SAM SHERMAN: MARK CERULLI INTERVIEWS THE LEGENDARY WRITER, PRODUCER AND DISTRIBUTOR (2025)

"WHEN SHERMAN MET FRANKENSTEIN"

BY MARK CERULLI

To celebrate the release of producer Sam Sherman’s memoir, When Dracula Met Frankenstein (Murania Press) Cinema Retro presentsthis exclusive interview with the man himself. In our two-hour conversation,the filmmaker demonstrated a virtual photographic memory when discussing hisremarkable 60 plus year career. Ourinterview was a time capsule of the drive-in era where creative marketing,distribution and production exemplified the true spirit of independentfilmmaking.

Sam Sherman grew up a horror and western film fan. The first horror film Sam ever saw wasUniversal’s classic monster comedy, Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein(1948) which captivated his imagination at a very young age. Following his dream, he attended City Collegeof New York to study filmmaking. Likemost CR readers, he was also an avid collector – in his case, horror stills,which one imagines were almost given away in the 1950s. Those black and white photos, picked up inthe small memorabilia stores that used to dot Manhattan, led to a career – “In1958, I wrote to Famous Monsters and to my surprise, got a call back from JimWarren and asked if they’d be interested in renting my stills,” Shermanrecalled.

“I produced ads for Captain Company (FM’s merchandisingdivision) and I also acquired product for them.” (As one who spent a lot of hard-earnedteenage cash on Captain Co products - including a Dr. No movie posterfor all of $4.99 - that was a part of Sam’s long career I could instantlyrelate to.)

While ghostwriting articles for FM and working on otherWarren publications like Spacemen, Screen Thrills Illustrated and WildestWesterns, Sherman frequently found his enthusiasm for horror looked down uponby Help! magazine art director, Terry Gilliam. Years later, Gilliam took anobvious jab (and inspiration) from Sherman’s climactic battle of the monstersin Dracula vs Frankenstein (1971) with his own comedic dismemberment scenein Monty Python & The Holy Grail (1975). “I made it a point never to see anythinghe’s done,” Sam adds.

In the 1950s and 60s, New York was the center of the filmuniverse and Sherman found himself making the rounds of small distributorstrying to find films to license for his own fledgling company, SignatureFilms. Sam later got in with an independentfilm company called Hemisphere Pictures which specialized in movies shot in thePhilippines, including the Blood Island horror cult classics directed byEddie Romero. Sherman honed hisexploitation skills by creating the theatrical, television, radio and print adcampaigns which established Hemisphere as The House of Horror withunforgettable gimmicks and marketing promotions like “The Oath of Green Blood”for the first audience participation film, The Mad Doctor of Blood Island(1969).

Sam’s book is full of photos from that era – fromsnapshots of early visits to LA, to on-set stills and “ballyhoo” photos oftheater displays, lurid posters and marquees. One image that jumps out is of a young Sam standing behind the iconic BorisKarloff on A.I.P.’s The Raven set. “Forry Ackerman (Famous Monsters’longtime editor) took me to the last day of shooting and we spent the whole daywith Peter Lorre and Vincent Price, which was wonderful. I had a nice chat withKarloff. He finished up for the day and (director) Roger Corman took him awayto do The Terror, which was non-union, somewhere else.” Talk about maximizing your star!

In 1968, Sherman and several partners – including longtimefriend, filmmaker Al Adamson, formed Independent-International Pictures Corp. (a riff off the very successful AmericanInternational Pictures). “Al just wantedto make movies, he left it to me to figure out how to market them and makemoney,” Sam recalls.

Their first production for the new company was a raw bikerfilm, Satan’s Sadists starring Russ Tamblyn of West Side Storyfame and directed by Adamson. The film tapped into the national shockwavesreverberating from biker gang violence as well as LA’s horrific Mansonmurders. The female lead was astatuesque California blonde, Regina Carrol, who became Adamson’s girlfriend,later his wife and star of his films. Wanting to give her a little extraexposure, Sherman labeled her “The Freak-Out Girl”. As the film contained nudity, the then-newmovie ratings board wanted to slap an X on Satan’s Sadists. Sam went to the mat to contest it, evenadvising the theatre circuits to rate the film themselves based on regionaltastes vs the Motion Picture Board’s inconsistent classifications forindependent films.

