While central New Jersey may not be the next Hollywood, it’s become the home to one of the more successful independent (read: low budget) film companies in recent memory. For 10 years, ei Independent Cinema has been producing and distributing films, mostly for the “direct-to-DVD” market, along with reissuing vintage ‘60s and ‘70s exploitation classics on DVD for the first time through their four labels: Seduction Cinema - home to their “sexy spoofs” like Play-Mate of The Apes and Lord of The G-Strings, and original erotica features like Sin Sisters; Retro-Seduction Cinema - which releases restored versions of exploitation classics from the ‘60s and ‘70s like Joe Sarno’s Inga films and Nick Phillips’ Lustful Addiction; the recently launched Shock-O-Rama - their horror imprint featuring in-house productions like Screaming Dead and Bite Me!; and Retro-Shock-O-Rama - which has reissued blaxpliotation classics like Mean Mother and vintage Al Adamson schlock like Nurse Sherri. While not every film ei produces or reissues may be for everybody, there’s bound to be at least something for just about anybody in their vast catalog of carnality and carnage. Originally we were going to spend a day on the set of their upcoming horror flick Shock-O-Rama (yes, it is the same name as their horror label - but we’re sure that’s purely a coincidence) but due to some unforseen delays in production, on both ends (this issue is scheduled to be on press during the same loop of time part of the movie is being shot in nearby Lambertville, NJ) I interviewed ei president (and producer/executive producer on almost all of their films, as well as boxcover designer) Mike Raso.
—the Kommandant
scene from Bite Me
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Were you always a film buff?
Yeah, I went to film school. When I say film school, I mean I went to the local university; I was a communications major with a minor in art. I went to school with Jeff Faoro and John Fedeli (who plays The Bug in Bite Me). We had a really tight group in school. We would shoot short subject films and help each other out, crew each other’s movies. From ‘86 through ‘94 I worked for Comcast Cable TV as a commercial producer. I would have John come in on a free-lance basis; we did some New Jersey-based shows and 30-second commercial spots. The show was called “Meadowlands Showcase,” it showcased short films and local music videos and we would write comedic skits in between. We would have writing sessions—John, Jeff and a few other guys—where we would write material. Some of that can be seen on our Titanic 2000 DVD. So some of our features, like the erotic spoofs, are very similar to the shows we produced on cable, in the sense that they were comedic skits. At the time, who would have thought ‘Add nudity and you’ll have something viable.’
What led you to start ei and what was the first film you produced?
I quit my cable job in ‘94 when J.R. Bookwalter, who had a company called Tempe Video, sent me a copy of Alternative Cinema magazine. (Which we subsequently bought a few years later.) The magazine came to my door, and I didn’t know that this underbelly of filmmaking was going on. I never knew there was this subculture of guys like Todd Sheets, and J.R. and his group, who were putting out these super-low budget films. J.R. was in post-production for a film called The Sandman, which was very ambitious; it had a lot of digital effects, which were very new at the time. So I quit my job and drove to Ohio to meet J.R. Because of my marketing experience with Comcast, I kind of convinced him to let me market his line of videos. I started ei Cinema in December of ‘94 with no product. I just started placing ads in Cult Movies, Psychotronic and Fangoria. They were classified ads saying: “The Sandman, Dead Next Door, Psycho Sisters. Send $2 for catalog.” I didn’t even have a catalog.
Of course not. That’s the punk rock way to do it.
Yeah. Another friend of mine, Pete Jacelone produced a shot-on-video feature called Psycho Sisters, and wanted to market it, so I marketed Psycho Sisters and the Tempe line of videos out of a small office in Bloomfield, NJ, and basically started cold calling and placing ads. When people started sending their two dollars in the mail, that’s when I made a catalog. That’s basically how I started. In ‘96, I convinced Pete, who’d made Psycho Sisters on video to re-shoot the movie as a real movie. I thought his script idea was great, thought it was a cool concept, and that was our first in-house production. That was ei Cinema, before we started our umbrella of labels.
