What's New - Home - Login

Amateur career

From 1953 to 1969, Glut made a total of 41 amateur films, on subjects ranging from dinosaurs, to unauthorized adaptations of such characters as Superman, The Spirit, and Spider-Man.

Due to publicity he received in the pages of Forrest J Ackerman's magazines like Famous Monsters of Filmland, Glut was able to achieve a degree of notoriety based on his work. This allowed him to increase the visibility of his films by obtaining the services of known actors such as Kenne Duncan and Glenn Strange (who reprised his most famous role as the Frankenstein Monster for Glut).

His final amateur film was 1969's Spider-Man, after which he moved into professional work full-time.

On October 3, 2006 Epoch Cinema released a 2-DVD set of all 41 of Glut's amateur films called I Was A Teenage Moviemaker. The total running time of both DVDs is 480 minutes, and includes a documentary about the making of those films, with interviews with Forrest J Ackerman, Randal Kleiser, Bob Burns, Jim Harmon, Scott Shaw, Paul Davids, Bill Warren, and others.

Professional career

Over the next decades, Glut pursued a variety of professions in the entertainment field. He worked heavily as a screenwriter, working mostly in children's television on shows such as Shazam!, Land of the Lost, Spider-Man, Transformers, Challenge of the Gobots, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, Duck Tales, Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle, Galactic Guardians', G.I. Joe X-Men, and many more.

He was also responsible for creating some of the characters and much of the back story for the Masters of the Universe toy line, which served as the basis for the popular TV show.

With the release of 1996's Dinosaur Valley Girls, Glut began a professional directing career that has seen him helm several exploitation-style films, such as The Erotic Rites of Countess Dracula (2001), The Mummy's Kiss (2003), Countess Dracula's Orgy of Blood (2004), 2nd Dynasty (2006) and Blood Scarab (2007).

In addition to the Empire Strikes Back novelization (national number 1 best seller for six weeks), written in 1980 and still in print, Glut has written approximately 65 published books, both novels and nonfiction, plus numerous children's books based on popular franchises. Many of his nonfiction books have been about dinosaurs, including the award-winning Dinosaur Dictionary and the current The Encyclopedia series of reference works.

He has also written for comic books such as Captain America, The Invaders, Kull the Destroyer, What If, House of Mystery, Vampirella, Tarzan, Porky Pig, Solomon Kane, The Little Monsters, Star Wars and many more, and also created (and wrote) The Occult Files of Dr. Spektor, Dagar the Invincible and Tragg and the Sky Gods.

For a full list of Gluts's writing credits, see www.DonaldFGlut.com.