Howco

"HOWCO" redirects here. For Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Company (HOWCO), see Halliburton.
Howco
Howco International
Corporation
Founded 1951
Founder Joy Newton Houck Sr.
J. Francis White
Headquarters New Orleans, USA
Owner independent

Howco later Howco International was an American film production and distribution company based in New Orleans specialising in low budget B pictures designed for double features. In 1951 Joy Newton Houck Sr. (born 10 July 1900, Magnolia, Arkansas died 8 July 1999, Texarkana, Texas) an owner of 29 Joy Theatres in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi teamed up with producer/director Ron Ormond and J. Francis White owner of 31 cinemas in Virginia, North and South Carolina to contract with independent film producers to create product for their combined theatre chains.[1] Their initials HOW provided the name of the COmpany.

Initially Howco released Westerns from Ron Ormond's company featuring Lash LaRue, but moved into monster, science fiction and exploitation films. In 1954 Howco started a television distribution company called National Television Films.[2] Howco released Roger Corman's Carnival Rock (paired with Teenage Thunder), Ed Wood Jr.'s Jail Bait (paired with The Blonde Pickup a reissue of 1951's Racket Girls) and double features such as The Brain from Planet Arous and Teenage Monster (1957), and Lost, Lonely and Vicious and My World Dies Screaming (1958). Houck Sr.'s son Joy N. Houck Jr. directed two of the company's final double bills Night of Bloody Horror and Women and Bloody Terror (1970).[3]

Notes

  1. ↑ p.72 Heffernan, Kevin Ghouls, Gimmicks, and Gold: Horror Films and the American Movie Business Duke University Press
  2. ↑ Billboard 21 August 1954
  3. ↑ p.292 Craig, Rob Ed Wood, Mad Genius: A Critical Study of the Films McFarland

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