Fred Olen Ray (born September 10, 1954) is an Emmy winning American film director, producer, and screenwriter of more than 150 low-to-medium budget feature films in many genres, including horror, science fiction, action/adventure, crime dramas, and holiday films.
Ray is also the head of Retromedia, which releases DVDs of both his own productions and archival films, including many sci-fi and horror “B-Movie” classics. He has also worked for other well-known independent studios and on a few occasions for major Hollywood studios. He is also cited as an inspiration for many independent film-makers. He loaned a 16 mm camera to Quentin Tarantino so he could make My Best Friend’s Birthday.
Aside from his work in the film industry, Ray was also a professional wrestler. His wrestling name was Fabulous Freddie Valentine. He has always been a passionate film fan, and as a teenager he regularly read Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. Being a fan of horror and science fiction films such as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and the AIP movies of the 1950s and 1960s, Ray started making his own movies at the age of fourteen.
He collected autographs of many of the actors in those films where he met Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. His early career was filled with low-budget horror and science-fiction films, but the market eventually dried up and he switched to producing softcore “T&A” videos of the type shown late at night on Showtime and Cinemax. His films rarely cost more than $500,000, and he has written under at least 30 different pen names; he was one of the first to fill time at the end of his films with outtakes, now a common practice in other comedy films. In the last ten years, he’s been making movies for the OWN, Lifetime, and Hallmark channels.
