Joseph Brenner(I)

Joseph Brenner was one of the principal American distributors of horror features and exploitation pictures of both foreign and domestic origin from the 1950s up until the 1980s. The Brooklyn-born Brenner worked in a movie theater as an usher while growing up in New York City and became the theater's manager within six months. Following a brief stint in the army and several years working for various booking companies, Brenner started his own distribution outfit called Joseph Brenner Associates. Some of the earlier movies Brenner picked up for theatrical release were the legendary Errol Flynn bomb Cuban Rebel Girls (1959), Mau-Mau (1955), The Flesh Merchant (1956), Juke Box Racket (1960), Fire Maidens of Outer Space (1956) and the nudist camp item Elysia (Valley of the Nude) (1933). Other films Brenner distributed to both drive-in and grindhouse theaters alike include the gruesome Italian slasher Torso (1973), the trippy So Evil, My Sister (1974), Pete Walker's excellent Frightmare (1974), the delightfully outrageous Asian sci-fi/superhero fantasy hoot Infra-Man (1975), a reissue of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), the gritty Italian crime thriller Almost Human (1974), the Cheri Caffaro sleaze classics Ginger (1971) and The Abductors (1972), the spooky zombie offering Shock Waves (1977), the bang-up giallo murder mystery winner Autopsy (1975) and the hilariously horrendous killer doll riot Attack of the Beast Creatures (1985).

Brenner often devised incredibly wild, in-your-face trailers and equally insane taglines for the movies he distributed (the tagline for "Torso" proudly proclaims, "One day she met a man who loved beautiful girls . . . but not all in one piece!", while the tagline for "Ginger" claims "Her body was a weapon!"). Brenner also produced Eyeball (1975), The Sin Syndicate (1965) and After Mein Kampf (1961).

Joseph Brenner voluntarily quit the business in the mid-'80s when releasing blithely trashy low-budget fare stopped being fun and profitable.