Harry Alan Towers: The Transnational Career of a Cinematic Contrarian

by Dave Mann

McFarland & Company (series)

Harry Alan Towers' reputation rests upon a corpus of 95 low-budget productions shot post-haste in every corner of the globe. He took an integral part, however, in the development of the protocols that now underpin much transnational film production and he must be regarded as a pioneer. Towers' slash and burn strategy focused on parasitic, back-to-back productions, funded by rights bundles that were pre-sold globally. This strategy was substantially derived from his early days in broadcasting wherein he acted as a go-between in the American and the British Commonwealth markets. Though he became adept at procuring funds from pariah regimes and black market economies, primarily he continued to act as a broker bringing together American equity investment and European finance under the auspices of EC co-production agreements. He was also quick to exploit the burgeoning niche markets becoming available in the wake of technological developments and government initiatives.