Special guest blogger Bret McCormick is a writer (and former film maker) living in Bedford, Texas. A collection of horror stories he curated, entitled Schlock! Horror!, will be released by Hellbound Books in June of 2018. By Bret McCormick I want to thank Hugh Gallagher for inviting me to write a piece for this blog. I’ve just read his piece on the trials and tribulations of magazine distribution and Tim Ritter’s insightful article on the changing face of movie-viewing in the last several decades. I can relate. I never published a magazine, but my dealings with film distributors echoed Hugh’s experiences. My evolution as a voracious consumer of all things horror paralleled Tim’s. From 1984 to 1996 I wrote, produced and/or directed a lot of direct-to-video features. Two of my titles that may still be recognizable to today’s fans are: The Abomination and Repligator. I still get a lot of FB friend requests from folks who like these two movies. I haven’t made a movie in over 20 years and I have no desire to ever go through that process again. In 1996 I had a distributor file bankruptcy a month before he was contractually obligated to pay me. He’d just built a very expensive home in an exclusive neighborhood in Dallas, so I couldn’t help but feel he’d stolen my money and the money owed other film makers to feather his nest, then filed bankruptcy knowing there would be little we could do about it. I reasoned there were easier ways to make a living. Life went on and I floated along with it, trying my hand at various pursuits along the way. Was I bitter? Initially, sure I was. But, that faded. My creative urges continued and writing became my preferred outlet to satisfy those urges. In 2009 a friend told me about a website called duotrope.com. Basically, you plug in the specifics of what you’ve written and the site gives you a list of venues that publish the sort of thing you’ve written. It was a free start-up at the time. Now they charge $50 per year. I sold the first piece I submitted via duotrope, so I was encouraged. In 2014 I decided to get serious about writing and developed a daily writing discipline. I’d be lying if I said I’d written something every day since then, but most days I write in the neighborhood of 3,000 words. I always have several novels in process and I write and sell a lot of short stories. I co-edited two horror anthologies for Eakin Press with my fellow Texan, author E.R. Bills. E.R. is a serious writer of mostly nonfiction; horrific accounts of racial violence perpetrated in the early 20th century. I met him at the North Texas Book Festival and it was just a few days before he pitched me the idea of doing a collection of horror tales set in Texas, written by Texas authors. We were fortunate to get a submission from Joe Lansdale. The collection got a lot of attention in the press and reception was good enough that we did a volume 2 the following year. (As of this writing, I am no longer involved in the Road Kill series, but E.R. is compiling volume 3.) At my 58th birthday party, a backyard cook-out affair, E.R. overheard Glen Coburn (of Bloodsuckers from Outer Space fame) and I reminiscing about our days as cinematic schlockmeisters. “This needs to be a book!” he insisted. I was very cool to the idea. I’d never done any long form non-fiction before and was not at all convinced it was a good idea. He persisted. And a year and a half later, in April 2018, Texas Schlock: B-Movie Sci-Fi and Horror from the Lone Star State was released at the Dallas Fan Expo and in May at the Texas Frightmare Weekend. The book sold well at both venues and we’ve had a number of very positive reviews to date. So, thanks E.R. for the nudge. In the process of putting the book together, I needed to get viewable copies of Time Tracers and Bio-tech Warrior, so they could be watched and written about. It had been over twenty years since I’d seen either film. Because of his hilarious book, Whacked!: Skewed Views of Horror Movies that Simply Refuse to Die, I asked Glen Coburn to write the reviews of the movies covered in the Bret McCormick chapter of Texas Schlock. There were no screeners available, so I pulled the masters out of storage and had them digitized. Since I’d gone to all that trouble, when it was suggested that I do a limited-edition DVD release of these two movies, I said, “Why not?” I’ve used the DVDs primarily as giveaways to entice people to buy the book. The strategy seems to have worked pretty well. I noticed recently that an original VHS of my movie The Abomination recently sold for $300. If that’s the case, then I suppose these limited-edition DVDs may actually be worth some serious money in 30 or 40 years. (That’s a joke. I say, that’s a joke son.)
Alamo Draft House expressed interest in doing a combination screening and book promotion. Another writing friend suggested that I speak to a Dallas-based PR person to form a plan to increase attendance. When I met with the lady she asked what my end game was. Was I trying to build a video distribution company? Did I want to resuscitate my film making career? I explained that I had these memories that a certain group of people seemed interested in hearing about. I still owned the rights to s few movies, so the re-releases were just a part of monetizing those memories. “It’s a bit like going through your garage after many years and realizing you need to get rid of some of that junk,” I said. “But, there’s no sense in just throwing it away. You can think of it as a sort of cinematic garage sale.” She got a laugh out of that. Thank you, Hugh, for the kind assessment you made of Texas Schlock! Good luck with your new and improved website! Reconnecting has brought back a lot of fun memories from the days when I first discovered Draculina. I’ll be watching for the odd and interesting bits that pop up on the blog.