How long did it take until you were putting out re-issues of old Al Adamson movies like Nurse Sherri?
I think all that came once we established ourselves as a company who could package products and sell them. What happened in late ‘96 was just sort of a fluke—we were doing these Chiller Theater shows and decided to shoot a feature called Caress Of The Vampire; it was a vehicle to have naked women on film.
There ya go!
It was a lesbian vampire movie. It was shot specifically to bring to Chiller, with the actresses, and to have sort of a presentation. Which we did. At the same time, we were constantly calling various major distributors around the country who distribute Hollywood movies. We would call them practically every day saying, “Carry our movie. Carry our movie.” Then I decided to package Caress Of The Vampire and release it myself, and it struck a chord. We found a niche immediately through the Playboy catalog. At the time we were really struggling, we were selling 5-10 videos a week through our mail-order; it was really slow. Once we produced the lesbian vampire film we immediately started seeing orders coming in and getting calls from distributors saying, “We’d like to carry this video.” We’d get orders for 50 pieces at a time, and for us that was reason to celebrate; we would go out and have dinner based on the fact we’d sold 50 pieces of a video. Cause it was so phenomenal. The thing is, it never stopped. It just kept selling. Then, subsequently, we shot Vampire Seduction. Then, in ‘99, when Blair Witch hit, we decided to shoot The Erotic Witch Project. The combination of the lesbian vampire films and all of a sudden us deciding to shoot sexy spoofs of major motion pictures started a snowball effect.
scene from Screaming Dead
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Well, parodies of major motion pictures are something that’s been a consistent success for the porn industry for years.
Yes. Certainly we were aware of Edward Penishands and the like. Actually, we shot Titanic 2000 before Erotic Witch Project. I think the phenomenon of something that effects people so culturally, like the Titanic phenomenon, that creates a wave that’s so big—same thing with Blair Witch, some of the people who went to see it normally would not go see such a film but went just because of all the media buzz so those are films we like to spoof. They’re so big and so ridiculous, media-wise, that they’re begging for it; and we come in with this whole lowbrow Monty Python-esque skit mentality. I mean, in Gladiator Eroticus they’re fighting with plastic swords in the backyard. It just is what it is. The budgets were so low, yet the writing style and, I guess, the casting somehow brought it all together and created a fanbase. Around the same time we coined Seduction Cinema and made it a label; I mean ei, the name, doesn’t really mean much to people. So we decided to coin it Seduction Cinema and we sort of left horror for a while. I think it was by natural instinct, just for survival; we had to pay the bills.
Hey, if boobs pay the bills, show boobs.
Yeah. And all of us have this offbeat comic sensibility. Love it, hate it, that’s what we do very well; it all kind of came together when we produced a series of films that really took off in the home video market, and kind of continues to this day. It wasn’t until last year that I was able to revisit horror—and from the roots perspective of, ‘I got into this business to make horror films.’ Seduction Cinema laid the foundation for us to get noticed and do proper sales, and that allowed us to pursue horror and launch a horror line.
Have any of the features you’ve done gotten theatrical runs or film fest screenings, or has it all been direct to retail?
All of the features have been direct to retail except for two of the Brett Piper films this year, which I wouldn’t consider theatrical. I would call it super-limited theatrical. Where they would play for a few days in one theater in New York or play once or twice in LA. I wouldn’t call that theatrical. Now it’s called direct to DVD market. When you say that it doesn’t get as much respect as a theatrical release, but what are you gonna do? Of all the different areas to exhibit our films, theatrical, for me, is really more of a dream. Hey, everyone wants to see their film play in a theater. But I think what we’re doing isn’t too shabby. Especially in the sense that our erotic spoofs, aside from going direct to DVD, are also heavily playing on cable TV. The break into cable—and, once again, everything is sort of a progression; I think our success is based on us keeping our nose to the grindstone, doing what we do and trying to do it the best we can. We had a TV rep from the get-go with ei but nothing ever clicked until I got a call one day from a guy named Ari Bass, who said, ‘Hey, who’s representing your films?’ I said, ‘All Channel Film,’ and he said, ‘That’s where I work!’ It’s so funny that my own TV rep would call me to ask who reps our line of films. The start up of Seduction Cinema was very underground, it was very under the radar in the sense that it developed a fanbase that continually bought the videos, yet it was completely ignored by television markets and foreign territories. Until the progression started and I think, especially the spoofs, started getting out there in stores. To the point where I kind of felt that someday the phone would ring and someone would ask such a question. Because I was thinking the same thing: ‘Why the fuck don’t these films play on television?’ At the time TV, especially the erotic late-night stuff, was very LA; very—
Vivid girls.
