In 1951 Joy Newton Houck Sr. (born 10 July 1900, Magnolia, Arkansas died 8 July 1999, Texarkana, Texas), owner of 29 Joy Theatres in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, teamed up with producer/director Ron Ormond and J. Francis White, an officer of Consolidated Theatres[1] and owner of 31 cinemas in Virginia, North and South Carolina, to contract with independent film producers to create product for their combined theatre chains.
[3] Initially Howco released Westerns from Ron Ormond's company featuring Lash LaRue, then moved into monster, science fiction, and exploitation films.
[4] Howco released Roger Corman's Carnival Rock (paired with Teenage Thunder), Ed Wood's Jail Bait (paired with The Blonde Pickup, a reissue of 1951's Racket Girls), double features such as The Brain from Planet Arous and Teenage Monster (1957), and Lost, Lonely and Vicious and My World Dies Screaming (1958).
One unusual exploitation effort was derived from an aborted television series, filmed in Europe and starring radio's hillbilly comedians Lum and Abner.
Howco compiled the three half-hour pilot episodes into a feature film, Lum and Abner Abroad (1956), which played to the comedians' fan base in the rural South.