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By Hugh Gallagher One subject I wanted to cover, that I am sure only a small percentage of people have the slightest interest in, is that of magazine distribution. I only broach the subject because I can remember some people thinking I was racking in the dough when at the end of my publishing career I was charging a whooping $6.95 for an issue of Draculina. Nowadays people are charging between $9.95 to $19.95 for a magazine. Who can justify these outlandish prices? Let me take you on a little Draculina distribution journey... When I started my magazine adventure back in 1985 I had a dream of seeing Draculina on a newsstand, available for anyone to purchase. It would be several years before that dream would be realized as I was a working class boob with no money and a vivid imagination. After publishing Draculina as a fanzine off and on for many years, I decided to go into a full size magazine format and started back with issue #1. I knew nothing about distribution or even how magazines got to that sacred shelf space at my local drug store. I would learn process very slowly and painfully, much like Chinese water torture, and equally as painful. I won't go into all the printing issues I had with the first issue of the Draculina magazine, but simply stick to my distribution efforts. There was no distribution... I was solely mail-order, advertising first in Fangoria and also the Comics Buyers Guide (which by that time had been bought by Krause Publishing from creator Alan Light, turning it from a fun fan-ran newspaper into a money grubbing piece of crap). I would also get reviews (mostly bad) in papers like Screw Magazine, Magick Theatre, and other publications, which despite their efforts to kill me would simply rack up sales. I did get some positive press, but I always found something gratifying in publications that would attack Draculina, only to see their own publication go under due to lack of sales, as Draculina Publishing continued to prosper. Fangoria ran a mail-order business called Fantaco and they were pretty much responsible selling out of issue #1 and #2 of Draculina fairly quick. They would contact me asking me to reprint the first two issues, which I declined as I always felt the magazine was getting better and I just wanted to keep improving it. Reprinting, in my mind, felt as if I was stepping backward. But, after issue 3, after selling exceedingly well and begging me to reprint, suddenly Fantaco quit ordering. I never got a reason why, but I believe some mother complained about catching her kid with a copy of Draculina. As always with the good old USA, gore and death will never be frowned on, but put any naked boobs in the mix and it must be shut down! I went several issues relying on small ads in fanzines and a strong but small subscription base. I kept searching for a distributor and finally found my first in Capital City Distribution. CC (Capital City) refused me on several submissions but finally broke down and added me to their catalog and sales were good. CC was a direct distributor, in which to say, they sold mainly to comic stores and sales were final, there were no returns. I would have to supply CC with a description and cover art for an issue of Draculina three months before it was actually to be released. CC would put this into a catalog that was distributed to comic shops who would in turn made available or even sold the catalog to their customers. Customers would make their selections from this catalog, stores would place their orders, and CC would send the total orders to you. Once you received this purchase order you had a date that the product had to be delivered to CC's warehouse, after which you were paid 30 days later. Now this sounds great but there were a few things that messed up this Shangri La. First off, I am more of an in-the-moment kind of person. Planning what I am going to do three months down the road was no easy task. And it wasn't always easy to get people to make definite commitments so I didn't want to promise something that may fall through and piss people off. So planning issues was a major stumbling block for me, but I did do it with little to no repercussions. The other thing was, I had no money. So I had to shell out the money to get the issue printed and then 30 days after CC received their copies, they would send me a check. And that check was for half the cover price! So, issue 9 had the cover price of $3.50, I was getting $1.75 a copy plus I was having to pay the printing costs and the shipping costs to get it to them! And believe it or not, CC was one of the best companies to deal with! Sales picked up and I was happy. But I still searched for more distribution. There was one more bigger direct distributor called Diamond Distribution. Diamond was top dog, and they continually refused to take on Draculina until issue #14 when I added the color cover. Then Diamond became one of my biggest distributors. They were set up in the same fashion as CC, with one vital difference... they only paid 40% of the cover! And that is if you waited the full 30 days to get your money, they had other deals where they would send you your money in 10 days but paid you even less! Once again, you were paying printing costs and shipping them the magazines and waiting 30 days to get 40% of the cover price. Another smaller mail-order business I dealt with was Bud Plant. I can't remember for sure but I believe they only paid 40% of the cover as well, plus they bought in much smaller quantities as their distribution division had been bought out by Diamond in 1988. I'd like to point out the difference between CC and Diamond. I loved CC. Although losing 50% of the cover seemed like a lot, they bought a lot and were very prompt in paying. Plus CC had a staff that seemed like a bunch of fan boys that happen to work of a distribution company. It