Cinema Image Productions, a small Long Island-based feature film company located in Mineola, New York, was founded by actor and film maker Joseph Zaso. He began the company in 1986 at the ripe age of 16 with an independent video feature entitled, "Maligno." Mr. Zaso wrote, produced and directed this ultra-low budget murder mystery which won him an Award of Merit from the 1987 Suffolk County Film and Video Competition and which had a brief release through the underground video circuit. His next video feature, "It's Only a Movie!" was a musical horror comedy produced in 1990. It too had a brief underground video release and was noted as being "in the vein of 'Rocky Horror Picture Show'" by Variety Magazine.
During his college years at the New York Institute of Technology, Zaso produced a 16mm music video for a Christmas ballad entitled, "That Old House" (1991). On campus, Zaso met a fellow film maker named Joseph F. Parda during the making of a graduate film entitled, "Frankenstein Reborn" (1992). A budding writer, director and cinematographer, Mr. Parda had produced two 16mm shorts: "Curse of the Pharaoh" and the award-winning "French Kiss." After becoming friends who both shared an intense interest in the European horror film, Zaso and Parda decided to collaborate.
