8mm Forum: Who Were Fletcher Films?

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Posted by Brad Kimball (Member # 5) on February 09, 2012, 09:53 PM:

There are several L&H titles and a Chaplin currently on Ebay from a company called Fletcher Films. The items are one-reel cutdowns with bogus titles (in the way Castle and Atlas did). The seller has no idea which films each title was extracted from. But, to my question... Who or What were Fletcher Films and were they a big player in the home movie market or were they a basement-bootleg operation much in the way Atlas was? What of the quality their product - was it decent? The boxes look really nice.

Posted by Lee Mannering (Member # 728) on February 10, 2012, 06:04 AM:

Used to buy silent Fletchers titles in the 1970’s and they were very variable in quality. The black and white titles were all printed on 3M acetate film stock at that time and films came in a plastic case with a clear flip open front cover and colour card printed insert, usually with the film on a grey reel. A little later they started to issue mag sound films such as The Bowery Boys some of which were quite good prints and I retained from way back then none of which have gone vinegar or am I chancing fate. My local cine shop way back then used to stock Fletcher Films on mass so we could always rely on a very good choice of both silent and sound films which came about later on. Box artwork designs were usually very simple with a large black border, Fletchers logo at the top and some hand drawn colour artwork for the centre which were all litho colour printed. On the spine of the box each film had a catalogue number such as CTN 4 and this corresponded to the growing film brochure Fletcher had on its display then. Fond memories of Fletcher titles but a far cry from the quality we were offered from other distributors.

Posted by Brad Kimball (Member # 5) on February 10, 2012, 09:45 AM:

Thanks, Lee. I actually came upon an earlier post of yours from October, 2007 where you scanned the cover to a Fletcher Video box for an animated "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea" and "Jack O' Lantern". From your scan it looks like bootlegs of Techno Films prints. Apparently they often didn't fill a 400' reel very much. Sounds like they were another 'Gary-In-The-Garage' type operation. I tried searching them via Google, but no hits. Looks like they 'upped-and-outed'. Big surprise.

Posted by Joerg Polzfusz (Member # 602) on February 10, 2012, 12:04 PM:

Atlas was and is a regular company with all the needed distribution-licenses as you can see on their homepage www.atlas-film.com

And as "Fletcher Films LTD." is listed in the article "OUT OF THE BOX - THE HISTORY OF THE PACKAGE MOVIE PART 6: OTHER UK DISTRIBUTORS" in the s m all format magazine, it looks like it was regular (but small) company with all the needed distribution-licenses as well.
(Sorry, but adding a link to the article caused error-messages from the forum-software?! I even had to add blanks to the magazine's name!?)

Jörg

Posted by Brad Kimball (Member # 5) on February 10, 2012, 11:01 PM:

Joerg,
The Atlas Film site you're link is for is definitely not the same company. The Atlas Films I'm referring to was definitely based out of New York City and primarily dealt in low grade prints of public domain titles. They did bootleg various Laurel and Hardy titles (the source being unconfirmed) and changed the titles to match the subject matter. They did the same with the Castle Films horror titles they "borrowed" from like "Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman". They may have had legitimate liscences from some major distributors, but I definitely have my doubts judging by the quality of the prints I've seen over the past 40+ years.

Posted by Colin Robert Hunt (Member # 433) on February 11, 2012, 03:13 PM:

Fletcher films was a very low budget film and from the prints that I have seen was not worth considering to purchase. Reel lengths was short as well. They came in plastic cases with coloured printed inserts. Maybe to give the look of quality. A no go in the collecting market. At the time they released there films they was not good value.

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