Nearly

During the initial meetings with Ken Troy, our contact at EMI, gave us a number of 16mm rental catalogues and reams of photocopied lists to take away and go through in our own time, in order to make a list of possible titles for release on Super 8. As many of you are aware that first contract consisted of the two Hammer Horrors, ‘Scars of Dracula’ and ‘Horror of Frankenstein’ and several Ealing comedies. The second contract had even more Hammer Horrors including ‘The Devil Rides Out’, ‘Plague of the Zombies’ and ‘Quatermass and the Pit’, also included was a title that Anglo-Amalgamated Film Distributors had released theatrically in 1965 which had come to them via American International Pictures (AIP), who they’d had a long standing agreement. Each released the others product in their own countries. AIP not only produced their own films (Corman’s, Poe Pictures for example), they also picked up low budget American movies (I was a Teenage Werewolf is a good example), European product (I Tre Volti Della Paura, which was dubbed into English and released as ‘Black Sabbath’ as well as numerous sand & sandal epics) and a number of Asian movies from both Toho and Daiei, many of which they released straight to TV in the States. The Toho product included several Kaiju (Giant Monster) movies including ‘Godzilla Vs The Thing’!  ‘Mosura tai Gojira’, as it was called in Japan, was the fourth film in the Godzilla series and follows the highly successful ‘King Kong Vs Godzilla’ released the previous year and picks up the story just months later with Godzilla rising from the mud and sand, when it had been thought he’d died in the plunge from the cliffs into the sea at the climax of the earlier movie. Derek was aware of my interest in Kaiju and was just as eager to see a Super 8 Godzilla feature in the Derann catalogue. So it was added to the second contract and EMI proceeded to produce a 16mm flat print for us to use for a master, as scope was still in its infancy for 8mm. I was about to take a weeks holiday and Derek gave me a lift home along with a 16mm projector, splicer and the 16mm print and left me to proceed with the job of producing a 3×400′ cutdown! It wasn’t as easy as I’d thought, it wouldn’t have been a good idea to just have 3×400′ of monster action, you really do need story and dialogue and it was infuriating to see monster footage lying unused, but I eventually produced a satisfying 50 minute feature. When Derek arrived to pick me up the following week I was informed that Ken Troy had contcted him a few days earlier to let his know that it had come to light that there was no 8mm rights in their deal with AIP! My first job on returning to work was to reinstate the cuts and send the now complete 16mm print (plus splices) back to EMI. The title appeared in a later EMI 16mm library catalogue, splices and all!