Yes! Prefab, blond…
You guys are the antithesis of that.
Darian Caine
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Yeah, we’re with Darian Caine. She’s more goth, a real girl with real boobs and tattoos. Early on, TV reps were like, ‘You can’t have tattoos, you can’t have piercings, you can’t do this, you can’t do that.’ I don’t agree with that at all. It wasn’t until last year that we decided to launch Shock-O-Rama Cinema and start producing horror films in-house, utilizing some of the sensibilities of Seduction Cinema. Not the sex, certainly, but—I think Shock-O-Rama is a bit of a throwback to the late ‘70s/early ‘80s. Up until last year or the year before, I felt horror was very homogenized. Even in the Jason series you’d be hard pressed to find sex. Freddy vs. Jason was kind of refreshing for me to watch; the amount of sex and nudity really surprised me, it was like, ‘Wow, someone’s getting it.’ That has been totally lacking in horror; the whole grit of the ‘70s and the early ‘80s was nowhere to be found. We started following some of those sensibilities. And of course putting the projects into the hands of existing directors, guys like Brett Piper or someone like Jon Keyes, who did one or two features and then made a film for us called Suburban Nightmare. It’s working. I don’t think any of the folks distributing our products thought much of it or thought that it would sell like our Seduction Cinema DVDs sold—plus we were kind of tagged as the lesbian vampire guys. It’s only been a short time since we released Screaming Dead in March, to now with Bite Me, that I’ve actually seen a reaction. It’s been a very good reaction to what we’ve been doing. I see that as a really good start because I think we can become very prolific in horror and allow a lot of opportunities to young directors who maybe couldn’t find what I’d call a “good deal” somewhere else. It’s a community, sort of.
Definitely. You’re supporting the underground, and maybe bringing it a little above ground. Is Retro Shock-O-Rama the label set aside for the Al Adamson stuff and the blaxploitation flicks you have?
Yeah. Interestingly enough, the Al Adamson movies are Independent International Pictures, which is run by Sam Sherman, who is (or was) Al Adamson’s partner. The funny thing is, Sam’s company is based in New Jersey. I remember calling him in the ‘90s and I didn’t get much of a response. It’s interesting because at a young age I was exposed to stuff like (Al Adamson’s) Dracula vs. Frankenstein.
Are you from this area originally?
Yeah, I grew up in Lindhurst (NJ).
So you remember stuff like Creature Double Feature and Dr. Shock’s Horror Theater.
Absolutely. When you were a kid, that was the coolest shit around on Saturday night TV. It’s a big influence. So the idea of me putting out an Al Adamson movie or a Joe Sarno movie… I’m a fan of the stuff.
Are Sarno’s movies also distributed through I.I.P.?
