5

At the height of his success, 7TV supremo Sidney Barron was looking to expand. His phenomenally successful stable of series like Department X, The Man From 2000 and The Daredevils were the talk of playgrounds and public houses the length and breadth of Britain, but for a visionary impresario like Barron, the big prize had always lain over the Atlantic – the untapped American market.

Whilst his core programmes had met with some limited critical success across the pond, a truly transatlantic smash hit had continued to elude 7TV throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Admittedly, classic Department X episodes such as the risqué A Dash of Sulphur had garnered a certain notoriety among late-night viewers from Rhode Island to Oregon, but these remained guilty pleasures enjoyed by the few, rather than the mass-market breakthrough Barron was looking for.

That tantalising foot in the door finally came about almost by accident. A Midwestern film distributor, looking for a cheap means of boosting his declining drive-in revenue, bought a job lot of 7TV reels with the intention of putting them on as cheap B movies before the main feature. They

contained a round dozen episodes from Barron’s 60s anthology Tea-Time Thriller, including such gems as Mayfair 3939 (US: Don’t Pick Up!), The Worm Keeper (US: They Crawl!) and Farmer John’s New Wife (US: Squeal Bride, Squeal!), and proved a runaway word-of-mouth success with hormonal teenagers and horror-hungry film buffs alike.

News of the success of the revival across American drive-ins and fleapit movie houses eventually made its way back to Barron, who instantly put his writers to work on a whole new series of chillers to cement their fledgling transatlantic toehold, and his lawyers to work renegotiating the rights to Tea-Time Thriller. Heading up the new production company would be Sid’s son Michael, then a twenty-something media brat eager to prove himself as a producer in his own right. Recognising the same restless ambition of his younger self, Barron Senior gave Michael carte blanche to do whatever he needed to crack America once and for all. Who knows if he suspected just how far his prodigal son would go?

Given free reign, the younger Barron applied himself to the task with all the zeal of a missionary journeying into heathen lands. His youth proved to be an advantage, as he soaked up American culture and trends like a sponge, but it was his instinctive eye for what would sell to a Vietnam-weary, post-Summer of Love generation which made the newly-minted Barron Pictures a near-instant money-making machine. Fresh thrillers and outright horrors pictures like The Psychotics, If You Go Into The Woods and Deathroute caught the eye and imagination of an audience with an increasingly dark taste in movies.

While the inevitable criticism of conservative media-watchers and god-fearing parents raged outside the gates of Barron Pictures, Michael applied himself ever more keenly to the job of catering to his lucrative market, and if blood and gore was what they’d pay for, then he would ensure they got their money’s worth.

zombieville, usa by HELENA RODINGS, Splatterhouse Magazine, April 1994

IF YOU GO DOWN to THE WOODS

BARRON PICTURES PRESENT

BARRON PICTURES PRESENTS A 7TV PRODUCTION A HENRY YOUNGER PICTURE JUNE COLLINS RAPLH GATES “IF YOU GO DOWN TO THE WOODS” MUSIC BY BERNARD JAMES SCREENPLAY BY JORGE ROMEO DIRECTED BY HENRY YOUNGER PRODUCED BY MICHAEL BARRON EXECUTIVE PRODUCER SYDNEY BARRON FILMED IN TECHNICOLOR

DISTRIBUTED BY BARNA ARTISTS STEREO WHERE AVAILABLE

6

By the mid-70s, a definite sub-genre had begun to emerge from the Barron oeuvre. Starting with the seminal Invasion of the Dead, the zombie flicks struck a chord with the public, and Barron was quick to respond with a steady torrent of shambling undead offerings. Characterised by black humour, thinly veiled political allegory and of course scenes of censor-baiting terror, the zombie series would prove to be Barron’s greatest success story, and its ultimate undoing.

Movie-goers of the time were pressed into their seats by such offerings as the desperate strangers fleeing The Walking Plague, the post-apocalyptic Zombieville, USA, and the tense psychological drama of The Last House On Earth. The casting of relative unknowns, the bucking of certain heretofore sacrosanct plot elements (The hero is – gasp – black! Nobody survives!) and the eye-popping make-up and effects proved to be a winning formula for the studio, who continued to strain their audience’s nerves – and the patience of censors around the world.

Eventually matters came to a head with the now infamous Zombie Drill Eaters in the early 1980s. The advent of the video cassette market, and with it the so-called video-nasty in the United Kingdom, had put the low-budget horror genre on a collision course with authorities both in the U.S. and Britain, and with unfortunate timing, Zombie Drill

Eaters proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic screamed to Ban This Filth and Save Our Children, and no amount of cinephiles contending that Zombie Drill Eaters was a sharply observed morality play on the Cold War clothed in Kensington Gore could contend with apocryphal tales of a schoolchild who had microwaved his little brother’s head because ‘that’s how you kill zombies’.

And so the story of Barron Pictures came to an end, perhaps fittingly, in a savage orgy of blood-letting, albeit a metaphorical one at the hands of the popular press. By today’s standards, we might view the zombie series as mild, even camp, but they were for their time on the absolute edge of western cinema, responsible for some of the most memorable scenes of the 70s and 80s, like the unnamed cop of The Walking Plague handcuffed to a moaning undead perp and the sole survivor of The Last House On Earth staggering out into the blessed morning sun, only for the shadow of a clawed hand to fall across her face. The outrage may have faded, but the nightmares endure.

BARRON PICTURES PRESENT

BARRON PICTURES PRESENTS A 7TV PRODUCTION A HENRY YOUNGER PICTURE AMY LEIGH CURTIS RAPLH GATES

“ZOMBIE DRILL KILLERS” JULIE EGDE IRENE HINDLE MICHEAL ELWICK SCREENPLAY BY JORGE ROMEO MUSIC BY BERNARD JAMES

DIRECTED BY HENRY YOUNGER PRODUCED BY MICHAEL BARRON EXECUTIVE PRODUCER SYDNEY BARRON

FILMED IN TECHNICOLOR

DISTRIBUTED BY BARNA ARTISTS

STEREO WHERE AVAILABLE

BARRON PICTURES PRESENT

BARRON PICTURES PRESENTS A 7TV PRODUCTION A HENRY YOUNGER PICTURE AMY LEIGH CURTIS RAPLH GATES “ZOMBIEVILLE U.S.A” JULIE EGDE IRENE HINDLE MICHEAL ELWICK SCREENPLAY BY JORGE ROMEO MUSIC BY BERNARD JAMES

DIRECTED BY HENRY YOUNGER PRODUCED BY MICHAEL BARRON EXECUTIVE PRODUCER SYDNEY BARRONFILMED IN TECHNICOLOR DISTRIBUTED BY BARNA ARTISTS STEREO WHERE AVAILABLE

FROM THE MAKERS OF ‘THE PSYCHOTICS’ AND ‘INVASION OF THE DEAD’