80s Orphan Films — Movies Released by One-Release Distributors (The Orphans #6)

[00:00:00] From Los Angeles, California, the entertainment capital of the world, it's The 80s Movie Podcast. I'm your host Edward Havens. Thanks for listening today. On this episode we continue with the orphan films we occasionally highlight, movies that were the only theatrical release from the companies that distributed them.

[00:00:26] Our first movie this week is called Heartbreaker. Born on the streets of Los Angeles during the summer of 1981, Heartbreaker stars Mexican actor Fernando Allende in his first English language film as Beto, the leader of an East

[00:00:40] Los Angeles car club called The Golden Knights who falls in love with Kim, a new girl in the area who has also caught the eye of Beto's rival Hector. If you don't know Don Dunlap who plays Kim, you're forgiven.

[00:00:54] Her only two roles of note were as one of the prostitutes working out of Henry Winkler's org in 1982's Night Shift and as one of the female warriors fighting alongside Lana Clarkson in 1985's Barbarian Queen.

[00:01:08] She would quit the film industry after finishing Barbarian Queen when she married a British billionaire. Peter Gonzalez Falcon who plays Hector played the young Federico Fellini in the director's 1972 film Roma but hadn't worked in five years before making this film, playing

[00:01:24] a small role as the Latin lover in Bert Reynolds' 1978 suicide comedy The End. Watching the movie today it's interesting to see actors like Pippa Serna, Apollonia Cotero and especially the late great Miguel Ferrer so young before their careers took off but

[00:01:43] far more fascinating are the cars featured in the movie. Director Frank Zuniga and producer Christopher Nebb visited more than 3,000 car clubs in California, Nevada and Arizona selecting more than 200 customized cars to be featured in the film.

[00:02:00] They were able to secure most of the cars for free in part because they only had a million dollar budget to work with and it would be cool for recruitment for the car club enthusiasts to be able to say hey our cars were featured in this movie.

[00:02:13] Producer Nebb was looking for Heartbreaker to launch his American theatrical distribution company which he named Monorex. In the early 1960s Nebb had started distribution companies in Austria, Germany and Switzerland importing American movies from Roger Corman's various American distribution companies over the years.

[00:02:32] In 1978 Nebb would start Monorex in Los Angeles with hopes of cutting out the middleman by making and distributing the movies himself. After nearly two years of editing and post production Monorex would debut Heartbreaker on Thursday, May 3rd 1983 at the Commerce Theater in Commerce, California.

[00:02:51] More than 100 cars from the movie drove the stars and invited guests including Oscar winner George Shakiris, Phyllis Diller, Beverly Sassoon and Connie Stevens to the premiere which was preceded by a champagne reception hosted by popular novelist Harold Robbins.

[00:03:08] He's a lover, he's a fighter, he's a winner but it's not enough for her screamed out the tagline from the poster in the newspaper ad for the film which opened in 25 theaters and drive-ins in Los Angeles on May 4th.

[00:03:22] Monorex didn't report grosses, which should not be of any surprise to listeners of the most recent episodes but the nine theaters playing the film that were tracked by variety that weekend reported a nice $64,000 worth of ticket sales.

[00:03:35] In its second week the film was still in the same 25 theaters but this time only six of them were tracked. This reported 43,000 gross from those theaters was an 8% increase from the previous week's numbers on a per-screen average which almost never happens.

[00:03:51] Week 3 would see the film move to less prestigious theaters in the area but overall it would only lose one screen and again Monorex didn't report grosses and variety didn't track any of the moveovers but by the following Friday, May 27th with all the new openers

[00:04:06] for the start of the summer movie season including Return of the Jedi, Breathless, and The Evil Dead, Heartbreaker would be down to a single theater, a drive-in in San Pedro. On July 1st, Heartbreaker would open in two theaters in Watsonville, California and one in Salinas.

[00:04:23] All three play dates would only last a week. July 22nd would see the film arrive on eight screens in New York City but only one in Manhattan, the RKO National which with variety would report having grossed $10,000 in its opening week.

[00:04:38] And that'd be pretty much it for the film, save an occasional play date as a B or C title for a downtown LA triple feature. But to the best of our knowledge, the film grossed about $150,000 in total.

[00:04:52] But unlike most of the one-time only distributors we feature on this episode, Monorex is still around. The company would be dormant for nearly 20 years but Chris Nebb would start it back up in the early 2010s to distribute a series of documentaries about China on home video.

