The documentary incorporates the making of MST favorites LASERBLAST and ROBOT HOLOCAUST, as well as RE-ANIMATOR, GHOULIES, TROLL, ELIMINATORS, ROBOT JOX, etc. I have been collecting interviews in-between other documentary jobs for the past two years. Now it is time to wrap the project and release it on the festival circuit.
My goal is to raise $25,000 to film additional interviews, hire Richard Band to compose an original orchestral score, commission a new theatrical one-sheet campaign from an award-winning illustrator, and digitize/transfer archival film elements. Thus far, I have raised 25% of the funding… with 19 days left in the campaign.
I really need your assistance! With your support, I know we can RE-ANIMATE the history behind the rise and fall of Empire Pictures!
The promotional trailer is here.
The Kickstarter page is here.
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I’m interested, but not $40 interested. A lower-priced digital option would be great.
Hey Majorjoe23! I understand your hesitation. This is an independent project. Backers are contributing to the completion the final documentary… and getting an special Blu-ray/DVD set as a reward. They are not simply buying a copy of the film.
They lived in things called cities.
I though Robot Jox was a FULL MOON production.
I backed it. Quality deserves support!
Even though these are not among my favorite B-movies, I gotta hand it to Griffith and Ballyhoo. They make fun documentaries and they’re preserving little pockets of film history that would otherwise slowly evaporate with time. So I hope this and lots of similar projects make it out.
I agree that Ballyhoo is doing a great job.
I just received my DVD of the Restored Manos, and there are some very good Ballyhoo extras on it.
Speaking of Kickstarter…. Don Bluth is trying to raise funds for a Dragon’s Lair movie.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/donbluth/dragons-lair-the-movie?ref=nav_search
Thanks, everyone! Your support really means a lot! No one gets rich off making these documentaries. I cannot speak for other producers, but I do this because I love it… and I know you do, too! Big things on the horizon from Ballyhoo!
No, that was Empire–Some of us remember leafing through those big Cannes Festival editions of Variety on the newsstand during the 80’s, just to see all those imagined spec-posters for the wild and crazy drive-in-circuit B-movies being marketed for a distributor. (qv. “Zack Norman is Sammy, in ‘Chief Zabu’!”)
And it’s nice to see Ballyhoo start being an actual documentary production studio (they did a couple surprisingly good real ones on the Blu for the ’51 “Christmas Carol”, around the same time as they were interviewing Richard Gordon for “Devil Doll”)–The painfully self-conscious cutesy-quirky-campy, trying-their-heart-out-to-be-Burton’s-Ed-Wood documentaries sort of went over a cliff after that Jam Handy one, and now we seem to be seeing a lot less of Larry Blamire…Think they might finally get rid of that “Hey, like, I directed Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, y’know!” logo, while they’re at it?
With the Gamera and Jack Arnold documentaries, I’ve braced myself for the worst on seeing those over stylized “We’re PARODY!” openings, and found some actual good cult-history therein. And come to think on it, DID we ever see that K. Gordon Murray Mexican-fairytale documentary?
It’s too bad there’s already a good documentary on Cannon Pictures, otherwise, Ballyhoo could be on the road to doing more good cult documentaries outside of the MSTie-verse.
(Well, nice to see he’s being active again after the, what, FIFTEEN YEARS since Titan AE? Is he still creepy and disturbing?)
I’ll back it. I’ve been singing the praises of Daniel Griffith for years and I love his Mst Documentaries. Good luck Daniel, you have my support!
Hey EricJ, Thanks for the comments! And your honesty. Concerning most of my early documentaries for MST, I was trying to be experimental. Testing the waters to see where I could take the medium of documentaries next. Some things worked better than others, but I am proud of the attempt. I will continue to explore new boundaries within the medium.
One correction, though. If you are referring to my company logo (Ballyhoo), please understand that it has nothing to do with Larry Blamire or his films. Ballyhoo is a one-man production company (yours truly), though I do work with many talented people in the industry, from time to time. The origins of the logo is much more personal. It references my childhood fascination with the promotional antics of William Castle and his film, “THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL”. The clip and the shriek are from that film, not Lost Skeleton.
I KNEW I’d heard it somewhere! :) (And not just on the RiffTrax.)
And again, never underestimate the “serious” geekdom of early MSTies where B-film lore is concerned–The Jam Handy short went in presumptuously assuming we’d automatically find the world of educational shorts dull, dated and 50’s-corny, and that we’d flock to the lovable parody of Blamire preciously trying to imitate “50’s style”. Turned out the reverse was true–Like Roger Corman talking about his own films, Handy talking about the birth of educational film shorts actually seemed pretty interesting, if he wasn’t interrupted literally every other line by a bad failed comic.
Hate to beat the “religious differences” between MSTies into the discussion again, but there are a faction of fans who don’t believe that some movies are born to ridicule by their very existence (whether they earn it is another matter), and its nice that the documentaries have moved away from taking too many later core-fan ideas/jokes for granted.
Just a quick two cents on the Larry Blamire issue. It seems to me from his films and public statements that Blamire has a genuine affection for older media. In that sense, his approach is actually less ironic than MST3K. What he does well, in my opinion, is absurdist humor. So I see ridiculousness, not ridicule, in Blamire’s approach.
As I mentioned in another thread, I was very reluctant to check out LOST SKELETON at first, but my wife and I were both very pleasantly surprised. So we’re glad Ballyhoo introduced us to his work!