In Praise Of Transcontinental International Pictures

Transcontinental International Pictures had a long profitable run on movie screens.  During their peak, they even stood toe-to-toe with the mighty American International Pictures as the premier independent American exploitation film company.  There will be plenty of TIP's film catalogue featured in upcoming posts, as they are criminally under covered for the large number of movies that they released.

Southern fried exploitation was always a hot ticket.  TIP's first foray into the genre was THE BOOTLEGGER'S BROOD (1970)

PLOT:  The old bootlegger (Raymond Mitchell) is badly injured when his still explodes (set up by a competitor).  Being bed-ridden he has to turn to his three granddaughters to step up and take over the family bootlegging operation until he can get back on his feet.  The granddaughters soon realize that most of their time involves fighting and outwitting other bootleggers muscling in on their territory and lawmen who want to shut them down.  

Lighthearted, good-natured, down-home fun, full of the prerequisite car chases, skinny dipping and low brow comedy that are comfort foods for the genre.  Even the violence is played for laughs.  Great scene where a none- too- bright horny deputy catches one of the girls running shine red handed and in exchange of him arresting her, he tries to get sexual favors from her, but she is able to turn the tables on him and leave him naked and handcuffed to his patrol car. 

Plenty of explosions and well filmed car chases around the hilly backroads in and around Charlotte and Ashville, North Carolina.

The three main actresses were all former beauty contest winners.  Georgette McDonald was Miss Tennessee 1970, Lilly Noble was Miss Georgia 1972 and Annabel Stevens was Miss Compost Cutie 1973.

Lilly Noble was the only one of the three female leads to continue an acting career.  She went on to play a dual role as long lost twins.  One a small-town girl. The other a high-class call girl, who switch places for a night in 1976's MY SISTER'S DIRTY DIARY.  She played a small role as "Inebriated Exhibitionist #6" in 1977's FOOT LOOSE AND FANCY FREE.

The special co-star, Raymond Mitchell, playing the part of the Bootlegger, once had an esteemed acting career, but years of drink and hefty alimony payments for four bum marriages left him in dire straits both in health and financially.  By the mid-sixties the only parts that Mitchell could get were in low budget exploitation films.  Hollywood had no need for his services anymore.

Excerpt from Raymond Mitchell's autobiography "The Drunk Stays in the Picture":

I had just come off a three-day bender, that had followed a weeklong bender, and I was making plans for a Thanksgiving bender, when my agent, Marty Royce, gave me a call.  He was ecstatic.  "Raymond", he said, "$5,000! Three days! North Carolina!"  $5,000?  I would kill my mother for $5,000, Hell, at that point in my career I would have killed anyone's mother for $5,000 and I would have thrown in the family dog for free.  I told Marty to accept and to come over with the contract, the script, a bottle of bourbon and a bucket of fried chicken.

My last marriage had just ended, adding to the two alimony payments that were already crippling me financially.  I should have known better than to take the plunge for the fourth time with my track record.  Susan and I had nothing in common.  I was sixty-three years old at the time.  Susan was twenty-five.  I was a washed-up actor.  She was a free spirit who believed that work was a four-letter word, which it is. So, she was correct on that one.  Our marriage only lasted three months.  Looking back, I should have known that we would have a rocky path.  Our first heated argument came during the preparations for the wedding.  I wanted white rice to be thrown and Susan wanted brown rice.  Neither of us would budge from our stance.  We ended up having our guests throw mashed potatoes at us.  It was all downhill from there.

Raymond Mitchell passed away in 1976 from cirrhosis of the earlobe. 

Director Dixon Mason made a lot of white trash, car crash movies, THE GREAT EL PASO TO YUMA CONVOY (1977), TRUCKER'S DELIGHT Aka. 18 WHEEL FEVER! (1978) and THE SMOKEY, THE SCOFFLAW AND THE SWINDLER (1979) 

Sibling Producers Rafe and Rory Calhern came from a long line of Carolina moonshine runners and provided screenwriters Moe Young and Rand Niven stories about their family's escapades in the bootlegging business for the script.  Rafe and Rory produced a horror movie called THE CREATURE OF THE GREAT CRAGGY MOUNTAINS (1977) and HAMMERDOWN! THE INCREDIBLE STORY OF TOAD DICKERSON (1978).  Which is a lost film as of this writing.

An interesting side note: 

Actor Gary Perkins who played the small part of "peeping tom in overalls", went on to be the leader of a doomsday cult who had garnered some national press in the 1980's.  The Society for Preservation of End of the World Prophesiers, Rapture Oracles, and Football Prognosticators was founded by Perkins and a parts unknown type who mysteriously went under the name of The Visionary.  The group built up a small but determined following, and on four different occasions pinpointed a date that the world would end.  March 6, 1982, August 9, 1984, October 11th, 1987, and November 16, 1989 (originally forecasted for November 10th, 1989, but was altered so The Visionary could celebrate his birthday on November 14th, 1989, in Cancún). 

The soundtrack was mainly needle drops except for three original songs written by country and western artist Buck Monroe:  "Daffodils and Gunpowder", "Dancing on Dirt Roads" and "The Bootleggers Brood theme".

Monroe, who was a highly sought after session man and amphetamine dealer in Nashville, would go on to play live with Johnny Cash, Johnny Paycheck and Johnny Whitaker.

In an effort to drum up more press for THE BOOTLEGGER'S BROOD, TIP's head of publicity, Klark Kincaid, called in a favor with an old drinking buddy, who was working for Art Instruction Schools and soon one of the characters from the movie, Breezy, was being seen and advertised in comic books and on matchbook covers.  Breezy would fast become the most drawn character by applicants, surpassing Tippy the Turtle by 100 to 1.  Breezy's time at the top ended when parents found their children drawings and after raising a stink, Breezy was gone.