was nothing for me to get requests for back issues from workers wanting to complete their personal collections. They enjoyed what they did and weren't looking to screw anyone over. Diamond, on the other hand, seemed like corporate creeps. They would gig a publishers anywhere they could. They knew the small guys had a tough time covering their printing costs and shipping costs and would offer little deals in which you would totally get screwed over. I guess no one was putting a gun to the publishers head, but it really felt like they were ready to take advantage at any time they could. Luckily for me I had a good relationship with my printers that would offer me up 30 days credit and I had an American Express card that had no limit, so when my five figure printing bills came in I could make it work. But even with CC and Diamond I was getting in comic stores, but how do you get into regular stores? Welcome to newsstand distribution. At least with direct distribution you knew what you signed up for and you did get paid, newsstand distribution was a completely different animal I dealt with a few of them, the last being RCS which was ordering thousands of issues, of which only a small percentage were ever paid for. See if you can follow along on how it worked: Let's say you have this great new magazine and RCS wants it. You send them X amount of copies of issue 1 and they distribute it to all kinds of big book store chains, newsstands, etc. Okay, you paid to print those copies and paid to ship it to them, you have not seen a dime yet but there is big promise. I mean, once people see this everyone will buy! Now issue #2 comes out, RCS increases their order and once again you print it, ship it out and now you are holding the bill for two issues and have yet to see a dime... but wait, there will be a big check coming soon (you are promised). Now, issue #3 comes out, RCS increases their order again, you reluctantly send it out. You see, unlike direct distribution, newsstand distribution works like this: issue #1 is sent out to the retailers, yea, it is on the stands. Then issue #2 is sent out to the retailers and this allows the retailer to return any unsold issue #1's for credit. So, they send in a check only for the issues they actually sold and return any unsold ones. RCS has a lot of paper work to do so they can't really get all this processed until after they receive issue #3. Therefore, you are now three issues deep in printing costs and shipping costs before you see any money for issue #1.
Now this is the funny part. They do not send you back those unsold issues, they send you an “affidavit” stating how many copies were returned and destroyed, and attach a check for what was allegedly sold. You could give them them 5,000 copies and they could pay you for 500 and claim the the other 4,500 were destroyed. I can remember when I was kid going to a place called the Bargain Center. They had stuff that looked like they fell off the back of a truck, as they had a real array of items for a brief period of time at really cheap prices, but you were lucky to find the same thing twice. My favorite section was their magazine section. Here you would find three magazines in a bag for .25 and I was in heaven. Copies of Scream, Psycho, Withes Tales, Castle of Frankenstein, bundled together in on bag for less than the costs of one issue. The big problem was a lot of the magazines had the title cut off the cover. I never could understand that, what nutcase was running through the magazine store slicing the titles off of magazines? But I was benefiting because they were jamming these defective publications into a bag and selling them to me dirt cheap and a lot of times a perfectly good issue would be in the mix... little did I know these were the unsold newsstand distributor publications. In earlier times the distributor would cut the title off of any unsold magazine and then return these to the publisher stating the magazine was returned and destroyed, the cut off title being the proof. I'm sure the publisher had no idea they were shoving the remainders in a bag and discounting them at places like Bargain Center. By the time I was in the biz I wasn't even getting the title, I was just getting a piece of paper staying X amount of copies were destroyed... or being sold in bulk to Crazy Gene's Magazine Emporium... either way I wasn't seeing a dime. There was one small newsstand distributor called Desert Moon Periodicals that would send me back any unsold issues. I appreciated that, but I literally had to hound them to get paid. I would refuse to send them any more magazines until I got a check, which usually worked, but it really got tiring trying to chase down the money. What pisses me off most is they talked me out of the last 800 copies I had of Pinup #8 and then went bankrupt a couple months later. I literally have two copies of #8 in my possession. 800 magazines that I would have sold at $7 a piece retail... good by $5,600! The number of newsstand distributors that went under owing me thousands is ridiculous. But getting your publication out to the public is hard work and it never got easier. In 1995 Marvel Comics started their own distribution company Heroes World Distribution which stole a lot of money from Capital City and Diamond in sales. In an attempt to survive both companies started signing exclusive contracts with publishers to run the other distributor out of business. Diamond got DC comics and Archie leaving CC with much smaller publishers and running them out of business. Facing possible bankruptcy CC was bought out by Diamond in 1996 giving them an almost monopoly on the direct distribution market. Of course Marvel's self distribution idea died in 97 and Diamond became a powerhouse. All of these changes truly affected the small publisher, now 40% of the cover was the best we could do and we had to deal with the shady newsstand