A look at some of the numerous meetings that we undertook in order to issue 8mm films to our customers.
Contracts & Rights Chapter 34
By 1979 EMI had become a regular source of product, but when our contact Ken Troy decided to retire we, as always under such circumstances, had to establish fresh relations with a new EMI manager. I don’t recall our new contacts name, but very soon after he had looked over our earlier contracts business had quickley resumed. Business with them became so routine, that a phone call was all it needed to add to what was to become a standard feature with many distributors, ‘An Open Contract’, in which titles could be added as and when required. Over the next few years this ‘Open Contract’ would include ‘It’s in the Air’ with George Formby, 1938; ‘Sing as We Go!’ with Gracie Fields, 1934; , ‘Whisky Galore!’ with Basil Radford, 1949; , The Colditz Story’ with John Mills, 1955; ‘Flash Gordon’ with Sam Jones, 1980; ‘Supergirl’ with Helen Slater, 1984; ‘Can’t Stop the Music’ with the Village People, 1980; ‘The Elephant Man’ with John Hurt, 1980; ‘The Ladykillers’ with Alec Guinness, 1955; ‘Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde’ with Ralph Bates, 1971; ‘The Railway Children’ with Jenny Agutter, 1970; ‘The Dam Busters’ with Richard Todd, 1955 ‘The Magic Box’ with Robert Donat, 1952; ‘Highlander’ with Christopher Lambert, 1986 and ‘Carry on Screaming! with Kenneth Williams, 1966, if you can add others please let me know, I just can’t recall. We also re-released ‘The Scars of Dracula’ and ‘Dracula, Prince of Darkness’ as full features. The clauses concerning editing were dropped as titles were released full length on video cassette, by EMI themselves. However the 8mm market had also changed and was still trying to adapt, so although many titles were released as complete features, there were times when a 600′ or in the case of the ‘The Colditz Story’ a 2×600′ was made available and in some cases, as with Cliff Richard’s two musicals ‘The Young Ones’ and ‘Summer Holiday’ although advertised in a sales catalogue, never made it to the sales floor.
…. to be continued.
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