In the fall of 1981, I came home from high school to find dozens of inflatable great white sharks scattered around. They were in bathtubs, on beds, atop the living room couch, in the garage. My dad explained he’d been given the sharks by a B-movie film distributor who was promoting a movie called Great White. We gave the sharks to neighbors and soon every swimming pool in our Studio City neighborhood was graced with a floating shark.
My father was an independent film producer and editor. He found himself between jobs in 1980 and took a quick editing gig from a man named Ed Montoro. Montoro headed Film Ventures International, a B-movie distributor focused on low-budget horror, martial arts and sexploitation shock flicks. Montoro obtained the rights to an Italian shark movie called L’ultimo Squalo (Great White) starring James Franciscus and Vic Morrow. It was nearly a shot-by-shot ripoff of Jaws.
Montoro invested $5 million to market Great White. Promotions included shark calendars, shark dollar bills and the aforementioned inflatable sharks. At the National Association of Theater Owners convention in Las Vegas, Montoro built a pool in the Caesar’s Palace lobby filled with live lemon sharks. Great White was released in 1982. Despite negative reviews, the film made $18 million in the first month. This caught the attention of Universal Pictures who owned the rights to Jaws. Universal accused Film Ventures of plagiarism and sought an injunction to block distribution. Universal won the lawsuit and Great White was pulled from theaters.
Montoro was no stranger to plagiarism lawsuits. In 1974, he acquired an Italian Exorcist ripoff for $100,000 called Beyond the Door. The film made $15 million. Warner Brothers, distributor of The Exorcist, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit but lost. A year later, Montoro financed his own movie called Grizzly. This was another Jaws ripoff with a killer grizzly bear instead of a shark. The film earned $40 million making it the highest grossing independent film at the time (eclipsed by Halloween in 1978).
Montoro loved cinema knockoffs. His success formula involved acquiring rights to foreign films, re-editing and re-looping the audio and then releasing the films under a new name. His list of plagiarized releases included The Fifth Floor (similar to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), The Visitor (Close Encounters of the Third Kind), Shogun Warlord (Shogun) and Convoy Buddies (Convoy).
After Great White, Montoro hired my father for post-production help on Kill or Be Killed, The Dark and They Call Me Bruce? In 1981, my father agreed to produce a Montoro-financed film shot in South Africa called Kill and Kill Again. The film turned a profit leading to another collaboration with my father, a zombie horror film called Mutant.
I was hired as a production assistant on Mutant. This was my first movie. In July 1982, my father and I traveled to Atlanta to set up production offices. Montoro met us at the airport in one of his Rolls Royce Silver Shadow sedans and drove us to Marietta. We stayed in Montoro’s massive Georgia home dotted with oaks, dogwoods and crape myrtles.
Montoro took us for dinner at a high-end steakhouse. He ordered several bottles of wine and regaled us with tales of his movie making past. My dad was in his element, talking movies and box office earnings. I felt out of place, an immature college student with little worldly experience. I watched and listened, dizzy from the wine and upscale surroundings.
Despite my naivete, I made several initial conclusions about Montoro. He loved to talk about himself. He never spoke with or even looked at me. He was constantly moving, gesticulating his hands or shifting in his seat. He didn’t finish his sentences. Instead, he’d complete a thought with a loud, feigned laugh.
This laugh made me uneasy. It wasn’t authentic. It was more like a chortle, a half-grunt/half-snort that made his whole body shake. It was an animalistic sound I likened to a walrus or elephant seal. It never accompanied anything funny or witty. It was merely a way to fill the silence, to make certain conversation never veered to anything uncomfortable.
Montoro gave me the creeps. I couldn’t elucidate the reasons, but he felt sleazy. He reminded me of characters I’d seen in movies like Mean Streets or The French Connection. When the waiter placed the bill on our table, Montoro slid it to my father. “Charge it to the production,” Montoro said followed by a pseudo laugh. The fact Montoro could’ve paid the bill himself then charged it to production wasn’t addressed. He made my dad pay, an expenditure that was never reimbursed. (Montoro fought over every penny.)
That first night at Montoro’s home, he insisted I sleep in the master bedroom. He gave my father a smaller bedroom. This was weird. Even weirder, Montoro insisted he’d stay at the local Hilton. “I want you both to feel at home,” he said, “This won’t happen if…” He never finished the thought, his words morphing into a cackling guffaw.
Montoro’s bedroom was as creepy as he was. His king-size bed was topped with a black comforter, black silk sheets and black pillow covers. The walls and carpet were black and there was a massive oil painting behind the bed of a dark hooded figure on a black steed. The room gave me the willies and when Montoro left, I slept on the living room couch.
The next morning, after a fitful night’s sleep, we took a cab to the Hilton to meet Montoro. We called his room and 20 minutes later he and a young brunette joined us for breakfast. She wore dark sunglasses and never said a word. He looked disheveled, his silk shirt unbuttoned.
“How’d you sleep,” he asked my dad.
“Fine, though I could use some coffee.”
“How about you,” Montoro said, looking at me sideways. This was the first time he addressed me.
“I slept on the couch sir,” I said. “That painting in your bedroom kinda scared me.”
This yielded a loud guffaw. Halfway through the meal the brunette stood up, kissed Montoro and left. This was awkward like every other moment with Montoro.
