By Blake Powell

For more than 30 years Don Dohler has played a pivotal role in independent sci-fi and horror cinema. In the 60s and early 70s he made several short films until he made the jump to feature films in 1976. He has produced and/or directed 9 feature films including Nightbeast, The Alien Factor, Fiend, Stakes and several others.

His connection with the world of the renegade filmmaker does not end there: he also has been heavily involved in the underground publishing field. He was the founder, editor and publisher of Cinemagic Magazine (1972 - 1979). Packed with how-to articles and features on many amateur sci-fi and horror films, Cinemagic was a fantastic resource for the amateur filmmaker. In its heyday the magazine boasted thousands of subscribers and was eventually sold to Starlog, which continued publishing it until the late 1980s. Dohler also published several issues of a similar magazine known as Amazing Cinema, in 1981.

At the time this interview was conducted, Dohler was in the production phase of his 10th feature film, Crawler.

When did you decide you were going to make your first feature film?

I can remember exactly when it was – on my 30th birthday in 1976. I was working as a payroll manager for a restaurant chain and our offices were robbed at gun point. After spending the morning on the floor with a shotgun pointed at my head, I realized that we all have a limited time here. That afternoon I called a friend and said “I almost died this morning and no matter what, I’m going to make a feature film.” My near-death experience was the catalyst for taking the plunge into low-budget features. The result was my first film, The Alien Factor, shot in 1976 and early 1977. I put together a kind of collective from my past Cinemagic contacts, local filmmakers and actors, and a few “deals” for equipment to get the movie shot and completed.

How did your first film do?

Actually we were really lucky with timing. About the time we finished shooting, Star Wars was released and the public was hungry for sci-fi. TV stations were desperate for anything in the sci-fi vein, so we licensed Alien Factor for TV syndication through a major distributor. That’s pretty much what put my name on the map, since the movie was syndicated all over the world – to about 300 TV stations. Alien Factor also had a pretty extensive video run in the mid-to late ‘80s. The movie achieved two hallmarks: a prime-time showing on Ted Turner’s Superstation on a Friday night; and we made the cover of Famous Monsters magazine, which was still going strong back in those days.

Your next film, Fiend, is one of my personal favorites.

Yes, it is one of my favorites, too. It’s a horror film only not in the blood and guts vein. I designed the film to be more along the lines of classic horror. Most of the film is shot in and around my house, which afforded me much more control over production. Often I’d spend an entire day setting up lights just the way I wanted them for a shoot later in the evening. You don’t have that kind of set-up time when you shoot at outside locations. In effect, my house became a studio – and that’s always the best way to have full control over sets, lighting, angles, and so on.

Then came Nightbeast, which is kind of a cross between slasher flicks of the day and sci-fi.

Despite Fiend having a solid story and being a pretty spooky and suspenseful film, it was finished right after the original Friday The 13th hit big. Distributors wanted slash-and-gore, and Fiend did not fill that bill. So, under the advice of distributors, I pulled out all the stops for Nightbeast – wall-to-wall action, loads of visual effects, plenty of gore, and even some nudity and language. It’s ironic that Fiend and Nightbeast did about equal business in terms of income on domestic home video and sales to foreign countries.

To read the rest of this article, please order B-Movies Quarterly #3.