In Praise of Kent Wilson and Dividend Films

 

Kent Wilson was a banker by trade and a movie producer at heart.  Desperate to get into the film business, Wilson came up with a scheme to raise funds.  His bank, like many others, were giving away a free gift to those who would open a new account.  The gift was a toaster valued at twelve dollars.  Wilson opened over two thousand bogus new accounts.  (coming up with the different names and addresses was the hardest part).  He had to keep a minimum balance of five dollars in each account.  He took the toasters, turned around and sold them on the small appliance black market, making eight dollars for each.  After a year he was able to withdraw and close out the accounts with no penalty and loss of funds.  He then had sixteen thousand from the sale of the toasters and over ten thousand from the bogus accounts.  He had enough to move forward with his newly christened Dividend Films.

The companies first feature would be MUMMY ON CAMPUS (1963). 

MUMMY ON CAMPUS is akin to American International’s I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF, I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN (both 1957) and HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER (1958).  The plot involves the delivery of a newly discovered teenage mummy.  The sarcophagus is brought to the college archeology department for study by Professor Ernst Von Ritenour and his student assistants.  The lead assistant and the lead in the film is Ben Watson, played with schoolboy charm by 26-year-old Dale Monroe, in his first and last movie role.  The restless mummies arrival coincides with the influx of people for homecoming weekend.

"CAN THE KIDS USE ROCK N ROLL TO DEFEAT THE MUMMY?"

"YOU WILL SHAKE, RATTLE AND ROLL-OVER WHEN YOU SEE MUMMY ON CAMPUS!"

The original soundtrack included the title song MUMMY ON CAMPUS:

There’s a mummy on the campus

And he is shuffling after me

He is slow and he is silent

and he just won't let me be

Mummy on campus, mummy on campus

It’s the craziest sight you’ll ever see

Mummy on campus, mummy on campus

And he just walked off with the homecoming queen.

Other songs include MY BOYFRIEND’S UNDER WRAPS, THE PYRAMID TWIST, The PHAROAH STOMP and ROCK N ROLL MUMMY.

In the end it is rock n roll that defeats the mummy, as the teen’s loud music give him a headache and makes all of his bandages unravel.

MUMMY ON CAMPUS made close to four hundred thousand dollars from an initial investment of seventy-five thousand.

Suddenly flush with cash, Wilson turned Dividend Films from a part time job into a full-time fiasco.  Wilson purchased offices on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood.  He Installed Terrazzo floors and carpeted the ceilings.  He had pieces of art flown in from across the globe.  Handcrafted jade pieces from the Orient, pieces of Spatialism art from Italy and colorful sand art pieces from an agoraphobic albino ensconced in Ensenada.  His favorite piece was a painting of himself holding a toaster, that he kept on the wall loaming over his desk.   He would be routinely queried about the painting, but he never did divulge the significance of the toaster that he cradled in his arms like a newborn baby.

One day, Harry Sherman, a struggling screenwriter, met with Wilson to discuss some ideas that he had.

Harry Sherman:  I had been trying to break into the movie business for a few years after moving to Hollywood from Kansas City.  I had sold a few screenplays, only one of which was produced, a nudie cutie called BY GOLLY GOMPERS! (1962).

PLOT:  The ghost of labor union leader Samuel Gompers haunts an all-female college.  

Filled with breasts, behinds and business agents.  In some promotional materials the film was advertised as . . .

“THE ONLY NUDIE FILM ENDORSED UNDER THE TAFT-HARTLEY ACT!”

Kent Wilson was riding high off of his first feature film MUMMY ON CAMPUS and I was trying to sell some similarly themed horror scripts to him.  Some of these were THE INVISIBLE TEEN GOES TO COLLEGE and MUMMY LOVES MAMBO.  I loved going to his office in Hollywood.  Beautiful marble floors, art pieces in all disciplines.  Granted, I felt that the carpeted ceiling was odd, but to each his own.”  The finest piece of art was his secretary/receptionist Gloria.  Though not from Ipanema, she was tall and tan and young and lovely.  She had an hourglass figure and rather large feet . . . large feet have always turned me on.    To my sorrow, she had no interest in me and preferred men with college degrees and hairy backs.  I did ask Kent about the carpeted ceiling, and he told me that since no one could walk over it or spill food or drinks on it, that it was the perfect place for a carpet.  It never had to be cleaned.  How could I argue with that logic?”

