Don Dohler

In the 1980s, when television stations still showed movies in the wee hours of the morning instead of those rotten infomercials, insomniacs like myself caught the low-budget science fiction movie The Alien Factor (1978). Shot in Maryland on 16mm (and largely on deferrals) for a measly $6,000.00, this film captured the hearts of many viewers, and not just for its spirit and imagination. At the time it was unprecedented to see a movie, produced for so little money, get sold in a package deal for broadcast. As such, this no-budget charmer awoke viewers to the possibility; “Hey, I can do this, too.”

The Alien Factor was the first feature film for director Don Dohler, launching the Baltimore resident into a career of infectious no-budget science-fiction horror films, whose imaginative special effects belie the paltry budgets, and with the “golly gee” enthusiasm of the 1950s genre films that no doubt inspired Dohler. Cable and home video gave life (and potentially wider audiences) to smaller films that would have quickly vanished from movie screens, and Don Dohler’s subsequent projects likewise found audiences who discovered them in their local video stores. A movie buff for most of his life, Don Dohler had made amateur shorts before his first feature. The Alien Factor was not simply the beginning of a new career, it was a logical extension of the “do-it-yourself” aesthetic to which Dohler adhered for most of his life.

Back in the 1960s, as a teenager, Don Dohler had produced his own comic books, featuring the character ProJunior, which was a benchmark in the days of underground comics. In the early 1970s, after having made mini-epics with the 8mm camera given him, and fascinated by special effects, Dohler produced the influential magazine Cinemagic. Although this publication was later bought out by Starlog Press, this self-published endeavour had influenced many people who would work in post-production on big Hollywood efforts. In the early 1980s, he published Amazing Cinema, which had a similar approach. As inspirational as he may have been in print or film, one doesn’t sense he was out to create any movement; he was just doing it out of love: the number one rule for DIY.

After a few years, Dohler retired from the movie business after wearying of the problems associated with low-budget productions. However, after a 12-year hiatus, he returned to the industry more prolific than before. Under his newly formed Timewarp Films with Joe Ripple, the two men released several science-fiction horror films which however divided fans of Dohler’s earlier work for their liberal use of nudity.

Shortly before Don Dohler’s untimely death in the year 2006, fellow Maryland filmmaker John Paul Kinhart had made a documentary, aptly entitled Blood Boobs & Beast, so named for the three requisites of low-budget direct-to-video horror. This film has undoubtedly garnered more (posthumous) attention to the life and career of Don Dohler.