RICKARD GRAMFORS & LISA PETRUCCI REFLECT ON THE PICK-UP!
Rickard Gramfors, head honcho of Klubb Super 8 and Cultpix reflections on THE PICK-UP
I’ve run the film club/research outfit/film archive/DVD label Klubb Super 8 for almost 30 years. We were lucky to get in touch with Mike Vraney and Lisa Petrucci at Something Weird Video and organize a film festival in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö in 1998. After the first successful festival, we had the pleasure of organizing the touring Scandinavian film festival Something Weird 2000 (1999), where Mike and Lisa brought “The Mighty Monarch of Exploitation” himself, David F. Friedman! The whole gang travelled to Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö, Copenhagen, and Helsinki!
At that time, Klubb Super 8 was merely a film club. But thanks to the inspiration from Something Weird Video, we started releasing vintage Swedish exploitation movies on VHS, then moving on to DVD and Blu-ray. Klubb Super 8 and our current streaming platform Cultpix.com would certainly not exist without Something Weird Video’s pioneering efforts.
In the 1990s, I got invited and involved with the loosely organized annual Scandinavia film collectors’ conventions, in Sweden, Denmark and Norway every third year. The meetings involve selling, buying and swapping anything cinematic: 35mm, 16mm, 8mm, film posters, film stills, VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, books, projectors, cameras, soundtracks, and all sorts of film related gadgets and stuff. The collectors were and are mostly middle-aged and older men, some of them former projectionists. There’s beer and film screenings on Saturday night, and film market all Sunday, each year. Klubb Super 8 got to know these great guys, and started collecting film on 35mm and 16mm. Since that time our collection has grown. We now have approximately 350 feature films (mainly exploitation films) and tons of trailers and short films.
One of our luckiest breaks was at the convention in Copenhagen. Back in the mid-1990’s a guy was selling vintage Danish posters and told us he got them from an old distributor, Henry Andersen. We got in touch with Andersen, who was formerly owner of the distribution company Scan-American Films (mainly active in the 1960’s). He was in his eighties by then, and wanted to sell his whole warehouse to us, as he understood and appreciated our enthusiasm. He said his relatives would otherwise throw everything on the garbage dump after he was gone.
We were completely blown away by this, as Scan-American Films’ main focus had been U.S. sexploitation movies, Italian spaghetti westerns, Italian horror and martial arts films from Hong Kong and Japan! It took us two lorry drives back and forth between Stockholm and Copenhagen, to get it all including 45 feature films — mainly on 35mm, but some also on 16mm — 5,000 posters for those films, and many other things like Henry Andersen’s own film cleaning system (“I invented it myself, so I guess I must be a genius!”, he told us). We also got his bingo equipment, as he used to arrange bingo nights in movie theaters!
This meant that we suddenly had northern Europe’s biggest collection of spaghetti westerns, about a dozen titles, ten martial arts films, including Sonny Chiba’s Street Fighter and Return of the Street Fighter, a bunch of Italian war movies, and Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath and Blood and Black Lace! Also in the haul, was a bunch of movies by Lee Frost and Bob Cresse: The Animal, Love Camp 7, Mondo Freudo, The Scavengers, and – The Pick-Up. What we didn’t know then, was that The Pick-Up was considered a lost film!
When Mike, Dave and Lisa were in Scandinavia for the Something Weird 2000 Film Festival, we managed to stage a little coup against Dave Friedman, with both Mike and Lisa in on the joke. We took Dave to our warehouse, and Dave got to “find” the 35mm film himself on a shelf! He was so surprised, thrilled and grateful that the movie still existed!
I believe Dave Friedman had some mixed emotions about seeing The Pick-Up again, as he also acted in it, and actually has a love scene in bed with a buxom woman (something I don’t think he ever told his wife…)! Coincidentally, the 35mm print in English had Danish subtitles (which didn’t matter because it was still a rarity). Dave got to see the film projected on the big screen in a small private showing with Mike, Lisa and the Klubb Super 8 crew. It was a hoot! There were lots of laughs and Dave commented out loud the entire time. An unforgettable evening was had by all. And before they returned to the States, Something Weird Video purchased some of the Henry Andersen haul, and brought 35mm prints back with them, including The Pick-Up. Klubb Super 8 are happy to be part of the story of finding a lost gem like The Pick-Up, so it could be seen by an audience again, 30 years after it’s theatrical release!
