Aug
25
Forgotten Filmmakers | Edward L. Montoro
Filed Under Movies
Everyone knows who Roger Corman is. A legendary b-movie producer/director with an unmatched eye for talent, Corman not only made a killing off schlock and cheapies, but also launched the careers of James Cameron, Francis Ford Coppola, Brian DePalma, Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson, Jonathan Demme, Joe Dante, John Sayles and many other luminaries whose names I can’t think of right now. Last weekend, a remake of the 1978 Corman-produced “Piranha” opened to positive reviews. Corman’s influence is clearly alive and well today.
But he wasn’t the only b-filmmaker of his era. There were others. These are the guys I find interesting, the ones who came and went, disappearing into relative obscurity, not unlike their respective outputs. Edward L. Montoro’s story is perhaps my favorite. He didn’t just fade away after a box office stinker left him penniless. No, he pocketed a cool million from his production company’s coffers and fled the country, never to be heard from again.
Last night I watched the Montoro-produced, “Jaws”-with-a-bear schlockfest, “Grizzly.” Made on a budget of $750,000, it ended up grossing $39 million at the box office in 1976. Not a bad haul, considering that it’s not a bear-y good movie. Now, I love “Jaws” ripoffs more than anything, but you can’t have a cute animal go on a rampage and expect your film to be scary. Bears are just too damn snuggly to be menacing. Even when the titular beast’s obviously fake paws are tearing people asunder, I still want to give him a big ol’ cuddle. In fact, when someone’s crushed to death in a bear hug (and he even pukes up blood like Quint in “Jaws”), I was like, “Yep, that’s how I want to go.” Loved to oblivion.
With “Grizzly” the largest independently-produced of the time (beaten two years later by the “Jaws”-with-a-guy-in-a-William-Shatner-mask flick, “Halloween”), you’d think Montoro and his production company, Film Ventures International, would share the profits with his collaborator, “Grizzly” director William Girdler. But, no, Montoro kept the film’s profits all to himself. This created some friction between himself and Girdler, who parted ways with the producer and directed the Leslie Nielsen-starring, “Day of the Animals,” a “Jaws”-with-a-shit-ton-of-forest-creatures knockoff. Guess what movie’s now at the top of my Netflix queue.
Failing to match his “Grizzly” success during the late-’70s, Montoro in 1980 acquired the rights to “Great White” (aka “The Last Shark”), a “Jaws”-with-a-Great-White-Shark dungheap, directed by Enzo G. Castellari; on a side note, Castellari had previously directed the original “Inglorious Bastards” in 1977, a movie that I made it about 15 minutes into before shutting it off, bored to tears. Universal Pictures, the studio that had released “Jaws,” sued Montoro for putting out a film that was a fairly blatant ripoff of their game-changing movie. If anyone was going to cynically cash-in on “Jaws,” it was going to be Universal, goddammit! The kangaroo courts sided with Universal, and “Great White” was pulled from theaters. It’s never been officially released on home video in the United States. I recently watched a bootleg of it that was subtitled in Japanese. Man, that’s distracting, subtitles in a foreign language.
Montoro’s final project was the 1984 movie, “Mutant,” which bombed for reasons that are baffling to me. I’d see a movie called “Mutant” at least a dozen times theatrically. In fact, “mutant” is probably my favorite word in the English language. Its failure, though, didn’t help FVI’s fortunes in the least. The company ultimately folded in ‘87, leaving the long-anticipated, George Clooney-starring(!) “Grizzly II: The Predator” unfinished; to date, the film has never been released.
Weathering a painful and expensive divorce, Montoro did was George Lucas should’ve done in ‘84: grabbed a pile of cash from his production company and left the country for good. No one’s seen or heard from him in over 25 years. I like to think he’s still out there, somewhere, stretching every last nickel of that million bucks as far as it can go. Maybe producing films in some banana republic.
Or, maybe he was eaten by a bear.
-Brad Lohan
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Nice analysis of Ed Montoro! He’s actually one of the main inspirations why I ended up working in the film industry and starting my own film company. There was always something interesting about this man and why he disappeared into oblivion. I have many interviews and articles on Montoro from Box Office Magazine and how Film Ventures got its start in the 70’s and leading up to Montoro’s infamous departure.
“Grizzly” was his most successful film, but the year before, he had acquired the Italian horror film “Beyond the Door” which is deemed by many as a ripoff of ‘The Exorcist’, but grossed over $30 million worldwide at the time of its release. Warner Bros. sued Montoro over the film, but they lost the case.
“Mutant” from what I understand in a brief article in box office magazine was that Film Ventures was horribly cash strapped at that time and the company’s board of directors vetoed Montoro’s decision to finance the film in the first place. Montoro went ahead and financed the film anyway, and put the entire company in turmoil. After Montoro took about $1.2 million (some others from the company claimed he took $2 million) and disappeared, producer Irv Holender bought the company out of bankruptcy and continued doing films until about 1990 and he merged Film Ventures into his Independent Networks, Inc.
Holender, by the way, is the father of producer Darren Holender who produced “Sorority Row” which is the remake of Montoro’s 1983 acquisition “House on Sorority Row”.
Those were interesting times back then. I’d also like to think that Montoro is still alive, most likely in South America some place. I’d really like to do a documentary on Montoro or perhaps even a black comedy film about his tenure in Hollywood during the 70’s and 80’s.