No. Sam’s company actually owned three Sarno pictures and he brought them to our attention. Simultaneously, a producer named Chris Levy, who produced three of Sarno’s films in Germany in ‘73, also contacted us. He sort of educated me. I didn’t know too much about Joe, but I thought the three German films were cool as shit, so we did a distribution deal for those in the late ‘90s and put them out on VHS. At the same time Sam contacted us and said, ‘Hey, I have a bunch of pictures here. We should get together.’ So we sat and did a deal. We really just put our best foot forward to release these older films on DVD—which was kind of new at the time. It all worked out really well. I think the focus is being fine-tuned even better now to releasing an older film. There’s a certain craft to it, and I think we made some mistakes—I’m actually looking to perhaps re-release some titles that didn’t do as well as we’d like them to. Mean Mother and Black Heat, for example. We released those with brand new artwork because, at the time, stores were screaming that if there’s old artwork they wouldn’t pick it up. Only in the last two years has there been some sort of recognition of retro titles; that it’s OK. Labels like Blue Underground or Synapse Films or Mondo Macabre—all they’re doing is concentrating on retro or older releases, and they’re releasing these films with the original artwork.
scene from Blazing Stewardesses
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When I was poking around the website it looked like you guys were going to use the original Blazing Stewardesses artwork for that release.
We just made that decision. We had brand new artwork shot and decided just last week to use the original Gary Morrow cartoon art. We felt that we might totally miss our audience by putting two hot chicks on the boxcover that aren’t in the movie. Certainly we’re guilty of doing that a number of times with some of our releases, but I attribute that to just trying to do a good job and trying to get the films seen by as many people as possible. So the whole interest in retro hasn’t wavered, I think more than ever we’re focusing on it. We just released Seduction of Inga, and just shot a new film with Joe Sarno.
Yeah, I wanted to talk with you about that. I had no idea he was still making movies—not that I have any idea about his age or anything, but I just assumed he wasn’t around anymore.
He’s 83 and living in New York City.
All right. So can we talk a little about this new movie?
It’s called Lust For Laura. He wrote it about a year and a half ago, specifically to shoot with us. It was originally written for Misty Mundae and Julian Wells. It was sort of a process of thinking—Joe somewhat launched the careers of Marie Liljedahl and Marie Forsa. He made these great discoveries and really put a lot of actresses on the map. Marie, from the two Inga films, went on to do some Jess Franco films and was in Playboy twice. We sort of announced that Joe Sarno was going to work with Misty Mundae and Julian Wells, two women we’ve been working with for years who have established a really cool underground following; at the same time we were pitching Playboy on doing a spread on Misty Mundae. It was a longshot because Misty does not have what you’d call the typical Playboy look—but we caught their ear and they were interested. We really got it as far as we could before Misty and Julian both decided not to do the picture. It was a huge disappointment, because that was the whole genesis of the idea. They’re very talented women and would have done a wonderful job. A lot of time was spent with Joe, meeting them and writing the script. But, the show must go on, so we recast and shot the film. It’s about a girl from the city who’s a fashion model and does a lot of nude modeling. She goes back to her hometown to kind of shuffle things up with an old boyfriend and her reappearance in town causes a chain reaction of situations, mostly sexual. Kind of brings up a lot of old, bad, indifferent feelings from different people and leads to sexual escapades, of course. And drama; it’s very melodramatic. Joe was in grand style.
How many years had it been since he’d shot a movie and how was he on the set?
It had been 20 years, and it’s like riding a bicycle. I’m trying to find as many Joe features as I can, too. We’re working on that.
How many in-house titles has ei produced?
I think around 50. The filmography is on the website, and 95% of those titles are ours. Even the retro titles. I so much prefer to purchase them than license them. Purchasing them allows us to take control of the film and then really—if we’re gonna invest $10,000 in restoring a film, it’s nice to know we’re doing it and that there’s a place for it. Now we have as much time as we need to market them and do what we’re going to do with them. This applies with films we shoot as well, without having to worry about a filmmaker or producer who’s antsy or doesn’t have the patience for the business. I think that’s the biggest problem with independent filmmakers and independent producers who are inexperienced—they shoot a film and think things are going to happen overnight. It isn’t going to happen overnight—as a matter of fact, there’s a good chance the film will bomb, that’s the nature of the business. Every film we release is not successful, although we try our best. It’s tough for us to report to a producer, delivery of bad news is something no one wants to hear. We’re so conditioned in what we do, and so used to hearing bad news, that we can take it on the chin and move on. Right now we’re marketing Voodoun Blues—
The Misty Mundae student film.