[00:05:10] Nebb would pass away in 2021 from cancer and his protege, J.J. Osborne, now leads the company. Our second film today had a long road from production to distribution. Hell's Angels Forever got it started in 1973 when Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead

[00:05:29] approached his friend Sandy Alexander, the president and founder of the Hell's Angels New York City chapter and offered half a million dollars to produce a documentary about the history of the motorcycle club.

[00:05:41] From its roots as the name of a Howard Hughes movie that was adopted by American bomber squadrons in World War II to those same servicemen starting up a motorcycle club after the end of the war because they were having trouble acclimating back into

[00:05:54] society to their mythic rise in the world imagination thanks to American movies to where the club was at the time. This sounded great to Alexander because let's face it, the Hell's Angels were still

[00:06:06] suffering an image problem thanks to the murder of a concert goer at the hands of a Hell's Angel working at security during a Rolling Stones concert in Altamont, California that was captured on film in 1970. Filming would begin in 1973 with Leon Gast, a young up and coming documentary filmmaker

[00:06:24] at the helm. Filming would stop and start sporadically based on the availability of the crew members. When Gast needed to leave in late 1974 because he was already contracted to shoot footage of a Muhammad Ali George Foreman heavyweight boxing title fight that was happening in

[00:06:40] Zaire, Kevin Keating the cinematographer would add director to his job description to continue filming until Gast returned in early 1975. A number of famous fans of the Hell's Angels would talk about the motorcycle club on camera

[00:06:56] and or lend their music to the project including Jerry Garcia, Willie Nelson, Bo Diddley and country star Johnny Paycheck. Garcia's money supporting the project would run dry sometime in 1977 and the film footage would sit in limbo for four years until the spring of 1981 when Richard Chase,

[00:07:16] a producer and director of hood made a documentary about the Irish Republican army in 1973 bought the uncompleted film from Garcia. In May 1981 Chase purchased a full page ad in the Hollywood Reporter stating the film would be completed for release in December 1981 with the title Angels Forever, Forever Angels.

[00:07:37] And even though the film was completed in time for release in December no one was buying. The film was a true testament to the Hell's Angels and that would make the Hollywood studios very nervous. Amongst the additions Chase would make is to have Morgan Paul, a character actor

[00:07:52] for movies like Patton and Mitchell who would become somewhat famous in 1982 as Deckard's former partner Holden and Playrunner to handle the narration. Currently in March 1983 Richard K. Rosenberg, a producer on the 1976 book Shields movie

[00:08:08] Alice Sweet Alice would purchase the American theatrical rights to the film which he would retitle Hell's Angels Forever and create RKR releasing to handle the distribution of the film. At first Rosenberg was hoping to have 70mm prints of the film with six tracked bilby

[00:08:25] stereo due to the artist who had contributed music to the film but because the movie had been shot in 16mm the quality of the film resolution was too grainy at 70mm so the prints

[00:08:37] were only blown up to 35mm and the sound mixed down to four tracked bilby stereo. Hell's Angels Forever would make its world premiere in San Antonio, Texas on April 15th, 1983 and a number of angels from New York City featured in the film would ride down

[00:08:54] to South Texas to attend the first screening. At the screening a member of the press asked Sandy Alexander why San Antonio for the premiere. I don't know was his response. A few weeks later on Friday May 13th RKR would get the film its first official theatrical

[00:09:10] release with 45 play dates in Corbett's Christie, Texas, Detroit, Miami, Orlando and Tampa St. Petersburg. Only eight of those 45 theaters would report grosses with a not very impressive $19,416 ticket sales but by May 25th all 45 theaters would have dropped the film mostly for the

[00:09:33] new Star Wars movie Return of the Jedi. Play dates in June would include Atlanta, El Paso, Minneapolis and Pittsburgh on the 3rd, Albuquerque and South Bend Indiana on the 10th, Allentown Pennsylvania, Cincinnati, Dayton, Philadelphia, Wichita, Kansas and oilming Tindelloware on the 17th and Kansas

[00:09:54] City, Missouri on the 24th. On July 8th the film would get a big West Coast push hitting 54 theaters in the Los Angeles Metro Region, Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area. 13 theaters in Los Angeles would gross $116,500 while 7 theaters in the Bay Area would gross $41,400.

[00:10:18] RKR still hadn't released any grosses for the film and by July 13th Variety was reporting a gross of $245,364. However an RKR releasing ad in the June 21st Hollywood Reporter claims that the film had grossed $764,118 in just its first four weeks of release.

[00:10:42] There would be small play dates in the 2nd and 3rd tiered markets throughout the rest of the summer but the next big push for the film would be a New York City premiere on October 7th.