distributors on a daily basis attempting to track down money. My continual calls to RCS were always greeted with optimism in how things were looking up, but the checks were always small in comparison to what was handed to them absolutely free. One of my calls was met with true honestly when they told me, “none of these magazines we distribute make money, you need to sell advertising, that is where the money is made, not on magazine sales.” It was after that that I cut off all newsstand sales. I had sold advertising but I did not want to commit myself to doing nothing but trying to sell ad space to make my magazine work. I wanted to work on the magazine. I did not trust this affidavit they sent me and I did not believe that the system was set up fairly or with any checks and balances. It was Thunderdome! I even attempted to start my own distribution company in the early 2000s. I had rented a warehouse with office space and set up some deals with various small publishers. I sent a catalog to stores and received orders, I then had to deal with collecting from stores... My god, does anyone pay for what they buy in business deals. I quickly got turned off on this and just continued to grow my own mail order business selling my own many publications and magazines and books from other small publishers. I included a large number of movies, books and other unique items. It was literally my mail-order business that kept me going those last few years. And then the Internet grew... and that is another story altogether. So, when you see a magazine with a $9.95 cover price (which is insane), chances are that publisher is only seeing a small fraction of that price come back to him or her, and I am sure they have to fight for every dime they get. Any publication surviving in todays world has be a real fighter, or a glutton for punishment. My first “guest blogger” is none other than writer, producer, director Tim Ritter. The maker of the original TRUTH OR DARE in 1986, he is also responsible for such classics as KILLING SPREE and CREEP starring the infamous housewife-turned-prostitute Kathy Willets. Tim decided to give his history of the rise and fall(?) of movie viewing... By Tim Ritter Growing up in the 1970's I loved movies and TV shows. As a little kid in Elementary school, I became infatuated with horror movies---especially Dracula, Frankenstein, King Kong, Godzilla, and the Hammer horror films of the 1950's. In the early 1970's, there was no such thing as "cable TV" in my world, so most of the information I got on horror movies was from books I'd purchase at the Paperback Booksmith or check out in the library. I have such fond memories of those oversized library books on Hammer and Universal movies---hardbound with the plastic covering protecting the jacket, the grainy black and white photos so enticing. I had to see these movies! There were also books at school about said films---in the library---later they were banned for being inappropriate, if you can believe that! I suppose there were some "provocative photos" of Christopher Lee with damsels in distress in lowcut outfits, but...again, as an Elementary school kid, this was my obsession! I'd stare at these for hours. On our old tube television sets---and eventually...my very own television in my room---which was a little black and white TV---I'd have to map out what the three or four channels we received and study the TV Guide like it was the Bible to see some of the movies I was reading about. Eventually, I did see very fuzzy versions---as in, through gray snow with bad reception---of movies like Dracula, Horror Of Dracula, King Kong, Godzilla, and many others. It was tough and frustrating to keep up on, and as cable TV slowly infiltrated our neighborhoods, other kids had access to like FIFTEEN stations! I was so jealous. I recall there was this mysterious "Channel 6" that ran all the Bela Lugosi horror flicks and tons of other stuff I had only read about, and I'd just stare at the blockings and capsule reviews in TV Guide for hours, so jealous of others getting the opportunity to see this stuff... As time wore on, many horror movies started to be released on television, as huge events! So I'd mark my calendar accordingly, whether it was the Friday Night Movie Of The Week or the Sunday Night Movie Of The Week. Eventually, as a young, impressionable kid, I saw stuff like THE EXORCIST and KING KONG '76 [still a favorite of mine---I wasn't allowed to see the movie in the theater as a kid because of the press, Jessica Lange for her skimpy wardrobe and the Kong waterfall scene, though I did see a 12-minute preview of the movie in the theater when I saw THE SHAGGY D.A. on television and obsessed endlessly over how great this stuff was, along with my sci-fi favorites The Six Million Dollar Man, Star Trek, Star Wars, Planet Of The Apes, and many others...I also remember seeing THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN being advertised, and wow, what a great, entrancing trailer! Again, too young to see the movie, I'd obsess over that movie, what it was all about---AN ASTRONAUT COMING HOME FROM THE MOON AND MELTING!!!