The Unknown Terror is a 1957 widescreen American horror science fiction film directed by Charles Marquis Warren and starring John Howard, Mala Powers, Paul Richards and May Wynn. It was produced by Robert Stabler. The narrative follows a group of explorers who, while searching for a missing man, come across the “Cave of the Dead”, filled with parasitic fungi and inhabited by foamy, fungus-covered monster men. The film was released theatrically in the US in August 1957 on a double bill with Back from the Dead.

Back from the Dead is a black and white 1957 American horror film produced by Robert Stabler and directed by Charles Marquis Warren for Regal Films. The film stars Peggie Castle, Arthur Franz, Marsha Hunt and Don Haggerty. The narrative concerns a young woman who, under the influence of a devil cult, is possessed by the spirit of her husband’s first wife, who had died six years earlier. The screenplay was written by Catherine Turney from her novel The Other One.^[1][2][3] The film was released theatrically on August 12, 1957 by 20th Century Fox on a double bill with The Unknown Terror (also 1957).

Regal Films Inc

Robert Lenard Lippert (March 31, 1909 – November 16, 1976) was an American film producer and cinema chain owner. He was president and chief operating officer of Lippert Theatres, Affiliated Theatres and Transcontinental Theatres, all based in San Francisco, and at his height, he owned a chain of 139 movie theaters.

He helped finance more than 300 films, including the directorial debuts of Sam Fuller, James Clavell, and Burt Kennedy. His films include I Shot Jesse James (1949) and The Fly (1958) and was known as “King of the Bs“.

In 1962, Lippert said, “the word around Hollywood is: Lippert makes a lot of cheap pictures but he’s never made a stinker”

When Darryl F. Zanuck announced his CinemaScope process, he faced hostility from many theater owners who had gone to great expense to convert their theaters to show 3-D films that Hollywood had stopped making. Zanuck assured them that they could have a large supply of CinemaScope product because Fox would make CinemaScope lenses available to other film companies and start a production unit, led by Lippert, called Regal Pictures in 1956 to produce B pictures in that process.

Lippert’s company was contracted to make 20 pictures a year for seven years, each to be shot in seven days for no more than $100,000. Due to Lippert’s problems with the film unions over not paying residuals to actors and writers of his films when they were sold to television, Ed Baumgarten was officially appointed the head of Regal, but Lippert had overall control. Regal Pictures filmed its movies with CinemaScope lenses, but due to 20th Century-Fox insisting that only its “A” films would be labelled CinemaScope, Regal’s product used the term “Regalscope” in its films’ credits.

Beginning with Stagecoach to Fury (1956), Regal produced 25 pictures in its first year.

Maury Dexter, who worked at Regal, later recalled the outfit’s productions were all shot at independent sound stages because they could not afford to shoot at 20th Century Fox, due to the high cost of rental and overhead they charged. The films were entirely financed and released by Fox, but Regal was independent. Dexter says “the only stipulation production-wise was that we had to give Bausch and Lomb screen credit on each film for CinemaScope camera lenses, as well as being charged back to Fox, $3,000 of each budget.

Impressed by the unit’s profits, Fox extended Regal’s contract by a further 16 films with an “exploitation angle” that would be approved by Fox.

In November 1957, Regal announced that they would make ten films in three months.

Regal made a deal with actors and directors to play them a percentage of any money from the sale of films to television. It did not make a deal with writers, and the Screenwriters Guild forbade its writers to work with them. Regal stopped making films.

In 1960, Lippert sold 30 Regal films to television for $1 million.

black & white, mono, UNKNOWN TERROR is widescreen, BACK FROM THE DEAD is fullscreen. DVD-R comes packaged as shown in color DVD case, wrapped in plastic!