involved with getting a magazine out and into the stores I did myself. When I think about those times now I feel very lazy. I could never do what I did back then today. I was very motivated then, I literally worked all the time. I would start around 10 in the morning and work until 3 or 4 the next morning. I would just walk in and out of it to eat, or take care of my kids or, whatever. That was the great thing about working for yourself; you set your own hours. But I easily put in 14-hour days and didn’t think twice about it. I loved what I was doing and felt like I was accomplishing a lot. I attempted to hire people to help with the layouts but I never liked what they did. I would get their stuff and then completely rework it. I was always working then.
D: What was your most popular publication?
HG: Draculina was always the breadwinner. It was always the most successful. Oriental Cinema and She tied for second. The other publications were mostly one-shot ventures back then. I would say that the Linnea Quigley book Skin was one of my favorites. It did well and I thought it looked great. It took a lot to get that made but I think it was worth the effort.
D: With issue #22 you finally added more color pages to Draculina, along with nicer paper. What inspired that expensive change?
HG: My goal was always to make it better at a decent price. Most people tend to dump all their money in something and then when they find it doesn’t work they are broke and can’t continue on. Draculina made a slow progression to the glossy paper and additional color. The printer in North Dakota couldn’t get me the glossy paper or color I wanted so I kept shopping around. I finally took the magazine to Texas where I found a company in which I could layout the whole magazine on computer and deliver it to them on an optical drive. This was before CD burners were around, computers were still growing. I had to spend a bunch of money on more computer equipment to make this all happen, but it was well worth it. Draculina 22 sold out fast. Issues from then on look great, the color was fantastic and the sales went through the roof!
D: You said you originally got into the magazine to make movies, you did make four? Why didn’t you put all your effort to movie making?
HG: It was hard to do. It took so much work to make even a cheap movie and the pay off, at least financially, wasn’t that great for the amount of effort you put into it. My first movie, DEAD SILENCE, just plain sucked. I don’t count it. GORGASM was a small step up, it looked a lot better and Gabriela, the star, was the real selling point. The movie was supposed to have full nudity in it, but it was that time of the month so Gabriela asked to skip out on the full nude scenes. What could I say? She was great, I was lucky to work with someone who was so easy to be around. She was very enthusiastic about being in the movie and she got a lot of publicity for it.
D: That was the start of the “gore trilogy.” How did the other two movies go?
HG: Without Draculina none of these movies would have ever been made. I met Gabriela through Draculina. The executive producer of both GOROTICA and GORE WHORE, Robert Walters, was a Draculina reader who approached me with ideas and a lot of great stuff for the magazine. I met Mike McCarthy, who was instrumental in getting the locations and most of the actors in GOROTICA and GORE WHORE, through Draculina.
D: Did McCarthy contact you?
HG: He saw Draculina and saw GORGASM. He lived in Memphis and was doing comic art and also had an interest in doing movies. He contacted me and said if I came to Memphis he would help me make my next movie. I came up with GOROTICA, which is probably the weirdest video ever made that had an actual story. I went to Memphis to a party at Mike’s house where everyone was watching GORGASM. He had all the locations and all the actors with the exception of the lead. I found Ghetty Chasun through Donald Farmer. I met Farmer when Draculina was a digest-sized fanzine. At that time he put out a great fanzine called Splatter Times and he went onto to direct a ton of movies. Donald was always helping out with Draculina in the early years. I can remember when Ghetty showed up to the shoot I thought, “Oh my God, she is not going to work at all!” I had seen pictures of her and spoke with her on the phone, but when I actually met her… she was very tall and very different looking. But as soon as we started talking to each other I knew that things were going to be fine. She was great, very professional and very good at what she does.
D: Many think GOROTICA was the best of the three movies, although it may have looked the worst.
HG: I don’t even remember why it looked so bad. It was shot on s-vhs like the others, but the picture quality wasn’t as good as the other two. But I think it may have added to the story. If you haven’t figured it out, all the actors used pseudonyms. I don’t think anyone thought the movie was going to go over, or they just didn’t want to be associated with it. Ghetty got a ton of work from her appearance in GOROTICA. I always figured she had to have really regretted going with the name Ghetty Chasun because she has used it in every movie since and kind of got stuck with it. She was always a very confident person, but I remember sitting with her at the Underground Film Festival where they were screening GOROTICA and she seemed like a little girl. I’m always very uneasy when I am with a group of people watching my movies, but Ghetty was just as nervous as I was sitting in this room packed to the max for the viewing. We were both on pins and needles in the back of the room. When it was over everyone came over to congratulate us, it was really funny. I think the movie made an impression on a lot of people. I still get new directors telling me that that movie is what inspired them to make movies. That is pretty cool.
D: McCarthy went onto to make a lot of movies.
