8mm Forum: Mountain Films and Walton

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Posted by David Kilderry (Member # 549) on October 01, 2006, 08:45 AM:

I have plenty of good information on films produced by Castle, Blackhawk, MGM, etc, but none on Mountain and little on Walton from the UK. I do own dozens of their titles as they were popular here in Australia.

How large were their catalogs? I would love to know how extensive their libraries were and what favourites I may be missing from my own collection. Has anyone done research on the re-titling that these companies did for their cut-downs?

Is their any information on the web, perhaps even scans of pages? Especially Mountain as there is some good info on Walton with reference to the late 1970's catalogs, but what was deleted earlier???

David

Posted by Joe Caruso (Member # 11) on October 01, 2006, 12:42 PM:

I have little information also; Only know that the prints and boxes I have equal that of CASTLE's finest of a sort - A catalog from '69 crops up on EBAY occasionally and on dealers' tables now and again - From CASTLE, I've long wanted to locate the people who designed and printed the boxes and where they were manufactured - Shorty

Posted by David Kilderry (Member # 549) on October 05, 2006, 09:47 AM:

Well, having had a good look through Tim's Walton Films website, there is much more information there than when I first looked at it. In fact it answered most of my questions. Excellent job Tim.

I can still find very little information however on Mountain Films. The back of their film boxes gives some information, but I would love to see a catalog or complete titles list.

The first films I ever bought were Mountain Films and they were brand new Std 8mm in the late 1970's; I only had a Std 8 projector! They were a 50 footer called Victim Of The Devil and a 2 x 200 footer called Walter Finds A Father. I ran them countless times and still have both of them.

Does anyone know what films they are from or who stars in them? Walter Finds A Father looks like an original silent two reeler and Victim Of The Devil is a cutdown of a horror film. I am not really up on my classic horrors so I don't recognise it. The cover art on this one is excellent.

David

Posted by Michael De Angelis (Member # 91) on October 07, 2006, 03:15 PM:

Here is something worth checking,
which is available in both
book and electronic form.

Scotty is an avid film enthusiast,
and has authored many interesting books,
and articles.

He and his wife Jan,
are consummate film buffs,
film hobbyists and nice people.

Castle Films: A Hobbyist's Guide (Paperback)

eBookMall: Castle Films By Scott MacGillvray

Another book worth while,
is titled:
Laurel & Hardy From the 40's Forward.

Book: Laurel and Hardy From the Forties Forward

As well as commentaries on some new
DVD releases

Amazon L&H DVD's

Michael

Posted by Joe Caruso (Member # 11) on October 07, 2006, 03:53 PM:

Hi Mike, please continue your prayers - I can buy some shorts if you still have, need twelve now, used to need forty so it's getting better now - Email Shorty at jvcaruso@bellatlantic.net

Posted by David Kilderry (Member # 549) on October 07, 2006, 08:01 PM:

Thanks Michael, I have the Castle book and use it as a reference frequently.

Even some old Mountain catalogs posted on line would answer so many questions. I was emailed by a very knowledgable Mountain horror enthusiast who told me Victim Of The Devil came from the Spanish film "The Awful Dr. Orlof" (The Demon Doctor, UK Title)1962.

I do buy catalogs when available; I thought I knew most of the Blackhawk catalog of films until I bought three more from different years and it opened a treasure trove of films I was unaware of.

I knew Blackhawk would rotate titles in their catalogs, but did not know to what extent. New titles would appear and replace others that would then come back!

There is certainly room for another book, a definitve one on film collecting in Super 8. Along the lines of the Juergen Lossau books on cameras and projectors. Film collecting by Gerald McKee is also excellent and he did a follow-up, but wouldn't it be great to have the stories of ALL the distributors; The history of the company, Who edited the films? Who did the box art? Who chose the titles? How many were sold?

David

Posted by Joe Caruso (Member # 11) on October 08, 2006, 11:05 AM:

Something I've been hitching about for years now - Thing is, the obscure fly-by-night outfits lasted perilouly short; CORNET, CARNIVAL as such - Information is quite scarce but not impossible - Yes, a box-art compendium would be the end-all glory to the dedicated collector as well as the rest of the information on all the distributors - We can start with what we know and go from there - Perhaps something can be located in England, with outfits like DCR and POWELL - Shorty

Posted by Michael De Angelis (Member # 91) on October 08, 2006, 08:10 PM:

David and Joe,

I have been creating frame
grab picts of any Castle
Film Box image which I can
locate on the internet, and
storing it on the computer
Hard drive.

I recently came across a 16 page
catalog from 1967-68, and if
there was a way of posting it here
on the Forum, I would appreciate
if someone could give me a heads-up
on how to achieve this for everyone to
view.

Michael

Posted by David Kilderry (Member # 549) on August 21, 2009, 07:08 AM:

Well it's taken years, but I finally bought a Mountain Films catalogue. Paid over $40.00 for it too.

Can't wait for it to arrive.

Posted by John W. Black (Member # 1082) on August 21, 2009, 09:40 PM:

Mountain Films became Portland Films near the end

Posted by John Clancy (Member # 49) on August 22, 2009, 02:35 AM:

We did a fairly extensive series of articles for 'smallformat' which covered every package movie film distributor we could get information on. Not exactly comprehensive, just the most comprehensive coverage there has ever been on the subject. Ran for about 14 issues and the forum member provided much of the information.

