Here’s an interesting article I found at Futuro Finale 2088 AD. Almi Pictures shut down American operations in 1986, only two years after Frank Moreno assumed the presidency. 2019: After the Fall of New York (1983) and Lucio Fulci’s The House by the Cemetery (1981) were as good as it got.
I thought it was hilarious that Roger Corman changed the name of Ingmar Bergman’s Whispers and Cries to Cries and Whispers (1972). If that’s not a dig, I don’t know what is. As for Moreno, he makes quite a few salient points. Exploitation films and art films faced essentially the same problems up front—raising capital and getting distribution. The difference is in how the films made money after release. The art film needs critical acclaim and word of mouth, while “sixty to seventy percent of an exploiter’s initial [business] lies in the title and the campaign,” Moreno says elsewhere. That’s why, back in the day, genre film posters and VHS boxes evolved into such a striking art form.
Moreno is also right about Gremlins and the MPAA. The PG-13 rating was instituted in June of 1984, as a direct result of complaints about violence in Gremlins and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, both of which received PG ratings. (Children were weeping in the theaters! It was amazing.)
Richard McKenna reviews 2019: After the Fall of New York tomorrow.
2 Warps to Neptune 
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