Don Dohler In Print

Don Dohler (1946-2006) is known to movie fans for his low-budget science fiction-horror gems, The Alien Factor, Fiend, Nightbeast and many others. Before he made his feature films, this Baltimore resident was already a “do it yourself” figure in print. In his teens he created the ProJunior character which was featured in his high school fanzine Wild! (ProJunior was so named as Dohler saw himself as a “junior professional editor”.) During its two-year run, Wild! featured contributions by future underground comics artists Jay Lynch, Skip Williamson and Art Spiegelman. In 1971, a special comic book was published starring ProJunior, with contributions by 22 artists like Robert Crumb, Jay Kinney, Jay Lynch, Skip Williamson, Jim Mitchell, Peter Loft, Ned Sonntag, Dave Dozier, Wendel Pugh, Dave L. Herring, Bruce Walthers, Dale Kuipers, S. Clay Wilson, Justin Green, Pete Poplaski, Trina Robbins, Art Spiegelman, Evert Geradts, Denis Kitchen, Joel Beck and Bill Griffith.

Then he published the influential Cinemagic, which influenced many future Hollywood special effects artists. When Starlog Press bought his magazine, Dohler began publishing Amazing Cinema, which continued in the same vein (and publicized his own films). In between those titles, he also released Film Magic: The Fantastic Guide to Special Effects Filmmaking (1979) and the two-volume Stop Motion Animation: A Complete Step-By-Step Guide (1980). In the 1990s, during his moviemaking hiatus, Don Dohler returned to print one more time to publish the magazine, Movie Club. For fans of Don Dohler’s movies, John Thonen’s B-Movie Horrors is a wonderful read. This book covers his first five features, from The Alien Factor to Blood Massacre. Lots of cool photos.

Enjoy the gallery below. Click on any image to view the gallery in a lightbox. Use your arrow keys to navigate back and forth.

Greg Woods

Greg Woods has been a film enthusiast since his teens, and began his writing "career" at the same time- prolific in capsule reviews of everything he had watched, first on index cards, then those hardcover dollar store black journals, then an old Mac IIsi. He founded The Eclectic Screening Room in 2001, as a portal to share his film love with the world, and find some like-minded enthusiasts along the way. In addition to having worked in the film industry for over two decades, he has been a co-programmer of films at Trash Palace, and a programmer/co-founder of the Toronto Film Noir Syndicate. He has also written for Broken Pencil, CU-Confidential, Micro-Film, and is currently working on his first novel. His secret desire is for someone to interview him for a podcast or a DVD extra.