Levine finds HERCULES

From American Film, September 1979

Dialogue On Film Joseph E. Levine

This educational series is directed by James Powers.

Question: You have been involved with many so-called art films from Europe. What do you think made them work in this country?

Levine: For a long time they did not work. There were only a couple hundred theaters in the whole United States that would play an art film. It was films like PAISAN and OPEN CITY and THE BICYCLE THIEF that helped to break down the barriers and attract more of the American public to these quality pictures. As the years wore on, pictures like BOCCACCIO '70, MARRIAGE ITALIAN STYLE, DIVORCE - ITALIAN STYLE began to make some inroads in a limited way. It was not possible to exist as a producer or importer of art films alone. If I were to succeed, it became obvious to me that I would have to produce or import commercial films. That was the only means of survival.

Question: It was in the late fifties, though, that your career picked up speed, when you bought a not very important Italian film called HERCULES.

Levine: I not only picked up speed, but I picked up a great deal of money, which is kind of nice to have around. It was a very important film to me. Everybody hated it, except the public. This film was not released - as an exhibitor friend of mine said, "It was exploded!" It ws a great exploitation picture. The people who paid to see HERCULES were by no means disappointed. They liked the film. They saw what the ads said they would see, and they were pleased. What else can one ask for?

Question: It has been said that you spent $100,000 on the picture and a million to exploit it.

Levine: I spent $125,000 on the picture and $1,156,000 to launch it. That $1,156,000 had the same effect that $10 million would have today.

Question: What led you to acquire HERCULES?

Levine: I heard from the grapevine that someone in Rome had just finished a film called HERCULES. I was very intrigued by the title. I flew to Rome, saw the film, and bought it. It was not quite as simple as that, nothing ever is in Rome. I won't bore you with the details, except to add that I saw the film in the screening room of MGM. I thought it was terrible, but instinctively I felt the title and the whole concept of the picture would have a great chance in America. The picture was poorly dubbed. When Steve Reeves said, "I love you" in reel 2, it came out in reel 3. When the mast on the ship fell, the sound of it falling came out two minutes after the action. The Italians were not fussy about their dubbing and could not have cared less. However, we did cure the bad dubbing, and we dubbed Steve Reeves's voice and gave it a godlike quality. His own was rather squeaky and high.

Fiscal inspectors on the HORROR EXPRESS

From: HOLLYWOOD EXILE Or How I Learned To Love the Blacklist

by Bernard Gordon

At work on HORROR EXPRESS, I made every effort to respect Sacristan's special status and macho image. I let him keep his office and saw to it that the new production manager trod carefully in dealing with the cacique, but word must have spread through the small Madrid film community that Sacristan was out at the only foreign-run studio. Out was out and my effort to remain on good terms with him were doomed, as I later learned.

Another complication arose, one I didn't anticipate. The studio real estate had been purchased and paid for by Bobby Marmor and Yordan. Everything - all the construction of the sets and buildings - had also been paid for by them, but Spanish law did not permit foreign ownership of any media, including film studios, so the nominal ownership had been vested in some Spaniards (one being Sacristan) and our studio accountant. The attorney, Paco Lizarza, may also have had a piece, though he was careful to keep his skirts clean, since what had been done contravened the law. The studio's muddled ownership would come back to haunt us.

Creating a truly Spanish production company to produce HORROR EXPRESS and subsequent Spanish nationality films was even more complicated. The same nominees who "owned" the studio became officers and shareholders, plus Eugenio Martin and me. Amused, I gave my consent to become one of the minor corporate officers, with a share or two of meaningless stock. There were no assets and the stock had no value. Since I was strictly a minority shareholder, there was no conflict with Spanish law. When the film was almost completed, Lizarza informed me that Spanish fiscal inspectors were snooping around, suspicious that our financing was not really Spanish and that the whole operation was fraudulent.

"You have to understand, Bernie," he said, so earnestly that I could see sweat on his brow as well as the dandruff on his shoulders, "the fiscal inspectors here are the most highly educated and trained officials in the whole country. Something like the people they send to the Ercole Normale Superieure in France." I was familiar with that setup. "You have to understand," he emphasized again, "in Spain maybe you can get away with murder if you have the right connections. But you don't get away with violating the currency laws. You'd be surprised at the people they send to prison for that." He paused to let that sink in. "It doesn't matter who you are or who you know."

I could only assume that he was referring to the fact that I was a foreigner. "So what do we do now?"

