FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD (Ken Films Double Super 8 Master Copy!)

In the days before "home video" was a thing, Ken Films was one of the leading distributors of films in 8-millimeter, Super 8, and later, sound versions of popular films.  Through licensure deals, they were able to offer movies from several different studios.  For more information, here is a very good forum discussion with the most information on the company that I could find.  The last major release that the company did was 1981's THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, after which, they began to decline, with the company folding somewhere in the mid-1980's (not coincidentally, the time period that video cassette recorders began to become more affordable).

At some point after closing down, someone "rescued" the master copies of 125 of their films, and offered them for sale.  One of these is what we are looking at today:  Ken Films' master copy of Baragon's debut, FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD.  It's important to point out here that Ken Films' masters were kept on a unique format called Double Super-8.  For users, Double Super-8 allowed for twice as much film to be shot (by a special Double Super-8 camera) from one roll of film, and then, during processing, the film was split down the middle, and spliced together.  This photo gives you a good example:

At first glance, it looks like a strip of 16mm film...which is the correct width, only those are Super 8 sprocket holes.  What you are really seeing is two prints of the same film, back-to-back if you will (red line added by me).  This allowed for the production of two copies at a time, which was a clever move by Ken.

You will notice in the Certificate of Authenticity, they refer to this as a negative (probably because the film is black-and-white anyway), but it's my understanding that it is indeed Ken's master copy here instead.  This, along with the spelling errors, make me think that an outsider organization offered these reels for sale after Ken's demise.

If you want to see what this print looked like, here's a YouTube video...it's a little wonky at first, but it gets better once the guy moves the camera...besides, it's got Baragon in it! That should be enough for anybody.