Fred Olen Ray
American filmmaker
Fred Olen Ray (born September 10, 1954) is an American film producer, director and screenwriter of more than 200 low quality feature films in many genres, including horror, science fiction, action/adventure, erotic thrillers, crime dramas, and holiday films.
Ray is the head of Retromedia, which releases DVDs of both his own productions and archival films. He has also worked for other well-known independent studios and on a few occasions for major Hollywood studios. He has been cited as an inspiration for many independent filmmakers. He loaned a 16mm camera to Quentin Tarantino so he could make My Best Friend's Birthday.
Aside from his work in the film industry, Ray was also a professional wrestler. His wrestling name was Fabulous Freddie Valentine.
Early life
Ray was born September 10, 1954, in Wellston, Ohio, to a family originally from West Virginia. As a teenager, he regularly read Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. Being a fan of horror and science fiction films such as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and the AIP movies of the 1950s and 1960s, Ray started making his own movies at the age of fourteen.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q713165. VIAF identifies the subject as 95129980. The Library of Congress control number is n91051458. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1954.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fred Olen Ray” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.