Howco


Howco Productions later Howco International Pictures, was an American film production and distribution company based in South Carolina, specialising in low budget B pictures designed for double features.
In 1951 Joy Newton Houck Sr., owner of 29 Joy Theatres in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, teamed up with producer/director Ron Ormond and J. Francis White, an officer of Consolidated Theatres and owner of 31 cinemas in Virginia, North and South Carolina, to contract with independent film producers to create product for their combined theatre chains. Their initials, "H, O, W," provided the name of the company.
Outlaw Women, started in November 1951, was its first production.
Initially Howco released Westerns from Ron Ormond's company featuring Lash LaRue, then moved into monster, science fiction and exploitation films. In 1954 Howco expanded its production with four films announced, including Kentucky Rifle. The same year, it started a television distribution company called National Television Films. Howco released Roger Corman's Carnival Rock, Ed Wood's Jail Bait, double features such as The Brain from Planet Arous and Teenage Monster, and Lost, Lonely and Vicious and My World Dies Screaming. Houck Sr.'s son Joy N. Houck Jr. directed two of the company's final double bills, Night of Bloody Horror and Women and Bloody Terror. In the 1970s Howco achieved success with Charles B. Pierce's films including The Legend of Boggy Creek, Bootleggers and Winterhawk.