Yeah. That was sort of a ballsy move. I think it’s a good film, and I think the other films on the disc are good. I think it works.
Misty Mundae as Spiderbabe
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She’s someone who you guys have developed and, for me, she’s the star I most frequently associate with Seduction Cinema.
I would say she’s our most popular and most recognized personality / star / performer / artist because, of a characteristic she has which is not really describable. She’s just very appealing. She has such a natural sensibility; she’s unaltered, she really looks like the girl next door.
So how did the Misty Mundae / ei relationship start?
She was doing a series of underground films for a company called Factory 2000. It was a series of films shot on VHS that used movies like Last House On The Left as influence. I’d call them roughies; damsels in distress, kidnaps, rapings, bondage, a very mean-spirited series of films that were just raw. The message of Factory 2000 was anarchy. It was like ‘We will shock you.’ ‘We are going to turn your world upside down.’ ‘By watching the film you will probably be repulsed.’ And here’s this sweet looking kid, 18 years old, in these movies. At the time she was dating Bill Hellfire, who started Factory 2000, and they lived 10 or 15 miles from our office. Through mail order, our company was distributing his VHS movies.
This is around what year?
‘98. Titles like Infamous Bondage Murders, Snuff Strangler, I Was A Teenage Strangler. Thowbacks, I would call them, to the super grindhouse films. When we launched Seduction Cinema we were hiring talent through whatever means possible. We weren’t hiring Playboy girls or Penthouse girls, we were trying to find people who just wanted to be in these movies. It was a ‘hey, want to make a few hundred bucks a day?’ kind of scenario. It was just a progression of Misty being there at the right time in the right place, and being cast in roles—Gladiator Eroticus was one of her first ones. When she was cast in Playmate Of The Apes, the director would swing by her house and pick her up, bring her to the set and give her the script—she didn’t even know she was the star of the film. At the time we could not anticipate that it was going to be playing on Cinemax and Showtime—we were just making another goofy spoof. So the phenomenon of Misty Mundae is a combination of what I would call raw talent, of someone who can really cast an impression on screen, and luck. I can’t tell you about the number of e-mails I get from people who’ve seen Playmate Of The Apes on cable and immediately single out Misty Mundae and want to know who this girl is.
I want to go off on a slight tangent from something you said earlier. Looking at Playmate Of The Apes and then Screaming Dead or Spiderbabe—obviously the budgets have gone up considerably.
Yes they have.
To shoot a movie like Spiderbabe, with all the effects—and this is coming from really not knowing anything about movie budgets or if you’ve shot on 16mm, etc.—have you hit the million dollar point for a budget?
Nooo. We’re not even close to a million. All of our spoofs are shot on film; Spiderbabe was shot on HD, which is as good as film. Our spoofs tend to roll in around $30,000, except in 2002—for whatever reason, that year the budgets just swelled to around $100,000. That’s not a good thing. Now we’re reeling it back, because I think there was a lot of wasted cash.
You’re making it back, right? I mean, it might take a while but you are making it back. I hope.
The thing is, the return on the investment of a movie is so difficult, even with a $30,000 film. Let’s use Spiderbabe or Lord Of The G-Strings as an example. These films cost a hundred, or a little over a hundred thousand dollars. This is an investment made in 2002 that’s not showing a return until 2004 or 2005, so this is a frustrating and tricky business in that we could put ourselves out of business just by having so many films in production at the same time and not having the revenue streams come in until much later.
scene from Playmate of the Apes
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Just like the record business.
Right. The way we keep ourselves going is to still produce features for under $10,000. That’s been a really great challenge and the source of numerous infighting. I would call 2002-2004 the cheese grater period of shakedown; you know, you shake the cheese grater and see what sticks. Anyone who doesn’t want to do what we do, should leave. And that’s happened. Everyone talks about the “next level.” That’s a lot of bullshit. We make movies. What do we need to make movies? We need film, a few computers, a script, good talent and a crew. I’m not saying that if we had a $500,000 budget we wouldn’t use it, but it’s easy for things to swell out of control. You know, do you really need Kraft Services on the set?