After breakfast, we drove to a Days Inn near the I-85 Freeway. The motel was close to Norcross where filming would take place. The desk clerk showed us the half dozen rooms that would become our production offices. Montoro returned to Los Angeles. We wouldn’t see him again until filming started.
Three days before shooting, I drove to Atlanta’s airport to pick up Montoro’s son Mike. Mike would be an electrician/grip on the film. He was gangly and energetic like his dad. He also loved to laugh though his laugh was real. As we hit the freeway, Mike stuck his hand into his trousers and pulled out a joint.
“Doobie time,” he said with a laugh.
“You brought that on the plane?”
“Kept it in my tighty-whities,” he said. “Airport security doesn’t check down there. Not like prison.”
Mike had worked with his dad on The Dark and Day of the Animals. Having grown up in Marietta, Mike was a Southern boy who loved to party. He found a rock station playing Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” and then took a hit. He offered the spliff to me. I passed. He wanted to go to a titty bar. I told him I needed to get back to the offices. We stopped for gas. I filled the tank while Mike bought a 12-pack of Coors.
The weekend before filming started, Mike took several crew members and me for a canoe trip on the Chattahoochee River. At one point, I jumped into the water. When I tried getting back in the canoe, Mike swung his oar wildly at my head. He struck me on the side of the face, nearly knocking me out. This sent him into a roar of laughter. I did my best to avoid him after that.
Ed Montoro returned for the start of production. He’d met an attractive young woman at an Atlanta nightclub and she became his personal assistant. My dad advised me not to speak with Montoro’s assistant since Montoro was prone to jealousy.
The first day of shooting was at night. Around midnight, we had a problem with a local resident wielding a chainsaw. This was common on location shoots. Some local would create a ruckus then demand payment for his silence. The second AD sent me to find the source of the noise. I followed the sound to a house a block away from set. The homeowner was a man in his 70s. He turned on his chainsaw every time he heard “Action.”
I asked the man if he could please refrain from making noise. He merely smiled and restarted the chainsaw. I got on the walkie-talkie and asked for Hank. Hank Lowry was a good old boy who’d been hired as a liaison with the locals. He was burly and intimidating and knew everyone in Norcross. Hank got the old man to put away his chainsaw without paying a fee. Montoro was so impressed, he hired Hank as his personal driver and bodyguard. I never learned why Montoro needed a bodyguard.
Montoro spent most of his days socializing with actors. He avoided hobnobbing with the crew. As always happens on set, rumors spread. A prop assistant who’d worked on Grizzly told me about Montoro’s alleged past. Supposedly when Montoro was much younger, he and a friend were arrested for printing over a half-million dollars in counterfeit $20 bills. Montoro was sentenced to prison. After serving time, he decided to become a commercial pilot. That’s when the Crash happened.
Montoro had mentioned the Crash at the steakhouse dinner with my father. In 1966, he crashed a small-engine Cessna into a tree. He broke nearly every bone in his face and had reconstructive facial surgery. He recuperated in a hospital for three months with his jaw wired shut. While reflecting on his near-death experience, he vowed to become a moviemaker.
In 1968, Montoro invested his life savings and made two sexploitation films called Platinum Pussycat and Getting Into Heaven. Each turned a profit and his filmmaking career began. He founded Film Ventures in 1970 in a building on the edge of Beverly Hills. When he greenlit Mutant, he’d already distributed more than two dozen films.
Mutant was filled with problems from the start. After the first week, the original director Mark Rosman was fired and replaced by veteran director Bud Cardos. Since Cardos was in the DGA, guild rules required above-the-line crew members to be in the union. The first AD, second AD, Production Manager and Director of Photography were fired and replaced. This created havoc and put us a week behind schedule. My father told Montoro they needed extra time for re-shoots. Montoro refused. This decision adversely affected the movie and played a huge role in Montoro’s personal fate.
Mutant didn’t fare well. During post-production, my father dealt with numerous crew members complaining about not getting paid. He tried getting Montoro to pony up funds, but Montoro said, “Fuck ‘em.”
Mutant was released theatrically in August 1984. Reviews and box office returns were dismal. My father was crestfallen. He didn’t know that Montoro’s life was falling apart. Montoro was immersed in a messy divorce from his wife Joanne who was entitled to half his possessions, including ownership of Film Ventures. Montoro became ill and spent several weeks in the hospital.
The fracas surrounding Great White, Mutant and several other pictures put Film Ventures in financial peril. After leaving the hospital, Montoro returned to work looking gaunt. Several employees heard him in his office learning Spanish from a language cassette. In late-1984, Montoro drove to the company’s bank, took out more than a million dollars in cash from the Film Ventures account and promptly left town. Company executives were shell-shocked. They gathered the Film Ventures employees and explained that Montoro had vanished.
Film Ventures sputtered for a year then filed for bankruptcy in 1985. Rumors spread that Montoro was in hiding. Some believed he fled to Mexico. Others heard he’d moved to Spain and was living on funds he’d stashed in a Swiss bank account. There was a story Montoro owed millions to Korean gangsters. My father heard that Montoro’s Rolls Royce was found abandoned in the Sonoran desert with blood on the front seat. This turned out to be untrue since Montoro left his Rolls Royces and his boat in Los Angeles.
Montoro’s son Mike died in 2008 at 48 of unspecified causes. Ed Montoro’s body was never found. If he were still alive today, he’d be 97. His fate remains an unsolved Hollywood mystery.