Ep. 30: New World Pictures (1984-1991). Ben & Meep discuss their favorite Movies from New World Pictures of the post-Roger Corman regime.
Retro Movie Love Podcast Episode 30: New World Pictures (1984-1991)
Song Credits:
Dancing in Heaven (Orbital Be-Bop) by Q-Feel
Why You Wanna Break My Heart by Dwight Twilley
You’re No Good by Betty Everett
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Retro Movie Love Podcast 
Omg, as soon as I heard that Pinocchio trailer I knew what it was. My mother bought it for me at a garage sale (it was still sealed, if that tells you anything) and I watched it half a million times, much to the woe of my older sister. She eventually hated it so much she taped over it, but not even at like the beginning of the movie, like, several minutes into some psychedelic crap happening. I totally forgot about it for years until one drunken discussion about kids movies made me remember it, and I too wondered if it was some strange childhood fever dream. I made the mistake of looking it up on youtube, thinking, ‘I bet this is like some beautiful lost animated classic’, and just being like ‘My sister was right, this is so terrible!’ There are maybe dozens of us, Ben, dozens!
This is such an amazing post. Thank you! I passed it along to Ben who was wowed but you sharing your memories of the Film. THANK YOU!
Good podcast on New World Pictures. If you ever want to have a “guest” on your podcast, I’d be happy to participate. I work in the film industry and produced the critically acclaimed documentary “My Amityville Horror” which IFC Films distributed and I’m currently in pre-production on the horror film “Witchula” with Kane Hodder and Dee Wallace Stone. I have been a historian on many of these old indie film companies including New World, Empire, Cannon, Film Ventures, TWE, etc. New World’s problem in the 1980’s was that they over-expanded far too quickly after the investment group bought it from Roger Corman in 1983. They became a public company in 1985 and had sufficient capital from Wall Street through inexpensive junk bonds to finance their plans. The company was owned by Larry Kuppin and Harry Sloan (who I had the pleasure of meeting one time); he later went on to run MGM. They brought in Bob Rehme as New World’s CEO, who had ironically worked as vice president of sales at New World during the Corman years. Mr. Rehme, who later went on to become president of the Academy Awards, kind of made a ‘name’ for himself in the indie film world: he ran Avco Embassy Pictures and increased sales there to over $100 million from 1979-1981 from producing low-budget films of under $6 million and had previously been head of marketing/distribution at Universal. Rehme wanted to basically do the same thing he had accomplished at Avco Embassy. New World also had an agreement with Balcor Film Investors which financed around 8-12 movies within the $5 to $7 million budget range. They also bought Marvel Entertainment, Lions Gate Post-Production Studios, and developed a rapid television operation. They were also one of the first companies that established their own in-house home video division. However these plans ended up being far too costly and while they produced and/or acquired nearly 100 movies from 1984-1989, only about six or seven of them were actually profitable at the box office (House, Hellraiser and Hellraiser II, Flowers in the Attic, Creepshow 2 and Soul Man). They drastically cut back production in 1988 and they couldn’t refinance their bonds, forcing them into bankruptcy, eventually taken over by the Andrews Group controlled by Ron Perelman in 1989, who bought it for far more than what Italian financier Giancarlo Parretti was asking for the same year. Parretti ended up buying Cannon and merged into his short lived ownership of MGM Studios which unfolded the biggest predatory lending scandal in film history with Credit Lyonnais which, to some extent, affected New World as well.