A look at some of the numerous meetings that we undertook in order to issue 8mm films to our customers, or obtain 16mm for our library.
Contracts & Rights Chapter 12
It would seem that EMI were more than pleased with the way things were moving with the batch of titles from the first agreement and were eager for us to choose the titles for a second contract. This time round our contact Ken Troy was less fragile and seemed a little more at ease, so the atmosphere was far friendlier he even related a few amusing anecdotes and introduced us to his secretary. We already had a list of films to submit to him for clearance and as with our second deal at Rank Film Distributors there was no messing about this time and we obtained the rights to ‘Spare a Copper’, 1940; ‘Dracula Prince of Darkness’, 1966; ‘Quatermass and the Pit’, 1967; ‘Plague of the Zombies’, 1967; ‘The Lavender Hill Mob’, 1951; and ‘Godzilla Vs the Thing’, 1964. The terms and conditions remained the same as our first deal. The Godzilla film, which I had chosen, was never released as EMI later discovered that their contract with AIP was only for 35mm and 16mm and did not include 8mm, but none of this was discovered until after I had editited a 3 x 400′ feature, using the 16mm print they had supplied! (Yes we were still using 16mm prints as masters). We even advertised the film in a trailer reel, along with The Devil Rides Out & Lust for a Vampire! In fact we discovered later that it was highly likely that Toho had only sold AIP in the States 35mm, 16mm and TV rights, so it’s possible that the 200′ extracts that Ken Films issued were not strictly legal! But whatever the truth was, the title had to be replaced and Derek chose ‘The Elstree Story’, 1952; which rather dissapointingly did not contain the colour sequence that had originally closed the film. All were released as 4×400′ abridged features and 400′ highlight editions with the exception of ‘The Elstree Story’ which was just a 3×400′ and wasn’t made available a 400′ version. Strangely, as far as I can remember, we also issued ‘Dracula Prince of Darkness’ as a Scope 400′ edition, but not as a 4×400′ edited feature.
…. to be continued.
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