He hunched his shoulders, "We're not in trouble yet. I'll try to handle it."

I had never considered the legal violations involved as truly significant because we were in fact bringing money into the country, honestly financing the films and creating employment for Spaniards. Where was the harm? But the government took a dim view of all this because, under the cover of Spanish nationality and its benefits, we would ultimately be exporting films to lucrative markets all over the world and never repatriating the proceeds to Spain. When Eugenio, not the most courageous man in the world, heard what was going on, he almost fell apart. I didn't feel very snappy either and made myself scarce when the inspectors came around to the studio. I never heard the end of this saga but assumed that Lizarza and Sacristan had somehow satisfied the expert snoopers.

La Crisi Italy 1979

From American Film July-August 1979

Letter From Rome by Roland Flamini

La crisi, and what to do about it, is a major preoccupation among Italians these days. It isn't just the perpetual political crisis, for if anything, Italy's labyrinthine politics seem to concern fewer people every year, largely because of the widespread belief that nothing can be done about them. But la crisi seems to dominate every sphere of life. La crisi is the catchphrase of the seventies, just as la dolce vita was the catchphrase of the fifties and il boom characterized the early sixties. Of course, it often bears as much relation to reality as any other label, but no one ever seems to talk about anything else.

The spread of the women's movement is playing havoc with the rules of a very Italian game, thus giving rise to la crisi sessuale. Political dissent among both teachers and students has seriously undermined one of the finest public school systems in Europe; so education, too, is in crisis. In the Catholic church, a crisis of vocations has depleted the ranks of the once numerous clergy, with consequent shrinkage of its influence.

The Italian cinema has not been immune from crisis mania - and with more justification than in some other areas. In 1977 and 1978, 110 fewer films were produced than in the previous two-year period. Movie attendance has been dropping steadily since 1959, and box-office grosses dipped from around $438 million in 1977 to an estimated $384 million in 1978, despite an increase in the price of tickets to an average of $1.25. Last year, 140 movie houses were forced to close through lack of business.

Furthermore, American films accounted for a thirty-five percent slice of the box-office pizza. Predictably, two of the biggest draws were STAR WARS and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, but the rereleased GONE WITH THE WIND over-took them both. And the same pattern is repeating itself this year, centering on THE DEER HUNTER and COMING HOME.

"Why the surprise?" says Federico Fellini, with characteristic perception. "The cinema in Italy has always been our self-portrait. It remains so in its absence. It's not the cinema that's in a shambles, it's everything else."

Fellini is right in at least one important respect. Italy's nightmare, terrorism, has been a serious deterrent to the U.S. and other non-Italian producers: twenty-one coproductions in 1977; sixteen in 1978. In March last year, following the Moro atrocity, at least four foreign productions due to start filming in Italy were quickly switched to other countries.

The movie community was hit directly in 1978 when a daughter of Giovanni Amati, one of the country's leading theater owners, was kidnapped. Amati was lucky enough to be showing STAR WARS at the time, and his share of the box office is said to have covered the $1 million in ransom money.

The Amati kidnapping sent shock waves through the Italian movie community. Several of its leading figures decamped to the relative safety of Switzerland and even New York. (It says something about their view of conditions in Italy that some would consider themselves safer in New York.) Others sent their children out of the country and took refuge themselves in villas bristling with more protective electronic equipment than the White House.

"These days no major Italian star will accept a movie part unless adequate protection on and off the set is assured in his contract," one Rome producer points out. "The movies have helped to make the security business the country's biggest growth industry."

Viewed from the secure vantage point of Beverly Hills, the Italian situation, with its terrorism, its political uncertainty, and its kidnappings (nineteen so far this year), tends to look even worse than it does in close-up. Hence, say Italian filmmakers, the conspicuous absence of the American majors. Hollywood on the Tiber survives mainly in the crumbling giant sets of CLEOPATRA at Cinecitta.

Hence, too, the understandable reluctance among American stars to work in Rome for fear of being kidnapped either by terrorists for funds (it is well known that terrorist groups finance their operations partly with ransom money) or by criminals for profit. A noted Hollywood star demanded a $1 million kidnap insurance policy to make a film in Italy. When his agent pointed out that this would make him even more attractive to kidnappers, he decided that the most prudent course would be to stay at home.

In the past six months, George Peppard and Jill Clayburgh were the only Americans of note to work in Italy. At the producers insistence, Peppard - in Rome to make a potboiler - was shadowed at all times by two or three bodyguards. Clayburgh was filming Bernardo Bertolucci's LA LUNA on location in Rome and Parma. With AN UNMARRIED WOMAN just released, she was hardly known in Italy. Still, she, too, was provided with a bodyguard.

