Dan Sonney’s father, Louis, was a lawman legendary for his single-handed capture of notorious outlaw Roy Gardner in 1919. The savvy Sonney used his newfound notoriety to enter “the show business,” traveling around the country, exhibiting a filmed reenactment of his exploits. When the “Crime Does not Pay” shtick wore thin, Sonney turned his expertise at exploitation to something even more sensational – sex. During an era in which Hollywood whitewashed any hint of the lurid or salacious, Sonney Amusement Enterprises offered a ravenous public such side-street movie fare as “Girls of the Street,” “Wages of Sin,” and “Gambling with Souls.” Pictures that railed against sin and degradation – while depicting it in all its sordid splendor.

Dan Sonney would take the reins from his father and become the most successful producer and distributor of Adults Only movies in America. In the early Sixties he formed a partnership with Dave Friedman, a former Paramount PR man who’d abandoned the sanctuary of the studio for the free- wheeling life of an independent producer. With partner Herschell Gordon Lewis, Friedman filled the screens of America’s grindhouses with such edifying examples of exploitation as “Daughters of the Sun,” “The Adventures of Lucky Pierre,” and their most infamous concoction, “Blood Feast,” the original splatter film. Once Sonney and Friedman teamed up, they produced a veritable cavalcade of concupiscence, with titles such as “The Defilers,” “A Smell of Honey A Swallow of Brine,” “Starlet,” “The Headmistress,” “Thar She Blows,” “Space Thing,” and the “Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill.”