There seems to be a talent pool of writers, directors and actors that you guys dip into frequently.
That’s because people we tap, like John Keyes or Brett Piper or Tony Marsiglia (on the West Coast) are people who we have established relationships with. Out of the box, it’s a tough grind. It’s a tough business filled with people who are not honest.
Again, just like the music business.
[laughs] Yeah. I’ve run into a few directors in past few years who’ve made some movies for us whose whole philosophy was, ‘I want a million dollar budget on my next film.’ I think they’re completely off base. It means nothing to me because where is that million dollars coming from? Who’s giving you that million dollars and who’s going to control your film? For me, I’d rather sweat to make the money to put up the budget, cut a deal with a creative force who’s making the movie and make it a deal so that when the film profits, everyone is going to make some cash. It may seem idealistic but it’s working.
With a film like what you’re working on now, Shock-O-Rama, are the shoots getting more involved and more extensive because of multiple locations and so forth? I mean if Playmate Of The Apes took 10-15 days, how long will Shock-O-Rama take? A month?
I would put it at somewhere between 20 and 25 days. A lot of the sets are built in our studio and we use some practical locations. A guy like Brett is very self-contained, he’s used to working by himself or with almost no crew. He builds the models, the sets and the animation himself or with a few assistants—and he does the post production on his own features. He doesn’t like to spend money unnecessarily, and he’s very focused on his work and making an entertaining film. That’s a winning combination. That’s the thing, we’re not clock punchers, we all live for what we do and I think that’s helping in our success. Although some of our films are rather lowbrow, I love ‘em and I think the fans appreciate them the same way.
You’re obviously in for the long haul.
Absolutely. I think some producers and video labels have been looking at the DVD market as a pipeline of ‘hey, let’s get out product as quickly as possible to make a buck and do turnaround on it.’ That’s fine, because everyone wants to make a buck, but you have to think of the end user. We think of ourselves, and we think of the fans buying the product. Between that are the distributors, sub-distributors, retailers, buyers—people who don’t watch or are not, generally speaking, fans of our movies. We make our movies for the fan, and if it wasn’t for the fan buying our movies on the other end or watching them on TV—the fans allow us to be filmmakers, because if we were producing stuff no one wanted to see, we’d have a problem. That’s kind of the goal of producing films, finding talented people who can make films that are fun and entertaining to watch. In the case of the sexy films, sure you can do a sexy film and get away with a lot more story-wise because of the sexual nature, but that’s why I think the sensibilities of a Joe Sarno are great. He’s a master of weaving story into sexual situations. I think that’s so much more interesting than what I call the “three girls in a hot tub” video. The bottom line is the fan. We appreciate the fan and understand that it’s the fan that’s allowing us to do what we do and I’m grateful for that.
Now that it’s been 10 years, where do you see ei in another 10 years?
We take it day by day. I think of us as a community of filmmakers working together, and I look at ei as being a studio that enables filmmakers to come on board, make their movies, have support and try different things. I’d be happy to think that in the future we’d be able to establish relationships with filmmakers and even maybe have those filmmakers move on to bigger things—without us perhaps. Or allow guys like Brett to continue to make movies at this level because that’s what makes them happy. I think that if we continue what we’re doing, the mass media will take notice a little bit more and may open up some opportunities for us to make films that are a little bit bigger, or maybe make films for a horror channel or the Sci-Fi channel. I guess my goal is to be a little more secure in the sense that we’re making a film and we know that the media streams—whether it’s TV, video or foreign markets, whatever—know that we’re making entertaining pictures and would be able to bank on us. Meaning, they know we’re making a film and they’d buy that film or license that film before it’s finished. We try to make the film as entertaining as possible and then present it with enough passion that the powers that be who are controlling the media streams acknowledge what we’re doing and think it’s as cool as we think it is.
(This interview originally appeared in carbon 14 #25.)