The siege mentality is further heightened by the growing aggressiveness of the fiscal authorities in dealing with movie people suspected of illegally transferring money abroad. Stars and producers became special targets because the government apparently felt that such cases gave publicity to its strict restraints on the export of capital and served to discourage others.

So far, the biggest case has been the one brought against Sophia Loren and Carlo Ponti, her producer husband. In March 1978, the couple were charged with illegally transferring funds out of the country to France, where they now live. After lengthy court hearings in their absence, closely watched by the movie community because the government looked upon the Ponti-Loren action as a test case, Ponti was sentenced to two years in jail and an extremely heavy fine, but Sophia Loren was acquitted for lack of evidence of complicity.

Non-Italians were not spared either: Ava Gardner and Richard Harris both have actions pending against them in the Italian courts for allegedly receiving their earnings from THE CASSANDRA CROSSING - filmed in Italy - outside the country.

In the prevailing climate of tight money, the available back goes to projects with modest budgets and good box-office prospects: soft-core porn, unexportable domestic comedies, and remakes of thirties tearjerkers about little waifs in Naples. As for the spaghetti Westerns, they have given way to a subgenre of boisterously violent films starring an amiable Italian giant who calls himself Bud Spencer, and they look as if they had been made by Sam Peckinpah in a cheerful mood.

It should come as no surprise that among the hardest hit are many of Italy's most distinguished filmmakers. Michelangelo Antonioni is one director who admits to having a tough time raising money for his film projects. Why? "I don't give in to commerical considerations, and I don't make concessions to producers," was his explanation. The maker of L'AVVENTURA and THE RED DESERT, who hasn't directed a film since 1975 and whose much-postponed current project has been gathering dust for months while waiting for a backer, has just turned sixty-seven. He would like, he says, "to beat up Italian producers. They are only interested in idiotic, grotesque, banal stories which have the effect of turning off the public, and which never even manage to make it across the border into Switzerland."

Bernardo Bertolucci complains that "new ideas don't exist in Italy because no producer wants to take risks any more." But Bertolucci does not have Antonioni's problem. Thanks to an American contract, he was able to make his marathon period piece 1900, and go on to his current venture, LA LUNA.

Bertolucci belongs to the large and politically active left-wing group of Italian actors and filmmakers. (Other include Lina Wertmuller, who is a member of the Socialist party's cultural committee, director Francesco Rosi and actor Gian Maria Volonte, who are Communists, and Claudia Cardinale, who is a radical and a feminist activist.) At one time, Bertolucci made propaganda films for the Italian Communist party, of which heis a card-carrying member. Recently, he has become more reticent about his affiliation, party because he fears (or quite possibly his American backers fear) that it will adversely affect his films in the United States, and also because of disillusion with the party.

Three years ago, when the Communists were riding the crest of electoral gains, left-wing filmmakers enjoyed distinct advantages: bigger subsidies, co-operation from the unions, good critical notices in the left-wing papers, and a large lefist public, especially among young people. For a complicated series of political and social reasons, Enrico Berlinguer's Communist party lost a lot of this magic, and with it, says Bertolucci, went the advantages: "Now you have little freedom to make pictures, even if you go about with L'Unita [the Communist party paper] sticking out of your pocket."

Ironically, television, which, with its scores of private stations all over Italy, has been a contributing factor in the decline of movie audiences, is also responsible for some of the best moviemaking in Italy today. The powerful PADRE PADRONE was commissioned by the Italian national television network R.A.I. Elio Petri's two-part television version of Jean-Paul Sartre's DIRTY HANDS, starring Marcello Mastroianni, is being offered to distributors, and Francesco Rosi's CHRIST STOPPED AT EBOLI was also made with the same cross-fertilizaiton in mind - the small-screen version being double the length of the movie.

No film better illustrates the double-edged influence of television on the Italian cinema than Federico Fellini's PROVA D'ORCHESTRA, produced by RAI. Fellini's film is a cautionary political tale set in a disused church. An orchestra is rehearsing for a concert. (PROVA D'ORCHESTRA means "orchestra reheaersal".) The conductor, who speaks Italian with a faint German accent, is unable to control the musicians, and the rehearsal is reduced to a shambles. The destruction of the building around them by a mysterious wrecker's ball brings everyone to his senses. The conductor begins to issue orders in shrill, Hitler-like German. Italians immediately saw the film as a warning of the possible dangers of their own chaotic politics, and they were irritated by the director's simplistic approach. In fact, Fellini shows a brilliant grasp of the medium, allowing viewers in any country to superimpose their own political perceptions on the story. In other words, as a movie, it's great television.

