The "Barbed Wire Dolls" triple feature from Mason Releasing Corp.

A triple bill of obviously retitled movies - SHE-DEVILS IN LEATHER, TEENAGE CEMETERY TRAMPS and HOUSE OF CHAINS - arrived in Cincinnati on August 29, 1986. Knowing that this was one of the territories covered by Mason Releasing Corporation, I reached out to Bob Murawski, who worked for MRC during that time, and asked for the inside story on this "Barbed Wire Dolls" three-picture program.

Bob wrote back, "Bob Mason was a Detroit-based sub-distributor in the 1970s and 80s. After managing the Kansas City office of Disney Films, the Chicago office of United Artists, and the Detroit office of Roger Corman's New World Pictures, he formed his his own distribution company Mason Releasing Corporation in the late 70s. MRC handled dozens of now-classic independent exploitation films, booking the movies into drive-ins and inner city theaters in Detroit, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Indianapolis, as well as smaller cities and towns throughout the midwest. Bob Mason passed away January 23, 2009.

"MRC acted as Midwest sub-distributor for many companies including Group 1, Motion Picture Marketing, Film Concept Group, Compass International, Ascot Entertainment, Trio Entertainment/Bedford Entertainment, Rugged Films, Malibu Bay Films, Transvue Pictures Corp., Trans World Entertainment, Lone Star Pictures, NMD, New World Pictures, Troma Inc., 21st Century Film Distribution, Joseph Brenner Associates, Nibo Films, Box-Office International, Reeltime Distributing Corp., Rochelle Films, Parker National Distributors, and others.

"The 'Barbed Wire Dolls' show was spawned by the success of the 'Slammer Girls' triple feature that Bob Mason had played in the Midwest drive-in circuit the previous year. Bob wanted to do a follow-up called 'Barbed Wire Dolls' and asked me to put it together. I told him that there was already a pretty well known women in prison movie titled BARBED WIRE DOLLS and he said, 'Don't worry about it. None of our customers ever heard of it.' This was in the pre-internet days, so he was probably right. There was little documentation on any of these movies for the mainstream audience.

"We retitled a bunch of old movies we had prints of especially for the show. SHE-DEVILS IN LEATHER was not the Herschell Gordon Lewis movie SHE-DEVILS ON WHEELS. It was actually a re-title of Jack Hill's SWITCHBLADE SISTERS, which had already been retitled PLAYGIRL GANG. TEENAGE CEMETARY TRAMPS was VAMPIRE HOOKERS, which was already retitled CEMETERY GIRLS, and HOUSE OF CHAINS was ROOM OF CHAINS retitled. We had enough prints of each of these films to support 6 playdates. We had a 100 feet of 35mm film made for each title by an optical company in Hollywood called Title House. I put reel one of each print on a bench, cut the old title out, and spliced the new one in. Of course there was no sound on the new title footage, but no one seemed to notice. I also changed all the reel bands on each print with the new titles. Incidentally, sometimes we never went through the trouble of printing up new titles. We'd just chop the original title out of the print and change the reel bands. Voila, a brand new movie!

"The triple bill proved popular and we managed to get 15 drive-in bookings the first weekend in the Michigan/Ohio/Indiana region we were servicing. So other similar movies were pulled into the fray and quickly retitled. A few prints of SWEET SUGAR and one of SAVAGE STREETS also became SHE-DEVILS IN LEATHER. GRAVEYARD TRAMPS (formely INVASION OF THE BEE GIRLS), GRAVE DESIRES (aka THE VAMPIRES' NIGHT ORGY) and SATAN'S MISTRESS (nee DEMON RAGE) all became TEENAGE CEMETERY TRAMPS for a few summer of '86 weekends. And while we almost had enough prints of ROOM OF CHAINS, two prints of SEX AND VIOLENCE (aka ANDREA, sort of a Euro LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT on a boat) also appeared as HOUSE OF CHAINS in a couple of venues. So you could go from the Van Dyke Drive-In to the Ford Wyoming Drive-in just a few miles away and see two completely different 'Barbed Wire Dolls' shows in the Detroit area."

Thanks, Bob!