Biography

Charles Band is a writer, producer, director and publisher. He was born on December 27, 1951 in Los Angeles, California, as Charles Robert Band. His father was producer and director Albert Band and his brother is composer Richard Band.

Band has been writing, producing and directing films in the horror, science fiction, fantasy and comedy genres since the 1970s both for other company's and with his own studios, Empire Pictures and Full Moon Features. He was instrumental in ushering in the home video boom of the early 1980s with his companies Meda (later renamed Media Home Entertainment) and Wizard Video, the latter imprint which was responsible for being among the first entities to distribute European horror movies from such now celebrated filmmakers as Jess Franco and Lucio Fulci.

Band is perhaps best known for his work with Empire Pictures, making such pictures as Ghoulies, The Dungeonmaster, Terrorvision, Re-Animator and From Beyond and later, with Full Moon Features making films like Puppetmaster, Doctor Mordrid, Subspecies, Pit and the Pendulum, Castle Freak and many more.

Despite the changes in the home video and theatrical film marketplaces, Band has never stopped making and distributing movies. Many of his classic Full Moon pictures can be found on his Full Moon Streaming channel and now on the Full Moon Amazon channel. Band also distributes hundreds of his own and other filmmakers movies on DVD and Blu-ray via Full Moon Direct, along with a myriad toys and related Full Moon universe merchandise.

Recent Full Moon Features productions include Evil Bong High 5, Trophy Heads, Killjoy's Psycho Circus, Ravenwolf Towers and Puppetmaster: Axis Termination.
- IMDb mini biography by: Chris Alexander

Full Moon Entertainment's tenure at Paramount Pictures ended in bitter acrimony following a disagreement over the actual budget of Lurking Fear (1994)), based on the H.P. Lovecraft story. Band claimed the budget to be around $300,000, but Paramount executives didn't buy it; that was the end of Full Moon's direct-to-video heyday. The actual budget, as it turned out, was well below $100,000.

His father was born in Paris, France, to Lithuanian Jewish parents, and moved with his family to the US prior to WWII.

While Paramount's distribution of Full Moon's horror films ended in 1994, it did continue to distribute Full Moon's children's/family films through 1997.

In approximately 2002, his company Full Moon Pictures' name was changed to Shadow Entertainment because he thought its latest films lacked the "Full Moon magic" that the company had in the early '90s.

Has two sons with wife Debra Dion: Zalman Band and Harlan Band.

There's no formula for making a good genre film. Everybody seems to come up with one, but you really can't create anything that's going to have value four or five years from now. This is a business that changes every year. Everybody is looking for the next trend, but nobody can predict it.

[his secret to having endured the ages] At the end of the day, it's still about entertaining people who want to escape for a while and be part of some crazy adventure. I've made more horror films than anything else, but I've made some sci-fi and tween movies, like the Moonbeam films. I enjoy the genre and even though the mediums have changed, the delivery systems have changed, it's still just telling a good story and having some fun with it. I think people recognize that.

[preferring practical effects] You'd be hard pressed to find any CGI in my movies. I really like creatures, inanimate objects coming to life that are real, that the actress can actually look and see, not dialed in later with a cartoon.