---endlessly! Again, I'd read about these movies endlessly in books and TV Guide, waiting for them to come to television, not even understanding what EDITED FOR TELEVISION meant at the time... As time wore on, we got cable TV and finally, I had ten, fifteen channels to choose from, including the mysterious Channel Six! Amazing! I'd buy a TV Guide each week with my allowance and write down when the movies I'd want to see were airing, whether it was a Ray Harryhausen stop-motion classic, a Godzilla vs. mixmash, a classic Universal Movie, or a Hammer Delight! Finally, I was seeing stuff that I had read about for so many years. Sadly, my imagination...had built many of these movies up so much that I was let down a lot, even if they were good! Reading about something and imagining what it will be is sometimes so difficult to beat! But I do recall really enjoying THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, THE INVISIBLE MAN, and many more...I'd watch whatever they ran! Once I got into middle school, I discovered the DIRTY HARRY movies on TV, with the cop that would do anything to solve a case, shoot first, ask questions later, and got obsessed with watching those. They'd run them late at night, like the Spielberg classic DUEL, and 70's TV horror movies were all the rage as well---stuff like TRILOGY OF TERROR, THE LEGEND OF THE HELL HOUSE, and many more---even after being theatrical releases in some cases, HELL HOUSE seemed to be more of a TV staple, along with DARK SHADOWS and the like... DEATH WISH II was an interesting one---of course, I found the original movie on TV late one Friday night and got obsessed with it, and was again, banned by parents from seeing the controversial sequel on the big screen, but a couple of years later...what happened? Well, this fledgling new LOCAL TV STATION---trying to make a name for themselves, called Channel 29, ran the movie UNCUT for all to see! Man did that make waves- it was the uncut European Edition that had all the additional attack scenes in it that were later cut from the U.S. video release! They'd follow that up with FRIDAY THE 13th and a few others before the channel actually changed its approach due to public outcry---they were nearly shut down by the FCC for running stuff children could see before midnight! Strange times, I believe they were later bought out by Fox and now, Warner Bros. Of course, my obsessing over SLASHER movies came with HALLOWEEN when it premiered on NBC in 1978. This is one I had been hearing about for a year or two prior from other kids on the school bus- how their parents started actually locking their home doors after seeing it and how scary it was when they heard "that crazy man breathing..." and wow, that one scared me to death, just seeing it on TV, and gave me the adrenaline rush of a lifetime! I'd been toying with the family super-8 movie camera for a while by then, trying to emulate ALIEN and STAR WARS, but now...I had a new direction to go in---all I needed was one actress, a rubber knife, a mask, and a shaky POV shot! Surely something easily accomplished by a 12, 13 year old moviemaker wannabe! So Carpenter's HALLOWEEN changed my life---just so many elements in that which are STILL haunting---the bad guy gets away at the end! The incredible score! The rapport between the babysitters and the kids---something we could all relate to at that time, because everyone had been baby-sat or made extra money babysitting! It wasn’t long before TV also introduced me to WHEN A STRANGER CALLS and it became another classic inspiration to me... It was around 1979 when I discovered the first issue of FANGORIA with Godzilla on the cover---favoring that mag over Forry Ackerman's FM, FAMOUS MONSTERS, as a new era of horror was ushered in with slasher movies...I had been reading about them, of course, but HALLOWEEN was my big cable TV dose...But from Middle School to High School, the transition occurred, as my heroes became Wes Craven, David Cronenberg, H.G. Lewis, John Waters, etc. I'd be the kid in the back of the class, ignoring the teacher, reading FANGORIA MAGAZINE that was wedged inside my puke green folder that was meant for sentence diagramming... Of course, HBO had taken hold in some homes, and it was here where at friend's houses, I'd be able to see the first of the UNCUT movies that I'd been dying to see...EMPIRE OF THE ANTS was one I recall vividly! And INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS '78, one that scared me to death so much I couldn't sleep the entire night, kept hearing that "pod cloning" sound effect and thought my whole family had been replaced...Crazy times, I even wrote a story inspired by it, called STUFFED PEOPLE, about family members being replaced by "plush animal stuffing" versions---an idea I saw used much later in STRANGER THINGS SEASON ONE, of all places! I also discovered that I could actually SEE HBO on my black and white TV at some point---the scrambling back then was not quite as extreme for HBO. Many stations that showed uncut movies, like ON TV, had all these squiggly lines wreaking havoc on the screen but you could still see enough, through those lines, to see many good scenes, so I began trying to watch movies like that until I discovered HBO was pretty clear---you could see the picture quite nice through the UHF-ish fuzz if you sat back far enough! And the audio was scrambled but back then, it ran on a radio station so HBO viewers could get "theatrical sound in their living room" if they wanted it for their HBO movies---so I tuned my clock radio to 88.1 FM and got the sound! Now, HBO would run ALL KINDS of horror movies late at night, so I'd peruse the TV Guide and set my alarm for 2:30 AM to get up and see stuff like PHANTASM, AMITYVILLE HORROR, SCANNERS [which was the first R-rated movie I snuck into to see in the Cinema, btw- I paid for THE ELEPHANT MAN and disappeared into SCANNERS!], THE OMEN, and you know, eventually, all the great 70's and 80's horror movies. It was crazy having to study the TV guide, though, set your alarm close to your head, careful not to wake anyone else in the house, and watch all these movies through grainy black and white fuzz through blurry early A.M. eyes! But I made a habit of it! Of course, with the introduction of the VCR- Video Cassette Recorder, the game was changed! Suddenly, you could watch WHATEVER YOU WANTED, WHEN YOU WANTED...by recording it and replaying it! Or renting it! So naturally, I HAD to have a Beta VCR, but honestly, we were a lower middle class family and those bad boys were SUPER EXPENSIVE when they came out, like $1,000.00! In school, I was nearly failing Geometry, the only class I really had