HG: Yeah. Mike is a very talented guy but he was difficult to get along with. He has a very big ego. We had a real falling out when we made GORE WHORE. I went back to run camera for him on DAMSELVIS as part of a trade off for him working on GORE WHORE, and I was going to edit it, but I just couldn’t take it any more and we had a major falling out. We just clashed. He had a lot of great ideas, he is very focused on his visions, which is always good, but you pretty much had to be a follower to be in his group. He had this whole entourage and you worked in his shadow. I wasn’t used to that and really didn’t enjoy it. I’m a hard person to get along with too, I know I am weird, some people get it and click with me, others think I am a psycho. But with Mike and I, some times it is better just to walk away. He is a talented guy, he has a shit load of good ideas.
D: What happened with your movie EXPLODING ANGEL?
HG: That was going to be my big breakout action movie. Besides horror I absolutely love action movies and the script that I wrote was great! Robert Walters and I made a considerable amount of money off of GOROTICA and GORE WHORE and we decided to dump it all into EXPLODING ANGEL. Robert got access to a complete studio with top of the line cameras, editing equipment, lights… pretty much everything you needed to make a top of the line movie that had much bigger possibilities than our horror movies did. I had lined up Amy Lindsay, which would have been her first movie before going into a long career in soft-core cable movies. I also had Gunnar Hansen from TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, Scott Shaw, another great actor I met through Draculina… just all this great talent. But, the problems came with the guy who had control over the studio and equipment. He worked very slowly, we’d spend a day setting up a shot that lasted maybe five minutes. We just wasted so much time gathering everything together and setting it up. It also didn’t help that he was gay and he was constantly hitting on me. I’d rather take a bullet in the head than one up the ass, so I was always on the defensive and the whole situation literally made me sick to my stomach. This atmosphere accompanied with his complete control over all the equipment we needed just destroyed the movie. We could not make a move without going through him to get what we wanted. We shot for over a week and ended up with maybe 20 percent of the movie shot. What we had looked great, but there were too many holes, and it was going to take a lot more money and time to finish it. Neither Robert nor I wanted to deal with it anymore. We decided to cut our losses and it was never finished.
D: Are you anti-gay?
HG: No. But I am anti gay people coming on to me when I say I’m not interested. Let’s face it, men are disgusting. If I were a woman I would be gay. I don’t see how women can stand to be around us… what is the joke? “The quickest way to fill a room is to put two women together, the quickest way to clear a room is to put two men together.”
D: You also were producer on several Jess Franco movies.
HG: Actually, only TENDER FLESH. My name is on a couple others, but TENDER FLESH is the only one I put money into. Kevin Collins is another person I met through Draculina. He contacted me once about something he saw in the magazine and we kept corresponding to the point that we ended up doing a lot of projects together and became very good friends. I was in his wedding party a couple years ago. I have made some really great friends over the years, like Michael Shuter, another person who just wrote in to me and we clicked. Michael has worked the Draculina table with me at 95% of the conventions I have done. We always have a great time.
D: So, what did you think of Franco?
HG: He knows what he wants. We gave him X amount of dollars to make TENDER FLESH and he made it with the money we gave him in the time allotted to him. I don’t think anyone in the U.S. could have shot a super 16mm film for the money he shot TENDER FLESH for. He is a real character, I was lucky to get to meet him and spend a lot of time with him and Lina Romay in Spain and England.
D: You are traveling to different countries, producing several magazines, comics and books. Did you become exceedingly wealthy?
HG: I think if I had to do it all over again I wouldn’t have done so many one-shot things. I should have concentrated on just Draculina and maybe a couple other magazines. Most of things I have done made money, but some did better than others. The comics were marginally successful. My real goal was to give rebirth to the Draculina comic. We did Draculina’s Cozy Coffin, which was like a Tales From the Crypt comic. But I had signed a great artist, Edwin Neives, who was set to do the Draculina comic, he did the Sheila Trent: Vampire Hunter comic for me, which was doing very well. Just as a side note, Edwin was gay too, I didn’t have any problems with him… Anyway, we did some promotional stuff together and were gearing up for the first issue of the new Draculina comic when Neives, who lived in New York, got mugged. He was hit so hard in the head that he actually got amnesia. He was going to doctors and doing therapy to try and remember his life. The weird part was he could no longer draw. He had to re-teach himself how to draw! It seemed too weird to believe, but the last time I talked to him, which was several years ago, he barely knew who I was. We’d start talking about the comic and he would just start crying… he just couldn’t draw anymore. It was a shame because he really was a fantastic artist, the best I ever worked with. It was around this time that the comic industry bottomed out, nothing was selling.
D: A lot of people in publishing went out of business then, what kept you afloat?
HG: I quit making comics, they were a death sentence. By now I had been building up my mail-order business because I could sense that the publishing boom was almost over. I didn’t expect it to plummet like it did, but I knew it wouldn’t last. The mail-order business became more of a moneymaker than any of the publications.
D: So what happened after the comics died?
HG: I had grown quite a publishing empire for a guy with no money and doing most of the work myself. I actually moved the whole operation into a building with 3 offices and a giant warehouse. My plan was to start my own distribution center for other small publications to get them into stores. There were a lot of problems with direct distributors and the newsstand distributors were ripping the little guys off. I planned to build this great network, hired a couple people, created a catalog for stores and started going to work on it. It didn’t pan out. Stores were very difficult to deal with, most would never pay. It was too difficult and too expensive to get off the ground. The distribution idea folded.