RIA, which has limited resources, clearly cannot fill the gap left by the U.S. studios and overly cautious Italian producers. But Italian television has discovered the television movie and has given the formula a touch of Italian class.

Eli reports for work.

From: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND ME In My Anecdotage

by Eli Wallach

The following month, I was met at the airport in Rome and driven to Leone's office. He greeted me warmly. "You'll grow a little beard," he said. As I showed him the outfit that Hathaway selected for me, I noticed that he was wearing a pair of suspenders and a belt. "That's an interesting way to hold up one's pants," I thought. The first thing that popped out of my mouth was, "Do you mind if I wear suspenders and a belt?" Leone smiled as his assistant explained my request to him. He snapped his suspenders and grinned.

"Oui, certo, of course," Leone said. The last two words surprised me.~"I learn a little English every day," he said, and over the course of filming, I would learn that he knew a lot more English than he let on at first.

LE AVVENTURE DI MARY READ

LE AVVENTURE DI MARY READ

France: MARY LA ROUSSE, FEMME PIRATE

U.K.: HELL BELOW DECK

U.S.: QUEEN OF THE SEAS

Director - Umberto Lenzi 1960

Cast: Lisa Gastoni (Mary Read), Jerome Courtland (Peter Goodwin), Germano Longo (Ivan), Agostino Salvietti, Edoardo Toniolo (Lord Goodwin), Loris Gizzi (warden), Gianni Solaro (Gov. of Florida), Eleonara Morana (Miss Elizabeth), Gisella Arden (French ballerina), Dina De Santis (maid), Tullio Altamura (Don Pedro Alvarez), Anna Arena (woman traveling by coach), Piero Pastore (master of ceremonies), Franco Lamonte (horse riding instructor), Ignazio Balsamo (captain of the guard), Gualtiero Isnenghi (English captain), Giulio Battiferri (jailer), Mimmo Poli (robber), Luigi D'Acri, Nada Cortese, Maria Teresa Angele, Walter Licastro, Bruno Scipioni, Massimo Ungaret, Piero Pastore and Walter Barnes (Capt. Poof).

Story and screenplay by Ugo Guerra, Luciano Martino

Director of Photography Augusto Tiezzi

Eastmancolor - Totalscope

Music by Gino Filippini

Editor Jolanda Benvenuti

Art Director Alfredo Montori

Costumes Walter Patriarca

Set Designer Franco D'Andria

Production Manager Nino Misiano

Assistant Director Tersicore Kolosoff

Production Inspector Pasquale Misiano

Sound Editor Maria Luisa Roy

Operator Luigi Allegretti

Assistant Operator Renato Mascagni

Nautical Consultant Walter Bertolazzi

Sound Mario Faraoni

Make-up Massimo Giustini

Hairdresser Violetta Pacelli

Produced by Fortunato Misiano for Romana Film

Distrib. SidenProd. Reg. 2568

Like a great many pirate movies, QUEEN OF THE SEAS used the name of a real life person, but didn't bother to try and tell the story behind the name. Mary Read was an associate of the infamous Ann Bonny, about whom director Jacques Tourneur made ANN OF THE INDIES in 1951. Perhaps it was fitting that as ANN didn't mention Mary, QUEEN didn't mention Ann. (For a terrific summary of the history of Mary Read, check out "Lesbian Pirates: Anne Bonny and Mary Read" by Richard Norton on the internet. <http://rictornorton.co.uk/pirates.htm>)

Lisa Gastoni was the star of QUEEN OF THE SEAS, and she was certainly a pleasure to behold, as she had the athleticism to make the swashbuckling convincing. In this interpretation, Mary Read was a thief who was caught, while disguised as a man, trying to snatch the jewels off a rich woman traveling in England by passenger coach. While her associate, an older man, avoided suspicion, Mary was thrown into prison. As it happened, the cell already housed Peter Goodwin, an aristocrat in the lock-up for a minor offense. Eventually, Peter discovered that his cellmate was a woman and the two had a secret romance. Freed, Peter gave Mary a token and told her to look for him when she got out.