super trouble with- that and Algebra to me were like hieroglyphics- and I would have to study three or four hours a night to barely squeak by. My mom made a deal with me- if I could pass these courses throughout the year, the reward would be a Beta VCR, in my bedroom! Of course, I dug in. I can't say it was easy---the gold at the end of the rainbow didn't make my understanding of higher math any easier, but I was able to squeak by with a C average by the end of the year in higher math---and wow, as they say in the Brady Bunch---"put on your Sunday best, we're going to Sears! To get a Beta VCR!" My friends with HBO could now record me UNCUT movies to watch whenever I wanted! It was amazing, I was...overjoyed. It was too good to be true. I pretty much got to see everything I wanted, and when I got old enough to discover rental stores and bicycle there---boy was I in for a treat, re-viewing all my old TV favorites UNCUT! From DIRTY HARRY to HALLOWEEN to THE EXORCIST, wow, I had been missing a TON OF STUFF, as we all know who grew up in that era. Suddenly, the TV Guide wasn't needed as much! I could simply give someone a blank tape and have them record me stuff, and some of my friends had TWO VCRS and would rent movies and record them onto my tapes! Yes, early piracy, but I wasn't selling anything, and we were paying the rental fees- and of course, when the sell-through rage finally hit, I'd BUY the movies as well to "own" the packaging. Movies were my life, man, and the more I watched and discovered- especially stuff like THE HILLS HAVE EYES, PINK FLAMINGOS, VIDEODROME, THE BROOD, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, ALIEN...on and on it went, man. The uncut version of THE EXORCIST about blew my mind! As things progressed into VHS, of course, some movies had a difficult time coming out and if you had the right connections, say with someone like Chas. Balun, you could score or trade copies with him of stuff that was UNCUT from foreign markets or not released yet. Over the years, it was an incredible time- reading about movies in magazines like FANGORIA, DRACULINA, GOREZONE, and DEEP RED...having to track the movies they were covering and showing pictures of---just like my Elementary School days, you know, seeing those pics and NOT being able to see the content on my airwave only television---and here, not being able to go to my video shop and score an uncut INTRUDER, or this little gem called HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER that had fallen into the cracks and not seen distribution for four, five years after it was made...So it continued to be a rather incredible time, reading about movies and trying to track them down, and of course, there were maybe a dirty dozen or so of dudes out there that you could go to, like Balun, that could hook you up with something rare, through a trade or cash. And of course, we diehards would always buy the movies when they came out. Heck, when I got my Beta player, I immediately started to try to BUY movies, starting with BASKET CASE and PIECES on original run Beta tapes! The price- $80.00 each! This didn't last long, I mean, I was a dishwasher that made about $80 a week, so...that habit died hard until sell-through became the norm... Of course, the notoriety wore off over the years- renting five movies a weekend and binge-watching them all, then hunting down uncut bootlegs and unreleased in the States movies, finding the Italian movies uncut from overseas...you know, there was a million things to view, it seemed, an endless array, but VHS...leading to DVD and the "extras" markets [I remember scoring a copy of Roy Frumkes DOCUMENT OF THE DEAD directly from the man himself in NY from people that knew him and thinking it was so cool!] changed the game in its entirety, and has led to the current, now dwindling markets of Blu Ray and 4K. The collectors are still there, but now it seems to be OOP [Out Of Print] is all the rage for rare DVDs and Blu's, or LIMITED EDITION [and that's limited to under 1,000 copies---something unheard of back in the day when copies of movies were selling tens of thousands and MILLIONS at the higher levels!] have morphed the Collector's Market again somehow.
As we slide toward the year 2020...rather reluctantly, really...groaning...how do we watch movies now? Trent Reznor has a great Nine Inch Nails song called THE COLLECTOR, with some great lyrics: "I pick things up, I am a collector And things, well things, they tend to accumulate I have this net, it drags behind me It picks up feelings for me to feed upon..." I look back upon the old days, of obsessing over books...pictures in books...and words...over movies. More than the actual movies themselves! And even into the 1980's, the LATE 1980's, it was the same---magazines, fanzines, they held the key over what to obsess over, what to covet over, what to look for and try to find and OWN...Back in the day, unless you lived near a drive-in or a movie theater where you could sneak in easily, it was very difficult to see movies like MANIAC, VIDEODROME, NIGHT SCHOOL, SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT, DAWN OF THE DEAD, etc. It was IMPOSSIBLE to see the old H.G.Lewis classics unless they were a part of a "best of" tape like SEX AND VIOLENCE or FILM GORE, where I first saw those movies in extended clips of "just the good parts..." And older stuff that you'd read about...like LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT...no chance! Until Vestron released it and its excellent Hess counterpart, HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE PARK, a couple of years later... What a time to live as a movie fan! What a place! Sadly, unless you go out of your way to kind of live in a bubble, that experience has largely disappeared today...even for me. Today, who could foresee the way the Internet would not only become "the new world of Videodrome," in a