Drive-in and exploitation movie producer Samuel M. Sherman, 85, died on Sept. 29. A graduate of New York's City College Film Institute, Sherman formed Independent-International Pictures with director Al Adamson and distributor and Dan Kennis, and they churned out such delightfully low-brow fare as Satan’s Sadists, Horror of the Blood Monsters, Brain of Blood, Dracula vs. Frankenstein, Hell’s Bloody Devils, Five Bloody Graves, Lash of Lust, The Naughty Stewardesses, I Spit on Your Corpse, and Blood of Ghastly Horror (and that’s the worst kind of blood!). “It was always my concept that if you have a very small budget, make the film different by very bizarre, crazy, loony elements — and this always worked,” Sherman once said. Of Al Adamson—who was murdered in 1995– he reminisced, “No budget was too small, no job too tough. He was a great friend and great partner and I was lucky to have known him. He was a very skilled director and always wanted to do bigger and better films, but the budgets were never there. In my opinion he was capable of making big budget, high quality films but never had the chance.”