D: Financially, how were you doing?
HG: I was still doing quite well, but I lost a ton of money to crooked distributors and a lot of ideas I had that never took off. I always attempted to get into mainstream thinking that was where the big money was. I did Mean magazine, an alternative to Mad. The distributor ripped me off on that and it died after the first issue. Thunder magazine, a mainstream action magazine, it never took off and lost a bunch of money. My next big idea was to create something like Playboy, which became Pinup. This magazine did not do that bad, but never made enough money to justify the effort. There was also the sister publications Pinup Digest and Oriental Pinup, which died along with the Asian craze. I was always looking for a new avenue to take, but with the birth of the Internet magazine publishing was not a lucrative profession to pursue.
D: Which would bring up the question, why did you buy the magazine Scream Queens Illustrated?
HG: The price was right. Bob Mechuluci contacted me and told me they were selling the magazine and wanted to know if I was interested. At first I wasn’t, but then I starting thinking “If I don’t buy it, who will?” I didn’t want someone else to buy it and create instant competition for me, so I figured I would get and completely change the format. I basically made SQI into that Focus magazine I did back in the beginning. Each issue would focus on one specific girl and I would stuff it with full color photos and an interview along with other vital statistics. Of all the crazy ideas I have had, this one was actually a good one. The first issue I produced, #24, featured Michelle Bauer and instantly sold out! I made enough money on that issue to cover what I paid to buy Scream Queens Illustrated. Every issue I produced made money, although I cut the circulation down tremendously. The magazine was now produced for the diehard fans of the women. The fans loved it. It eventually became too expensive to do. Although magazine prices rise slightly, the costs of printing and shipping continually rise. Most people just don’t realize the costs involved in putting out a magazine.
D: You recently sold off your magazine Sirens of Cinema. Why did you start that magazine and why did you end it?
HG: My last futile attempt to break mainstream. I wanted to create a magazine that covered the women of the movies that wasn’t just tidbits of information. Most of the magazines out there you can read their feature articles in about two minutes and get no real info. I wanted something in-depth, that you could really sink your teeth into. I worked my ass off on that magazine and each issue was stuffed with information. Kevin Collins came aboard early on and we both put a lot into it. But, what messed me up, was the mainstream mindset. People that were buying it would complain that the $5.95 price tag was too high and that there should be more pages. The magazine should come out monthly and… blah, blah, blah. The majority of the readership was women, which totally threw me for a loop. I didn’t know how to write for women, and I didn’t want to cater to their needs. Women involved with mainstream work on some different level. They liked the magazine but they were always making little remarks, or bitching about totally pointless stuff. It was annoying. I was comfortable doing Draculina because I reported on things I thought were cool and everyone that read it thought it was cool. Women that read Draculina are my same wavelength, the women reading Sirens of Cinema were mostly annoying. It was a good magazine, but I just didn’t enjoy doing it because it didn’t become what I wanted. I had to decide whether to dump more money in to it or sell it. I chose to sell it.
D: It doesn’t seem to matter what you have done, you always come back to Draculina.
HG: I have made a full circle. I started out with Draculina, built a modest publishing empire, then dwindled back down to where I began. I really don’t think there is any shame to it. There are highs and lows in all markets and publishing had its moment and it is now gone. The Internet has destroyed so many things, and publishing has been one of the casualties. There are so many publications that have bit the dust, very few have survived. It is a much tougher business than it was ten years ago.
D: Looking back on the last 20 years, what would you have done differently if you could do it over?
HG: I kept trying to branch out and should have focused my attention solely on Draculina. Maybe just did a few one shots instead of dumping a lot of money into mainstream projects. Should have saved my money. But, you live and learn. Hindsight is 20/20.
D: What were the best things that have happened over the last 20 years?
HG: The people I have met. I have met a lot of famous people, been to a lot of places that I would have never been exposed to had it not been for Draculina. I have made lifelong friends that started out as fans of the magazine. It has been a wild ride that hasn’t ended yet. I think most people think of me as Draculina, my name and hers are intertwined, you don’t think of one without the other. It is cool, I am happy with that.
D: What is the future of Draculina?
HG: Well, I am finally concentrating all my efforts on just Draculina. I plan to have a Draculina book published before 2006 is out, and naturally, a feature length movie will undoubtedly follow. I will probably be looking for someone else to actually publish the book, I don’t think I want to tackle that myself.
D: What would you like to say the fans of Draculina?
HG: Thanks. It is hard to believe I have been doing it this long, and the only reason I have is because of everyone that is holding this magazine in their hands right now. I like to think we are the ones that have bucked the system and not fallen into the grips of the media driven drivel that lines our magazine racks. Draculina fans are the greatest and I appreciate the letters and support. We are all a little weird, but that is what makes it fun. It has been a fun ride and with your continued support I am sure it will last another 20 years!