way, and the way EVERYONE would have video in their hands to create and upload content...and the way...we ultimately read about, discover, and watch movies. Today, you can pretty much type any movie title into a SEARCH ENGINE and read about it on Wikipedia or some horror-related site. Yes, there will be pictures, but naturally, our attention spans are short, so we don't waste the time. We can find the trailer instantly on Youtube, and well, yeah, it might look of interest. So perhaps we'll check it out or perhaps we'll lose interest because there's about twenty, thirty other titles that are ALSO distracting us, demanding our attention...And then, we might even forget about what we were looking for with our heads dancing with imagery and synopsis blocks of these other titles. Everything is available. You head on over to Amazon Streaming, then Netflix Streaming, to Vudu, to Hulu, to Vinegar Syndrome Streaming...hey, it's all there. I read about a paragraph of that movie, is it any good? Wait, that title looks good too, is it new? Let me sample it- push play, oh man, that's boring, I'm five minutes in and I am BORED TO DEATH with this. Let's head over to this other streaming site! Look at all the covers. I'm scrolling through now, that one looks good, pretty new. There's an oldy I missed, maybe I should watch that, man what great artwork they did on the cover? Is Cameron Mitchell really in that? Oh wow, look at that, they're up to Part 5 in that series, how did I miss the last three? I'm scrolling now, I want to watch something and there's so much here now...I've seen that, do I want to see it again? Is it uncut, is this the EXTENDED version? I dunno. What else is there? Oh, look at that! I didn't know Linnea was in that-oh, wow, I saw that in the theater 30 years ago, maybe I should watch that again. Naw, it wasn't THAT good, was it? Cool cover though, let me check out the reviews and see what other people think... Pretty soon, in my quest to WATCH a movie, simply watch one...I find I've been searching the Net and scrolling through digital poster art for ninety minutes, pretty much...the ninety minutes I had set aside to watch a movie! And guess what? I watched...NOTHING. And now---I'm out of time, with so much to do, bills to pay, responsibilities. Maybe tomorrow. What was it I had initially been looking to watch? Oh yeah, I'll add it to my Que to WATCH LATER- there's only 880 titles on there I want to get to on this Streaming site. And that stack of DVDs in the living room. And that shelf of Blu Rays I've been adding to with all those extras in my office. Ah, what to watch? I dunno. No, not only WHAT to watch...when will I watch it? Oh, my pal told me about this new remake, maybe I'll watch that tomorrow- but wait- there's this new series I've been dying to binge watch on Netflix, it's only ten episodes, so maybe I'll hit that tomorrow, or the day after...I think I'll add it to my Que...oh wait, says it's already been in my Que... ,,,for a year now! So..how's YOUR movie watching going with EVERYTHING at your fingertips instantly in this oversaturated, over-informed technological age? Are you collecting still? Are you adding to the shelves? Are you glancing at the TV while answering texts on your smart phone? Are you watching popping circular discs into machines? Is the TV Streaming endless things, or are you just watch the same old favorite every night before you fall asleep and get up to go back to your job again...repetitively....like Groundhog Day... Are you...watching anything at all? Or...is the Smart TV...and it's IP tracking devices...and Alexa recordings... ...watching YOU? [Like the killer in...WHEN A STRANGER CALLS...] |
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Special guest blogger Bret McCormick is a writer (and former film maker) living in Bedford, Texas. A collection of horror stories he curated, entitled Schlock! Horror!, will be released by Hellbound Books in June of 2018.
By Bret McCormick
I want to thank Hugh Gallagher for inviting me to write a piece for this blog. I’ve just read his piece on the trials and tribulations of magazine distribution and Tim Ritter’s insightful article on the changing face of movie-viewing in the last several decades. I can relate. I never published a magazine, but my dealings with film distributors echoed Hugh’s experiences. My evolution as a voracious consumer of all things horror paralleled Tim’s.
From 1984 to 1996 I wrote, produced and/or directed a lot of direct-to-video features. Two of my titles that may still be recognizable to today’s fans are: The Abomination and Repligator. I still get a lot of FB friend requests from folks who like these two movies.
I want to thank Hugh Gallagher for inviting me to write a piece for this blog. I’ve just read his piece on the trials and tribulations of magazine distribution and Tim Ritter’s insightful article on the changing face of movie-viewing in the last several decades. I can relate. I never published a magazine, but my dealings with film distributors echoed Hugh’s experiences. My evolution as a voracious consumer of all things horror paralleled Tim’s.
From 1984 to 1996 I wrote, produced and/or directed a lot of direct-to-video features. Two of my titles that may still be recognizable to today’s fans are: The Abomination and Repligator. I still get a lot of FB friend requests from folks who like these two movies.
I haven’t made a movie in over 20 years and I have no desire to ever go through that process again. In 1996 I had a distributor file bankruptcy a month before he was contractually obligated to pay me. He’d just built a very expensive home in an exclusive neighborhood in Dallas, so I couldn’t help but feel he’d stolen my money and the money owed other film makers to feather his nest, then filed bankruptcy knowing there would be little we could do about it. I reasoned there were easier ways to make a living.