Lisa Petrucci, Boss Lady at Something Weird reflections on THE PICK-UP
Mike Vraney, Dave Friedman and I were invited to Scandinavia by Klubb Super 8 for the Something Weird 2000 Film Festival in 1999. Mike and I had been there the year before, had a terrific time and made many new friends and fans over there, so we were excited to be welcomed back! Besides doing multiple theatrical screenings in Sweden, Denmark and Finland, Mike was also wheeling and dealing with our pals at Klubb Super 8. Rickard Gramfors hinted that he had a big surprise, and boy, he delivered! Rickard had found a 35mm print of R.L. Frost’s lost roughie, The Pick-Up! Our minds immediately melted!
Mike and I were already familiar with The Pick-Up just from the notorious images in the original press book and photo still set. Bishop and Frost actually “went there,” portraying some of the most vicious and violent scenes ever portrayed in a sixties sexploitation film. The only thing comparable at the time would have been Michael and Roberta Findlay’s misogynistic over-the-top oeuvre from the mid-1960’s. Mean-spirited hardly even begins to describe what happens on screen to the poor gals being menaced and tortured. Plus Friedman had always talked about the film because it was one of many that he and his good pal Bob Cresse appeared in together. Well, Rickard eagerly informed us that he had found The Pick-Up in a Danish film vault and wanted to surprise Dave Friedman with the discovery. What amazing news!
It was really fun when we took Friedman to the film vault where he “found” The Pick-Up. He was giddy. As if that wasn’t a big enough surprise, we got to watch the film (which was subtitled in Danish) with Dave in a movie theatre! In this intimate setting, it was amazing seeing it for the first time in decades with a prominent player involved in the production. I sat right next to Dave, so I got an earful. He commented like a riff-track, talking out loud and sharing anecdotes and fun facts. It was especially cringe-worthy for me during Dave’s “love scene,” (since I was literally rubbing elbows with him) and he whispered, “Carol (his wife) never saw this one.” I can understand why! We all felt so blessed to have had such a special and memorable experience watching the The Pick-Up with our beloved Uncle Dave.
Rickard had come across a stash of Danish posters for The Pick-Up with the more appropriately descriptive title “Et Sex-Dyr i Las-Vegas” (A Sex Animal in Las Vegas). Apparently it was also released in Sweden as, “Den vilda jakten på nakenbrudarna” which oddly translates to “Romancing the Naked Chicks” (hardly an accurate synopsis of what actually happens in the film)!
Something Weird Video released The Pick-Up on VHS in 1999. Mike Vraney included a side note on the video description: “For ten years Friedman asked me if I had found this movie yet, and nothing gave me more pleasure than taking him to a dingy old vault in Copenhagen where I presented him with a 35mm film print of The Pick-Up in March of 1999. It was like finding the Holy Grail!” Unfortunately, The Pick-Up never came out on an Image Entertainment Special Edition DVD because, like Love Camp 7, it was considered “too offensive” by the home video distributor. The film did come out on a SWV DVD-R in the early 2000’s though.
Also of interest: Although Bob Cresse and Dave Friedman appear in The Pick-Up, neither of their companies released the picture - Republic Amusement Corp. RAC FILMS did (although Olympic International Pictures was the distributor). RAC Films is credited for releasing the equally brutal Cresse / Frost historical roughie, The Scavengers. In the late 1960’s, Cresse, Wes Bishop and R.L. Frost were also responsible for Hot Spur, Love Camp 7, and The Animal, delivering even more salacious smut for the sick set!And now, here’s The Pick-Up newly restored and ready for a new generation of gutter-dwelling degenerates to enjoy! (Electrocution kit sold separately…)