Escaping from prison, Mary sought out Peter's home and was most disturbed to find him relating their jail experiences to giggling ladies of his class. After smacking the young Lord and throwing back his token, Mary left. Reteaming with her older partner, the woman decided that life would be better on the sea, and sought out someone willing to hire her.

Walter Barnes brought his usual bluster to the role of Captain Poof; a fellow who didn't mind the idea of having a woman aboard his ship. Of course, he hoped to sleep with her. This impasse was overlooked when their ship was attacked on the high seas by a Spanish galleon. Poof was killed and his crew taken prisoner. Not surprisingly, the victorious Spanish captain hoped to bed the blond beauty aboard the captured ship, but Mary had the moxie to club him into unconsciousness and set free the English prisoners. In command of their old ship, the crew appointed her their new leader. Mary adopted the name of Captain Poof and began a new career as a sea pirate.

Eventually, Mary came face-to-face with Peter Goodwin on opposite sides of Maritime Law. Will she be forced to hang him for his attempt to murder Captain Poof in the night, or will a way occur for the two of them to become a respectable married couple?

Having previously worked on the Tales of the Vikings TV series, Jerome Courtland and Walter Barnes were reunited in the cast list for this movie, but they had no scenes together. A good-looking but rather bland actor, Courtland soon left the performing profession to become a producer at the Walt Disney company. After Walter returned to the U.S., Courtland was able to find him a number of roles in Disney productions.

Innovation and novelty were obviously not on the agenda of first-time director Umberto Lenzi, and he succeeded in making a respectable, but dull, formula actioner. The only element which was memorable was Lisa Gastoni, and for some that may be enough.

An unanswered question for this reviewer was "From what movie did the shelling of the pirate island come?"

(There is a beautiful French DVD of this with the title MARY LA ROUSSE, FEMME PIRATE. There is also a fandub made from this DVD with English subtitles.)

The Importance of BARABBAS

From ONE MAN TANGO by Anthony Quinn with Daniel Paisner

I could be a capricious bastard on a motion picture set. If I did not get what I wanted, when I wanted it, there was no telling what I might do. For all my grousing over temperamental creatures like Yul Brynner and Anna Magnani, I was no better. In some ways I was worse, and yet I indulged myself in this because it kept life interesting.

And why not? It was not in my character to acquiensce to a producer, even in matters of little consequence. Where was the sport in merely avoiding all friction, accepting what was given? The true measure of an actor's stature lay in his ability to make trouble. If they tolerated your tantrums, it meant you were a big star.

They tolerated mine, I made sure of it. I had a winner on the BARABBAS set, and it was out of this nonsense that my future was spun. At issue was whether I was entitled to a dresser, someone to see me in and out of my costume changes and handle my wardrobe. What the hell did I need with a dresser? What did anyone need with a dresser? It had always seemed to me an unnecessary extravagance, and yet I was humiliated to learn that my costar and friend, the Italian matinee idol Vittorio Gassman, had a dresser at his disposal.

I learned this at an inopportune time, at least as far as Dino De Laurentiis and director Richard Fleischer were concerned. I was preparing to play a key confrontation with Jack Palance, in front of an arena crowded with extras. I was having some trouble with my robes, and needed an additional few minutes to meet my call. One of the production assistants suggested a dresser might be able to help. "Mr. Gassman's dresser is just finishing with him," he said innocently. "She can come in and dress you when she's through."

I fumed: "What? Mr. Gassman has a dresser and I don't? What the fuck is that?" At the time, the inequity struck me as intolerable - and just cause for a star turn.

"We weren't told you required a dresser," the boy very reasonably replied.

"What the hell. If Gassman's got a dresser, then I'll have a dresser. How the hell can I not have a dresser if he's got one?"

To this, the assistant had no reply. It was difficult to reason with a testy artist rattling off his demands. Actors are sometimes referred to on a motion picture set as "the talent" - as in, "The talent is causing some trouble" - and I always felt a certain condescension in the phrase. Here, I could tell, the poor boy was thinking of me in just these terms, and he looked at me as yet another in a string of petty annoyances sent to muddy his otherwise pleasant day.

Just then, I spotted a beautiful blond girl across the way, absentmindedly looking at the other actors' tunics. She moved with such grace and surety that I was drawn to her. (Or perhaps it was just that she pulled into my sightlines with good timing.) I pointed in her direction. "That girl," I proclaimed, "she will dress me. Go and make the arrangements."

The assistant was in over his head, unable to help the temperamental talent or himself. "Mr. Quinn," he stammered. "I'm afraid I can do no such thing. She's one of the costume designers."