[00:10:51] To prepare filmgoers in the area RKR would go all out with their promotions. Sandy Alexander and legendary Hell's Angel member Sonny Barger were made available for interviews with the press and on the night before the film opened the pair would lead

[00:11:06] more than 400 members from headquarters in Lower Manhattan to Broadway in 47th, the middle of Times Square where the local premiere was being held at the Movie Land Theater. And despite the animosity that usually existed between bikers and law enforcement a dozen

[00:11:22] NYPD police cars would escort the group the entire way and then to the after party that was being held at Studio 54 a few blocks away where the angels partied until the place closed at 4 am. The film would open in 70 theaters that would hand in gross a cool $340,000 in

[00:11:42] its opening weekend in the Big Apple. The following week the film would lose most of its theater but it would still gross another $120,000 from 32 theaters and it would continue to play in the area well into November but only on a handful of screens in the Outer Burrows.

[00:12:00] The film would open small in Boston on November 4th only three screens but its last big push would be in Chicago on December 2nd. $80,000 from 25 theaters would be the final nail in the coffin for the

[00:12:12] film and for the distributor our KR would close shop soon after the start of the new year after a slightly bizarre twist involving our next film and Hell's Angels Forever would hardly be seen after its 1984 VHS release.

[00:12:28] It's rather easy to find copies of the movie on the internet today if you Google Hell's Angels Forever full movie and go to the video section you'll see a very good looking 87 minute version in English with French

[00:12:40] subtitles on YouTube or a very poorly copied 90 minute version that looks like it's from the 1984 VHS release. I'd choose the first one because the second one literally looks like someone was holding a camcorder near a television when they made their copy.

[00:12:57] Our third and final movie this week was A Family Affair. In June 1980 Academy Award winning actor Charlton Heston signed on to star in two films for an upstart Canadian production company looking to take advantage of new rules by the Canadian Film Development Corporation

[00:13:15] that were meant to help Canadian film workers and the industry as a whole. As long as any film had a Canadian producer shoots in Canada with a mostly Canadian crew it would qualify for special discounts and incentives to

[00:13:30] make a lower budget movie look more like a Hollywood production through a series of tax credits that would stretch the budget to appear larger than it really was. The first film in the deal was a family adventure film called Motherload.

[00:13:43] Heston would make sure his hands were all over the production. It would be produced by his son Frasier Heston through the elder Heston's production company Agamemnon Films. The younger Heston would also write the screenplay making sure to give

[00:13:58] dad's character Silas McGee a crazy old Scottish gold prospector who's been living in the remote high country of British Columbia for 30 years looking for gold less screen time than one would expect from an Oscar winning star like dear old dad because surprise, surprise,

[00:14:13] Charlton decided he was going to direct the film as well. Oh and Mrs. Heston, Lydia would act as the set photographer. Much of the budget would be going to the Heston's. Charlton would earn $400,000 to star in the film, $177,000 to direct the film and 20% of the net profits.

[00:14:34] While Frasier Heston would earn $129,000 for his writing of the screenplay and $118,000 for producing the film along with 11% of the net profits. The story would involve a man who's missing after he goes on a personal vacation to look for gold in the mountains of British Columbia.

[00:14:54] Kim Basinger in her second movie role plays the lost man's wife who is convinced by one of her husband's co-workers played by Nick Mancuso to go look for him together. After their plane crashes into a lake, they find themselves at the

[00:15:09] mercy of Heston's character who will stop at nothing to keep his expected mother load of gold to himself. Production on the $4 million film would begin at Lake Lovely Water near Vancouver on September 21st 1981 after two weeks of rehearsal

[00:15:25] in the woods where much of the film would be shot. Heston had directed one movie before, 1973's Anthony and Cleopatra, and that experience would help him guide the production smoothly, finishing up its eight-week production one day behind schedule just before Thanksgiving.

[00:15:43] After the Thanksgiving break, Frasier Heston would supervise editing in Los Angeles while his dad would go on a mini tour of Canada making a series of personal appearances in Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto and Vancouver to promote the sale of investor shares in the film.

[00:16:00] $1,200 shares were being offered at $5,000 of the piece in the hopes of raising $6 million. While chatting it up with potential investors and signing autographs, Heston assured everyone that the Canadian government was offering a 100% tax deferment for investors, which was true, and they would sell all 1,200 shares.

