Let me try to recall the production of a film in the early days of Derann. In 1976 Derann was printing in both Standard 8 and Super 8, with production of standard 8mm terminated by 1977/8. Most of our films were printed at Filmatic, a laboratory that had a reputation for variable colour and quality. The Elvis Presley musical ‘Blue Hawaii’ had soon been given the nickname “Green Hawaii” from customers. A new release would start with us supplying a master, usually 16mm in the ’70’s, to Filmatic who would make a double 8mm negative, that is a 16mm width neg with an 8mm negative image running down one edge and up the other, hence each pass of the 16mm neg through the printer would produce two 8mm prints when slit. The quality could be very good, it depended on the quality of the master material. Derann was mainly issuing features but did occasionally put out a short. Their first 200′ had been the shower scene from ‘Psycho’, a film under license from Universal along with ‘Flower Drum Song’, ‘Magnificent Obsession’, ‘The Evil of Frankenstein’ ‘The Invisible Man’ and others. This contract abruptly ended when it turned out the Universal employee who had sold Derann the rights, didn’t occupy a position at Universal to do so and may have pocketed any monies and royalties involved, Powell Films were also caught out with Hammers’ ‘Phantom of the Opera’, ‘Winchester ’73’ and ‘The Munsters’ amongst others. Although I never saw a print of ‘Flower Drum Song’ I coveted the Double 8mm negative for many years and had it stored under my bed. Mountain Films always chose the cheapest lab they could find, usually Filmatic, and imported the negative and box sleeves. As an example, let’s take the 4 extracts from ‘The 7th Voyage of Sinbad’, they obtained the negs from Columbia Home Movies in the USA and then edited out a few feet from each extract (it may only save a few pence per print, but could and in fact would ending up saving them many thousands of pounds over the years), they would then have numerous copy negs made and remember, every time you produce a copy of a neg from a neg you loose some quality.. I’m sure you’re beginning to understand why Mountains print quality never matched that of the same title from the states! As far as I’m aware he did this only with silent prints, but with his mail order he sold thousands of them!! Some of Derann’s early 8mm contracts stipulated rental only and so only a small number of the titles were required, and when this happened we would have contact reversal prints made, to save having the cost of a neg. This would sometimes produce contrasty prints but the colour was as good as the original master material. ‘The Projected Man’ was one on many such titles printed this way.
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