"I don't give a shit what she is," I bellowed. "She's gonna dress me!"

There were five thousand people milling about the arena, waiting to be put to work. They had been waiting all morning, and each minute was costing a fortune. Word of the delay traveled up the chain of command, and soon De Laurentiis himself was knocking on my door, wanting to know what the matter was. "What's going on?" he demanded. "Tony, it's eleven o'clock and we haven't done a shot!"

"Fuck you, Dino," I shouted, from the other side of the door. (I would not let him in.) "Who the hell do you think I am, offering me Gassman's dresser? I don't want his fucking hand-me-down. I want my own dresser. I've already picked her out."

"Tony," he pleaded, "they've told me about the girl. She can't dress you, she's a costume designer."

"She'll dress me, or I'm going home," I said. "You decide." Being a star meant you could sometimes get away with an ultimatum like this; it remained to be seen if this was one of those times.

De Laurentiis went to talk to the girl. She would not dress me. She wanted to do the work she was hired to do, and she wanted credit for it. The experience was one thing, she reasoned, but the credit would help her land her next job. He offered to give her a full designer's credit on the picture, and a salary bonus, if she would help him out, just this once.

Still, she could not decide. After about an hour, she came to see me. "Why do you want me to dress you?" she asked. "I don't understand." She did not speak English, and my Italian was lousy, so we settled on French.

"Because Gassman has a dresser and I don't," I explained. "What's to understand?"

The poor girl did not know what to make of my reasoning, and went to see her boss, the production designer, for advice.

"Well, my dear, what can you expect?" her boss said. "Signor Quinn, he's a diva. He has chosen you. He is the diva so he gets what he wants. That's the way it is in pictures. Maybe it is not a bad thing, that he has chosen you. He has beautiful legs. It should not be such a chore to dress him."

The girl came back to see me. "I need a better reason to come and dress you," she said. "So Signor Gassman has a dresser and you do not? What concern is that of mine? I am a costume designer, not a dresser."

"You are absolutely right," I agreed, not wanting to put the girl through any more anguish than I already had. I figured a little civility might help my case. "I have put you in a terrible position, and for that I am sorry. I did not know what to do. But now I'm in so deep, they'll eat me alive if I give in. Please, you must help me. I'll pay you anything you want."

The girl finally agreed. She would not accept my money, but took the job, she said, for the good of the picture. Her name was Iolanda Addolori, and she was lovely. She was from Venice, and her familiarity with the region was an immediate benefit to me and my family. She introduced us to wonderful restaurants, and occupied Katherine and the children with grand adventures while I worked.
(Iolanda would become Quinn's personal assistant on LAWRENCE OF ARABIA and would later give birth to his son Francesco on March 22, 1963. On April 16, 1964, she gave birth to Daniele Antonio. Quinn and his first wife, Cecil B. DeMille's daughter Katherine, divorced in Juarez, Mexico in January 1965. Iolanda finally married Quinn on January 2, 1966 - while she was pregnant with Lorenzo Alexander, who was born on May 7, 1966. Quinn and Iolanda divorced on August 19, 1997.)

Preparing HORROR EXPRESS

From HOLLYWOOD EXILE Or How I Learned To Love the Blacklist

by Bernard Gordon

In Madrid, Julian was working disconsolately on the HORROR EXPRESS rewrite. He had been away from home and wife in Rome too long and was impatient to finish. I worked with him as much as possible, but I was overwhelmed by the problems of getting the production organized. This was to be an entirely new experience because I had bitten the bullet, fired Sacristan, and undertaken full responsibility for the production. Even forgetting the multi-million dollar Bronston budgets, Sacristan had grown accustomed to working with us as foreigners who had money to burn. None of the previous three films at Daganzo had been brought in for less than a million dollars. I was now determined to work in the local mode and produce films for much less. With the help of a truly Spanish crew, including my new production manager, I budgeted HORROR EXPRESS at $300,000, apart from any British of American cast. My production manager, cameraman, special-effects person, art director, makeup artist, and all the crew spoke no English. For me it was another learning experience.

I was now a one-man operator, entirely in charge and entirely responsible. My only real help, aside from Eugenio, who was having the usual director's jitters at the prospect of starting a film, was my new production secretary, Lisa Doty, an American woman who spoke serviceable Spanish. She had worked extensively in Canada on documentary and television films so she was not without production experience. Lisa and I became good and lasting friends.