Life went on and I floated along with it, trying my hand at various pursuits along the way. Was I bitter? Initially, sure I was. But, that faded. My creative urges continued and writing became my preferred outlet to satisfy those urges. In 2009 a friend told me about a website called duotrope.com. Basically, you plug in the specifics of what you’ve written and the site gives you a list of venues that publish the sort of thing you’ve written. It was a free start-up at the time. Now they charge $50 per year. I sold the first piece I submitted via duotrope, so I was encouraged.
In 2014 I decided to get serious about writing and developed a daily writing discipline. I’d be lying if I said I’d written something every day since then, but most days I write in the neighborhood of 3,000 words. I always have several novels in process and I write and sell a lot of short stories.
I co-edited two horror anthologies for Eakin Press with my fellow Texan, author E.R. Bills. E.R. is a serious writer of mostly nonfiction; horrific accounts of racial violence perpetrated in the early 20th century. I met him at the North Texas Book Festival and it was just a few days before he pitched me the idea of doing a collection of horror tales set in Texas, written by Texas authors. We were fortunate to get a submission from Joe Lansdale. The collection got a lot of attention in the press and reception was good enough that we did a volume 2 the following year. (As of this writing, I am no longer involved in the Road Kill series, but E.R. is compiling volume 3.)
At my 58th birthday party, a backyard cook-out affair, E.R. overheard Glen Coburn (of Bloodsuckers from Outer Space fame) and I reminiscing about our days as cinematic schlockmeisters. “This needs to be a book!” he insisted. I was very cool to the idea. I’d never done any long form non-fiction before and was not at all convinced it was a good idea.
He persisted. And a year and a half later, in April 2018, Texas Schlock: B-Movie Sci-Fi and Horror from the Lone Star State was released at the Dallas Fan Expo and in May at the Texas Frightmare Weekend. The book sold well at both venues and we’ve had a number of very positive reviews to date. So, thanks E.R. for the nudge.
In the process of putting the book together, I needed to get viewable copies of Time Tracers and Bio-tech Warrior, so they could be watched and written about. It had been over twenty years since I’d seen either film. Because of his hilarious book, Whacked!: Skewed Views of Horror Movies that Simply Refuse to Die, I asked Glen Coburn to write the reviews of the movies covered in the Bret McCormick chapter of Texas Schlock.
There were no screeners available, so I pulled the masters out of storage and had them digitized. Since I’d gone to all that trouble, when it was suggested that I do a limited-edition DVD release of these two movies, I said, “Why not?”
There were no screeners available, so I pulled the masters out of storage and had them digitized. Since I’d gone to all that trouble, when it was suggested that I do a limited-edition DVD release of these two movies, I said, “Why not?”
I’ve used the DVDs primarily as giveaways to entice people to buy the book. The strategy seems to have worked pretty well. I noticed recently that an original VHS of my movie The Abomination recently sold for $300. If that’s the case, then I suppose these limited-edition DVDs may actually be worth some serious money in 30 or 40 years. (That’s a joke. I say, that’s a joke son.)
Alamo Draft House expressed interest in doing a combination screening and book promotion. Another writing friend suggested that I speak to a Dallas-based PR person to form a plan to increase attendance. When I met with the lady she asked what my end game was. Was I trying to build a video distribution company? Did I want to resuscitate my film making career?
I explained that I had these memories that a certain group of people seemed interested in hearing about. I still owned the rights to s few movies, so the re-releases were just a part of monetizing those memories.
“It’s a bit like going through your garage after many years and realizing you need to get rid of some of that junk,” I said. “But, there’s no sense in just throwing it away. You can think of it as a sort of cinematic garage sale.”
She got a laugh out of that.
Thank you, Hugh, for the kind assessment you made of Texas Schlock! Good luck with your new and improved website! Reconnecting has brought back a lot of fun memories from the days when I first discovered Draculina. I’ll be watching for the odd and interesting bits that pop up on the blog.
Alamo Draft House expressed interest in doing a combination screening and book promotion. Another writing friend suggested that I speak to a Dallas-based PR person to form a plan to increase attendance. When I met with the lady she asked what my end game was. Was I trying to build a video distribution company? Did I want to resuscitate my film making career?
I explained that I had these memories that a certain group of people seemed interested in hearing about. I still owned the rights to s few movies, so the re-releases were just a part of monetizing those memories.
“It’s a bit like going through your garage after many years and realizing you need to get rid of some of that junk,” I said. “But, there’s no sense in just throwing it away. You can think of it as a sort of cinematic garage sale.”
She got a laugh out of that.
Thank you, Hugh, for the kind assessment you made of Texas Schlock! Good luck with your new and improved website! Reconnecting has brought back a lot of fun memories from the days when I first discovered Draculina. I’ll be watching for the odd and interesting bits that pop up on the blog.