It would seem logical that Wilson would want to follow up the massive success on his first feature with another teen horror film, but Wilson had something else in mind.   Wilson was a huge fan of the Christmas holidays.  His favorite movie was THE MALTESE FALCON (1941), granted it has nothing to do with Christmas, but he also liked IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946). 

So next up for Dividend Films was a children’s Christmas movie, written by Harry Sherman, called SANTA IS THE TOWN DRUNK (1965). 

Kiddie matinees.  Are you old enough to remember them?  Theater owners would book family friendly fare during the days before switching over to more adult fare in the evenings.  Kent Wilson knew that hundreds of theaters were starving for films that provided pre-teen theater goers with not only top-notch production values, but also a strong storyline with solid moral values and a happy uplifting ending.  SANTA IS THE TOWN DRUNK provides none of these.

Wilson had spent so much money on furnishing his Dividend Films offices that the budget, which was not even adequate to begin with, was first cut in half.  Then that was slashed by a third. Then, the day before filming commenced, he had to cut it down another 3/8ths.  All of the outdoor scenes, to be filmed in a small town in Utah, were there would have been actual snow were eliminated.  Instead of filming the indoor scenes at a respectable studio like Monster film Soundstages, initially set for schedule of ten days, He cut the schedule down to three half-days at Buck’s Movie Studio and Wild West Emporium, which in reality was a dilapidated airplane hangar owned by ex-rodeo star and current alcoholic Buck Shoulders.

Buck’s glory days as a rodeo star were so far behind him that they couldn’t be seen with a high-powered telescope.  Once a strong, strapping young lad and natural athlete, Buck had been reduced to a frail, disheveled, middle-aged boozer, whose only athletic activities involved pouring a drink and lifting it to his mouth.   

PLOT:  At one point in in life, a long time ago, Billy Slaton had the world in the palm of his hand.  After a series of tragic circumstances, he lost his job, his house and his family, basically losing the will to live, he turned to the bottle for solace.  Now, he is the town drunk.  Another Christmas season is near and a young boy, who sees Billy in town when his parents take him shopping, thinks that Billy is Santa Clause, due to Billy’s white beard and tattered red sweater.  The young boy’s father comes up with a plan to hire Billy to play Santa Claus at the department store, hoping to fill a job and give Billy a reason to live.  The whole thing ends in a barrage of bullets. . . Just kidding.

SANTA IS THE TOWN DRUNK played for years, mainly as support to other long forgotten holiday films like NARGO’S CHIRSTMAS ADVENTURE (1965) and THE DAY THAT THE SNOW TURNED YELLOW (1967). 

 

The Woke Film Company announced that a remake was forthcoming to be intitled SANTA IS THE PERSON WHO MISUSES ALCOHOL but produced FROSTY THE TRANSGENDER SNOWPERSON 2023 instead.

Wilson filed for bankruptcy after the holiday season playdates.  His assets were frozen.  Kent Wilson left the movie business, but not for good.  In 1981 he returned as one of the producers of THE SLASHER STRIKES AFTER MIDNIGHT.

PLOT:  A blade killer is terrorizing New York.  Police discover that every murder happened on the stroke of midnight.  While investigating a murder scene one detective states; “We are obviously dealing with a very sick and twisted mind and someone who is quite punctual.”  In the end the police are able to lure the killer into a clock factory and on the stroke of midnight are able to dispatch on him.

Director Rebecca North was one of the few female directors plying her trade in exploitation, she also directed THE SWINGING CARHOPS (1974), THE MONSTERS CRASH THE ROLLER DERBY (1975) and its sequel THE MONSTERS CRASH THE ROLLER DISCO (1979).