Charles Band

A pioneer in the field of home video, Band built a reputation as a prolific and fairly reliable producer and frequent director of entertaining low-budget genre films. Beginning in 1973 with the erotic comedy "Last Foxtrot in Burbank" (featuring Sally Marr, mother of celebrated comic Lenny Bruce), Band has produced a string of features variously delving into the realms of horror, sci-fi and fantasy. Many of these were met with mainstream critical disdain and spotty regional releases. Detecting a potential gold mine in the explosion of the direct-to-video market and the omnipresent programming demands of cable in the late 1980s, Band formed Full Moon Entertainment, a marketing and production entity designed to release modestly budgeted "brand-name" fantasy movies directly to video stores without theatrical release. (Paramount Pictures handled the video distribution.)