Posted by Joe Caruso (Member # 11) on August 22, 2009, 06:55 AM:

Mountain released several RKO cut-downs of Edgar Kennedy & Leon Errol shorts. Can you provide me with a list, so I can match what I have? Cheers from Shorty

Posted by Joe McAllister (Member # 825) on August 22, 2009, 07:42 AM:

Re Mountain Films-of the top of my head...
I believe they were so called because they started by taking over the product of a company called Peak Films that made and distibuted their own films in the 40's and 50's, Their logo was a poor mans version of the Paramount mountain and Mountain utilised that later too.Their titles were things like "Brumas" who was a bear that attracted visitors to London Zoo. Their stuff was generally 100' of 16 or 9.5 and of general interest. I'm not sure if they went in for 8mm.
Mountain titles started to appear in the 60's they had rights to the RKO library and a lot of their stuff was from that source. They also distributed Chaplin's and Laurel and Hardy's etc often duped from Blackhawk prints. They took over titles which were distributed by Heritage, Peter Walkers 8mm outfit before he got into feature production,which had produced many glamour films but also a line of horror titles like "Wasp Woman" "Monster of Piedras Blancas" "Plan 9 from outer space" and so on.
Mountain put out some nice titles like King Kong which was available complete on 6x400's slightly abridged as 4x400's and as various 2 and 4 hundred footers both silent and sound.
They had a few shops in the west end that stocked their titles but also a lot of 16mm stuff from all over the place ie some TV versions of L&H features cut to 1000' and retitled for TV castle travel films Flash Gordon Serials and so on, The shops which were called Portland films also stocked titles from Columbia Walton Universal 8 and whoever was around. Mountain went over to video distribution in the late 70's early 80'sbut had a lackluster catalogue of PD and TV material which kept them ticking over for a while but they disappeared by the mid 80's entirely. As a footnote they put out a number of Disney's on VHS before Disney did themselves because of a short lived loophole in the law which meant that video was not covered by the copyright laws in England.
Because they bought up other companies it would be difficult to be comprehensive about what they actually put out. I remember speaking to the owner about the RKO titles and he said he had rights to over a 1000 titles from that source alone only a fraction were released of the more obvious features and shorts. Apart from those titles which provided the backbone of their output they also had many independent horror and sci fi titles. The catalogues I have seen don't give much indication of the range and volume they produced.
They also had a line of glamour and adult titles which was distributed under "Unique" "Elysia" and various other company titles.

Posted by Robert Wales (Member # 502) on August 22, 2009, 09:51 AM:

Another excellent book with plenty of information on the 'good old days' is MOVING PICTURES AND CLASSIC IMAGES by the late Samuel K Rubin, who started the industry bible Classic Film Collector in the pre-internet days. Several chapters are devoted to the various distributors over the history of the hobby ( how many remember there was once a United Artists 8 which released several classic silent features from original negatives on Standard 8mm in the 1960's ? ) However, he does admit he has little knowledge of the European community and really only mentions Derann. I just checked my copy and there is no information on Mountain Films.

Posted by Joe Caruso (Member # 11) on August 22, 2009, 09:52 AM:

Thnaks, Jon, if you might shed light on titles that were released. I'm right to think there were ten Kennedys and same with Errol. I'm close to completion, hard to locate, some crop-up on Ebay only rarely - It's a matter of chance detective work, persevering and hounding - Cheers, Shorty

Posted by Robert Crewdson (Member # 3790) on June 24, 2013, 10:10 AM:

If Mountain Films were around in 1966 then they were in business before the demise of Peak Films. As a 14 year old in 1967 I bought a peak films hand held viewer sold under the name Jollyfilm, it came in a box with 4 or 5 boxed loops of Charlie Chaplin film, each about 2 feet in length. About 6 months after the toy shop sold off cheaply all the remaining stock, and I bought a film of The Trooping of the Colour. I still have that one in the box. The films were coated with a grease to protect them from scratching. Peak Films were the trademark of a company called J.S. Friese. There is an illustrated article on the company on the website of Grahame Newnham.

Posted by Maurice Leakey (Member # 916) on June 24, 2013, 11:43 AM:

I'm sorry to take so long but I've only just found this link. I refer to David Kilderry's post of 5 October 2006 in which he asks about "Walter Finds A Father".

Walter was Walter Forde. See below.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0399863/

Posted by David Ollerearnshaw (Member # 3296) on June 24, 2013, 02:41 PM:

I have scanned a couple of Walton catalogues their last one is on the site now, about 1979. The Reel Image (UK) Mountain Films are also scanned, but not yet ready to put on the site. Hope to get them done over the next few weeks.

Posted by Robert Crewdson (Member # 3790) on June 25, 2013, 12:38 PM:

Is there a link to the Walton Films site? A son of one of the founders started a site but it never progressed beyond the front page. The Mountain Films catalogue was phenomenal, I remember later they sent me a small supplement which I think consisted mainly of Terrytoon cartoons; after that came the regular sheets of paper through the post advertising King Kong, Flash Gordon, and Astaire and Rogers movies. I had to wait until I was 19 before I could afford a camera and projector, from the age of about 12 I used to go to our local Dixons and pick up a free Walton catalogue and drool over what was available.

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