Sam’s book is full of similar throw out the rulebook tales– like licensing an odd Filipino caveman film named Tagani which wasshot in black & white. To modernize it, Adamson shot some new scenes withveteran horror star John Carradine but the film still didn’t look right, so Samsuggested using various tints (“Like they did in silent movies”). He wrote MOREnew scenes (including computer sex!), added an eye-catching title - Horrorof the Blood Monsters and they now had a releasable film!

At Independent-International, Sam and Al shrugged off theindustry’s notoriously unforgiving deadlines: “We released an imported Germanpicture called Women for Sale which had been a big hit and I said ‘Wecan’t find anything like it to follow up with, so let’s make a picture likethis’, it’ll be called Girls for Rent…” Sam hired an industry friend to write it, months went by without ascript. “We’re getting closer to the keysummer playdates, and we were really in a jam” Sam recalled. “I got anotherwriter and we knocked the picture out fast, doing the campaign fast, orderedprints and got it into release by the end of the summer. Sixty days, I couldn’tbelieve we could do it but we did and it was a pretty good film!”

Of course, there’s a chapter on Independent-International’sbiggest picture – Dracula vs Frankenstein, which actually started out asBlood Freaks (aka Blood Seekers). “The script was not much of anything but I was working on it… we wanteda name actor so Al went to agent Jerry Rosen who said ‘You can have Lon Chaney,Jr. and J. Carrol Naish for a week for $6K.’” They booked them sight unseen – and when they reported for work, bothwere in ill health. “Naish had a bad eye and Chaney had throat cancer. (Draculavs Frankenstein would be his final horror film.) “Ya gotta meet the people,” Sam addsknowingly. Diminutive Angelo Rossitto roundedout the cast as the carnival barker Grazbo. The resulting film was so bad,backers recommended it just be shelved. Sam lives by the motto “Waste not, want not” and since he was an editorhimself, he went to work watching the film repeatedly until he found a line ofdialogue he could use to expand the storyline to include the last survivingFrankenstein… and the monster. “And once I thought that I said, ‘Let’s bring inDracula for good measure.’” Scrapingtogether $50K for reshoots they hired a tall, dark-haired record storeemployee, Rafael Engel (named “Zandor Vorkov” by Forry) to play the Count and7’4” accountant, John Bloom, to play the monster. “I left it to Al to make the picture, but asthe president of Independent International, I made the final decisions,” Samadds. Sam also tapped Famous Monsters’ Forry Ackerman who not only acted in thefilm, but also secured the electrical equipment and props of special effectswizard Kenneth Strickfaden for the production. Strickfaden’s cracklingelectrical contraptions were originally used in Universal’s Frankensteinfilm 40 years earlier. Against theodds, Dracula vs Frankenstein was a monster hit! Ahead of his time, Sam even released the filmon TV AND in theaters/drive-ins “day-and-date” at the same time. “Nobody cared”, Sam says, chuckling, “I did whatI wanted to do.”

Naturally, Sam devotes a chapter to his creative partnerand “the brother I never had”, Al Adamson, who was tragically murdered by acontractor renovating his desert house in 1995. Incredibly Sam still had a connection with him because one night after Alhad been declared “missing”, Sam silently asked his friend to give him a signof where he was… the word “Cement” popped into his mind. He communicated that to police and sureenough, when they investigated, Al’s body was discovered underneath a cement floor. The contractor was apprehended in Florida andis now serving decades in prison but the pain of Sam’s loss is palpable. He still keeps Adamson’s name alive withdrive-in screenings and special DVD and Blu-ray releases of their work.

Now 81, Sam feels the time is ripe for his story to betold. His oversize book is full ofindustry lore and life lessons. “I hopereaders get that if they want to be in the picture business, they can… and peoplewho aren’t filmmakers but want to know the history of Al and myself, the wholestory is there – how we did it, why we did it and what really happened.” Summing up, Sam says, “We did what we had todo.”

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