International Courant
Terry Levene, the schlock showman who as the pinnacle of Aquarius Releasing was behind such movies as Bruce Lee Fights Again From the Grave and Physician Butcher, Medical Deviate, has died. He was 90.
Levene died Jan. 13 surrounded by his household in Englewood, New Jersey, Severin Movies government Josh Johnson introduced.
Working out of an workplace above the Selwyn Theater on West forty second Avenue in New York, Levene creatively marketed low-budget American options together with Isaac Hayes: Black Moses of Soul (1973) and Silent Night time, Lethal Night time (1984).
For grindhouses and drive-ins, the onetime novice boxer rebranded Lucio Fulci’s supernatural horror movie The Past (1981) as Seven Doorways of Loss of life (1985) and Umberto Lenzi’s Italian shocker Cannibal Ferox (1981) as Make Them Die Slowly (1983), selling the gory latter as “The Most Violent Movie Ever! Banned in 31 International locations!”
Aquarius handed out barf baggage to these paying to see Physician Butcher, Medical Deviate (1983), which was a re-edited model of Marino Girolami’s Zombie Holocaust (1980). The movie additionally glided by titles together with Island of the Final Zombies, Queen of the Cannibals and Zombie 3.
“In one of many biggest and most absurd movie premises of all time,” Mike Campbell wrote in a overview of the movie on The Scariest Issues weblog, “a cannibal outbreak within the New York hospital system is found by a horny morgue assistant (Lori ), who occurs to be a horny anthropologist, who occurs to have been raised on a horny cannibal island — the place the cannibals/zombies are from!”
It could not be shocking to be taught that Levene early on distributed the infamous intercourse movie Deep Throat (1972), starring Linda Lovelace. “A theater that was doing a mean of $10,000 to $15,000 every week, which they have been proud of, was now making 60 grand, $70,000 every week,” he mentioned within the 2016 DVD featurette Butchery and Ballyhoo.
He additionally booked into theaters early showings of John Carpenter’s Halloween (1976) and John Sayles’ Alligator (1980).
Terence Levene was born in London on Feb. 17, 1933. After his dad and mom bought a series of theaters that they owned, they moved the household to Buffalo, New York, and began one other one.
Levene helped popularize martial arts motion pictures within the US after the 1973 loss of life of the motion star Bruce Lee with such titles as Goodbye Bruce Lee (1975), Bruce Lee Fights Again From the Grave (1976) and Fist of Worry, Contact of Loss of life (1980) ).
Levene was featured within the 2023 documentary Enter the Clones of Bruce.
Levene additionally discovered success with flicks that revolved round girls in jail, amongst them Ladies in Cell Block 7 (1973), Barbed Wire Dolls (1976) and The Concrete Jungle (1982). “The sluts in a slammer phenomenon actually does enterprise,” he famous.
Survivors embody his spouse, Sarai; his daughter, Rachel, and her husband, Gregory; his grandchildren, Charlotte and Clifford; and his sister, Mollie, and her husband, John.
“The entire photos that have been first reproduced by me had a sure uniformity to say, they have been all crap on the left hand and on the correct hand they made some cash,” he mentioned. “I produced 32 photos in 30 years, all exploitation, that is not so unhealthy.”
