The Orphans #5 – The Last Fight, The Howling III, and Cold River | One-Off Distribution Company Film Discussion

The 80s Movie Podcast returns to The Orphans series, which spotlights films whose distributors released exactly one theatrical feature before closing their doors. In Part 5, host Edward Havens examines three films with almost nothing in common except that shared fate. The Last Fight (1983) stars Fred Williamson as his signature character Jesse Crowder, alongside Ruben Blades and Darlanne Fluegel, distributed by Best Film and Video, a company that ceased operations immediately after the film's release. The Howling III (1987) took the werewolf franchise to Australia under director Philippe Mora, picked up by Square Pictures, a distributor so obscure it left behind no business filings and no further releases. However, the episode's most surprising entry is Sullivan's Pavilion (1987), a personal documentary by upstate New York filmmaker Fred G. Sullivan that won a Special Jury Prize at Sundance and still almost nobody saw.

Each of these films tells a different story about what it meant to make and release movies outside the Hollywood studio system in the 1980s. Along the way, Edward traces Best Film and Video's brief and troubled attempt to build a distribution business on the back of a Fred Williamson action picture, the mysterious origins of Square Pictures, and Mora's decision to self-finance The Howling III as a kind of apology to fans of the original. Furthermore, the episode follows Sullivan's remarkable persistence in self-distributing his film city by city, eventually retitling it The Beer Drinker's Guide to Fitness and Filmmaking and finding genuine audiences in Burlington, Vermont and at the Bleecker Street Cinemas in New York. Consequently, Sullivan's story stands apart from the others as something closer to a quiet triumph than a cautionary tale.

In addition to the individual release histories, this episode builds a portrait of independent cinema infrastructure that was simultaneously ambitious and deeply fragile. At the same time, it recovers three filmmakers who operated entirely on their own terms, with wildly different results. The Beer Drinker's Guide to Fitness and Filmmaking is available to watch free on Vimeo, and this episode makes a strong case for why it deserves to be found.

The Orphans series is an ongoing exploration of one-off distribution company films as part of The 80s Movie Podcast.