Biography

Legendary exploitation film producer and distributor Harry H. Novak was born on January 12, 1928 in Chicago, Illinois. He got a job with RKO Radio Pictures distributing theatrical release posters and press books to theaters while still in his teens. After a tour of duty in the Army during World War II Harry returned to RKO, this time booking and selling films as well as designing advertisements for them (amazingly, one of his primary responsibilities while working at RKO was handling the distribution arrangements for innocuous family fare made by Walt Disney Studios!).

After RKO went out of business in 1957, Harry went on to work booking exploitation films for the distribution film company JEM. He then founded his own production and distribution film company named Boxoffice International Pictures (BIP) in 1964. The first film that was released by BIP was the naughty n' nice nudie cutie film Kiss Me Quick! (1964). Harry then went on to produce and / or release a plethora of entertainingly trashy films throughout the 1960s and 1970s that ran the gamut from sexy softcore porn flicks (Lila (1968), The Dirty Mind of Young Sally (1973), Below the Belt (1971)) to grim and gritty crime thrillers (Booby Trap (1970), The Godson (1971), A Scream in the Streets (1973), Date with a Kidnapper (1976), Hitch Hike to Hell (1977)) to sizzling Southern fried hixsploitation sleaze (Country Hooker (1974), Country Cuzzins (1972), The Pig Keeper's Daughter (1972), Sassy Sue (1973)) to phony mondo documentaries (Mondo Mod (1967), Mondo Keyhole (1966)) to creepy horror outings (The Mad Butcher (1971), Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks (1974), Lisa, Lisa (1974), Rattlers (1976), The Child (1977)). Harry's softcore porn films often featured popular drive-in movie starlets such as Uschi Digard, Rene Bond, Marsha Jordan and Colleen Brennan (a.k.a. Sharon Kelly). After Boxoffice International Pictures was forced to close down in 1978. Harry then subsequently founded Valiant International Pictures (VIP) in the late 1970s; this particular film company distributed porn films such as Sissy's Hot Summer (1979), Sweet Surrender (1980) and Leather Persuasion (1980).

Harry co-directed two early 1980s hardcore porn films titled Moments of Love (1983) and Inspirations (1982) under the pseudonym H. Hershey. In addition, he provided several hysterically bawdy commentaries for the official DVD releases of many of his films under the Something Weird Video label.

Harry H. Novak died on March 26, 2014 in Los Angeles, California of undisclosed causes.