A Scream in the Streets

Legendary exploitation cinema producer and distributor Harry H. Novak was born in Chicago, Illinois sometime in the late 1920’s. Harry got a job with RKO Pictures distributing movie posters and press books to theaters while still in his teens. Following a tour of duty in the Army during World War II, Novak took a job with RKO booking and selling films as well as designing ads (amazingly, one of his primary responsibilities while working at RKO was handling the distribution arrangements for innocuous family fare made by the Walt Disney studio!). After RKO folded in 1957, Harry went to work booking exploitation films for the JEM distribution company. Novak founded his own production and distribution outfit called Boxoffice International Pictures in 1964. The first film released by Boxoffice International Pictures was the nice’n’naughty nudie cutie “Kiss Me Quick.” Harry went on to make and/or release a slew of entertainingly trashy flicks throughout the 60’s and 70’s that run the gamut from sexy soft-core smut (“Mantis in Lace,” “The Dirty Mind of Young Sally,” “Below the Belt”) to grimy crime thrillers (“Booby Trap,” “The Godson,” “A Scream in the Streets,” “Kidnapped Coed,” “Hitch Hike to Hell”) to sizzling Southern-fried hicksploitation sleaze (“Country Hooker,” “Country Cuzzins,” “The Pigkeeper’s Daughter,” “Sassy Sue”) to mondo crock documentaries (“Mondo Mod,” “Mondo Keyhole”) to creepy horror outings (“The Mad Butcher,” “Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks,” “Axe,” “Rattlers,” “The Child”). Novak’s soft-core items often featured such popular drive-in film starlets as Rene Bond, Sharon Kelly, Marsha Jordan, and Uschi Digart. Boxoffice International Pictures was forced to shut down in 1978. Harry subsequently launched Valiant International Pictures in the late 70’s; this particular outfit distributed such X-rated porno fare as “Sissy’s Hot Summer,” “Sweet Surrender,” and “Leather Persuasion.” Novak co-directed the early 80’s hard-core movies “Moments of Love” and “Inspirations” under the pseudonym H. Hershey. More recently Harry Novak has provided several hysterically bawdy commentaries on DVD releases of his pictures on the Something Weird Video label. —IMDb