[00:16:21] Editing continued throughout the winter and early spring of 1982 while Charlton Heston continued with the publicity tour on behalf of the film. He would help open the 1983 American film market in Santa Monica on March 25th and would be the guest speaker at Black Tide

[00:16:38] closing gala for AFM a week later. But post-production on the film was not yet complete, so both American and foreign distributors interested in picking up the film would have to settle for a 20-minute presentation reel. Heston and his foreign sales agent, Manson International,

[00:16:55] would line up $3 million in commitments from foreign buyers but no interest from domestic distributors. After spring and most of the summer came and went without any interest from the American studios, Heston and his son decided to release the film themselves through Dad's company, Agamemnon.

[00:17:13] The first stop would be Kansas City, Missouri which PR and distribution consultants to the Hestons recommended as having the most ideal demographics to test the appeal of film for the rest of the country. After a world premiere at the Fox Theatre that included the Hestons and Kim Basinger,

[00:17:30] who had been all over the local television and radio airwaves all week promoting the film, the movie would open locally on 10 screens on August 26th where it would gross $51,244. Manson International gearing up to promote the film at the Doville Film Festival in France in three weeks

[00:17:49] would purchase a full-page ad and variety to boast about the grosses. The ad would also note that the film would be opening on 80 screens across France on September 15th. In the film's second week in Kansas City, it would add a screen and do better than its first week, $52,600.

[00:18:07] Third week was still pretty good, 32,000 from 10 screens and the film would continue to play to decent crowds in Kansas City through October when Agamemnon, who had originally seen that first release as a test release, decided they would open the film in more markets. And on October 8th,

[00:18:25] they would open the film on 120 screens in Austin, Corpus Christi, El Paso, Fort Worth, Santa Fe, St. Louis and Tulsa, Oklahoma. An article in the October 20th, 1982 issue variety would note that the company planned on spending $5 million to release and promote the film

[00:18:46] and that its next round of openings would include Dallas, Houston, Oklahoma City and San Antonio in the coming weeks. Oklahoma City would open the film on October 29th and Dallas on November 12th, but other locations would arrive before Houston and San Antonio.

[00:19:03] Boise, Phoenix, Salem, Oregon and Salt Lake City, for example, would get the film on November 19th. In December, it would open in Charlotte, Memphis, Miami, Orlando, Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area. And all the while, the company never released grosses

[00:19:19] for the film and every theater playing the film was not a showcase theater and thus wasn't being tracked by the trades. Agamemnon would make their first big market push on February 4th, 1983 when they opened the film on 36 screens in Los Angeles. This time, they'd booked the film

[00:19:36] on two of the biggest showcase theaters in the city, The Man Brewing in Westwood and Grumman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood. The eight theaters tracked by variety would port $65,000 in ticket sales, which doesn't seem like a lot until you see that David Cronenberg's video drum

[00:19:54] made twice as much as that but on three times as many screens. After a second week that saw the film lose half its screens and 75% of its ticket sales, the film was gone from the second biggest American market.

[00:20:08] The film would never open in Chicago or New York City but by late April, 1983, the film would have grossed $7.2 million and according to a short article in Variety Magazine. Now here's where it gets tricky. In late April, 1983, Richard K. Rosenberg of RKR Releasing

[00:20:30] who had released the Hell's Angels movie we just spoke about announced that he was acquiring the theatrical distribution rights to the film from Agamemnon and that he was changing the title to In Search of the Motherload. But he wouldn't release the film until November 18th

[00:20:45] when he opened the film on one screen each. In Chillicote and Zanesville, Ohio, both towns of less than 15,000 people each about an hour from Columbus. The following week, the film would open on 15 screens in Dayton, Ohio, Lexington, Kentucky, Louisville, Martinsville, Indiana and Troy, Ohio.

[00:21:07] There were two screens in Munster, Indiana and one each in South Bend, Indiana and Springfield, Ohio on December 2nd and one theater in McHenry, Illinois on January 6th, 1984. Then for unknown reasons, Rosenberg changed the title of the movie again to The Search for the Motherload

[00:21:26] where it played on one screen Alexandria, Louisiana on March 9th, 1984 before being released on home video and cable television the following month. Since Agamemnon did more than 95% of the release of the film, I'm considering our care to be nothing more than a sub-distributor of the film

[00:21:44] for that remaining 5%, which keeps my timeline intact. And with that, we end this episode. Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again next week when episode 121, The Orphan 7 is released. Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, the80smoviepodcast.com,

[00:22:03] for extra materials about the movies we covered this episode. The 80s Movie Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for idiosyncratic entertainment. Thank you again. Good night.