The 1970s saw Halfpenny Pictures go international with their productions, sourcing directors from across America and Europe and providing them with bigger budgets than they were accustomed in a bid to flood the market with the Halfpenny brand. One such director was famed Italian filmmaker Antonio Prosciutto, who had made a name for himself with the Spaghetti Western A Fistful of Cannoli and the poliziotteschi film Dressed to Cook. At the time he was headhunted by Halfpenny, Prosciutto was just finishing work on his horror creature feature Buzzkill for Paramount, about an apiary that is struck by lightning, resulting in a gigantic swarm of killer electric bees. Eager to get Prosciutto on board, Francis Amberton promptly bought the rights to Buzzkill and released it under the Halfpenny Pictures banner instead.

The Snow Ballroom stars Sinatra as Jake Nesbitt: a former mobster on the run from his enemies and in possession of a briefcase of stolen money, who takes refuge at a ski resort hoping to hide from his pursuers. When it turns out that there are several crime families staying at the resort for a big meeting, Jake disguises himself as the Santa in a Christmas pageant that will be performed on Christmas Eve.

The circumstances under which Frank Sinatra came to collaborate with Francis Amberton on The Snow Ballroom at Halfpenny Pictures are the subject of much speculation, but the popular rumour is that Amberton met Sinatra’s agent Milton A. Rudin at a holiday party in December of 1957 and, over several drinks, convinced him that it was a good idea for Sinatra to make a Christmas film in England. Whether or not this is true, Amberton somehow managed to acquire Rudin’s signature on a contract binding Sinatra to star in The Snow Ballroom in 1958 for release in 1959, which proved to be a bit of a challenge because he was already under contract with United Artists to shoot A Hole in the Head at the same time. Ultimately, Sinatra ferried back and forth between England and the United States on alternating weeks shooting the two films simultaneously. Sinatra reportedly hated working on The Snow Ballroom as a result and refused to discuss the movie for the rest of his life, even though it was a box office success and received much critical acclaim.

In 1978, John Carpenter’s Halloween proved to be a surprise smash hit and almost singlehandedly ushered in a trend of slasher movies that would last through the 80s and even have a brief revival in the 90s thanks to Wes Craven’s Scream movies. The following year, Halfpenny Pictures set to work creating their own entry into the burgeoning slasher genre: Stabbings. In fact, Stabbings was little more than a copy of Halloween, and when John Carpenter got wind of the fact that his work was being imitated, he sued. Carpenter lost the subsequent legal battle, but it was enough to hold up the release of Stabbings until 1982 – three years after the film’s completion.

Tapping into the booming home video market, Halfpenny Pictures produced numerous direct-to-VHS (and briefly Beta) movies throughout the 1980s and 1990s, most of which were horror. One such film was Serpentine (1987), adapted from a W.G. Cline short story about a cursed artifact which transforms an archaeologist into an anthropomorphic snake monster. The film only saw moderate success as a rental but eventually gained a cult following in later years and became a sought-after collectible due to the fact that it was never given a DVD release. 30 years after its initial release on VHS, Vinegar Syndrome purchased the distribution rights and gave the film an official, restored release on BluRay.

Gothic horror films saw a boom in the 1930s, with classic horror novels such as Frankenstein and Dracula being adapted for the big screen by Universal Pictures. Unable to afford the rights to any of the best known stories, Halfpenny Pictures decided instead to follow in the footsteps of F.W. Murnau when he created Nosferatu (1922) as an imitation of Dracula. The result was Forbidden Serum, a film about a mad scientist who discovers a serum which allows him to bring people back from the dead. Obviously taking inspiration from Frankenstein (1931), Forbidden Serum proved popular as a B-feature and inspired Francis Amberton to fund several other “knock-off” productions in the same vein.

The 1980s slasher craze saw the rise of independent horror filmmakers producing their own films on 16mm celluloid. One such movie was Scum Fair, a film about a traveling country carnival run by a murderous psychopath called “The Carnie,” who preyed on hapless attendees and sometimes used their corpses in his haunted house dark ride attractions. Scum Fair was directed by Matthew Berger and starred a cast of unknown actors. The film was purchased by Halfpenny Pictures for a modest amount of money and managed to break even at the box office, but no one in the cast or crew went on to make any other movies. A sequel was teased in the end credits, but never came to fruition.

The 1990s saw a boom of straight-to-VHS action movies which were also frequently played on television. Not one to overlook a film trend, Francis Amberton II bought five screenplays to be made into movies specifically for the home video market. The first of these was Adrenaline Rush (1995) starring Olivier Gruner, about a thrill-seeker who gets in over his head after witnessing a mob execution on Los Angeles. Amberton was so impressed with the dailies that he considered giving Adrenaline Rush a theatrical release, but ultimately opted to stick to his plan and released it on video to moderate success. Two more of these straight-to-video movies were made, but the last two scripts were shelved when none of the movies was a major hit.

By the 1970s, Halfpenny Pictures had begun funding international productions shot outside their UK studios. One of their early films shot in the United States of America was The Killa Called Vanilla – a Rudy Ray Moore / Pam Grier vehicle that hoped to cash in on two major movie trends of the decade: blaxploitation and slasher pictures. The plot sees Moore as the owner of a popular discotheque in Akron, Ohio, whose night club becomes the site of multiple murders by a slasher serial killer. Grier plays the sexy lead detective investigating the case. As is typical for blaxploitation films, the killer is eventually revealed to be a corrupt white policeman motivated by racism and a hatred of disco music. Moore and Grier would not appear in a movie together again until 1997’s Fakin’ da Funk.

With the era of silent comedy in full swing, Francis Amberton knew that he had to find a slapstick star to compete with the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. That star came in the form of Australian performer Harold “Snub” Pollard who, by 1922, had starred in dozens of one- and two-reel comedy shorts, but had yet to headline a feature. Amberton hired director Emil Wingard, who also had experience with comedy shorts, to direct The Cheese Stands Alone. Starring Pollard as a naive, city-dwelling young man who inherits a farm from his deceased great-uncle, the film mostly consisted of comedy vignettes where Pollard’s character got into farm-related mishaps. The most popular of these was a segment involving a runaway tractor that was later adapted to be a single-reel short in its own right. Pollard’s time with Halfpenny Orpheum did not last long, as the following year, shortly after his second marriage, he returned to Australia and began touring theatres there holding speaking engagements about the film industry.

On the 20th anniversary of their first collaboration, Amberton and Hardcastle commissioned a new logo for the studio and officially renamed “Halfpenny Orpheum” as “Halfpenny Pictures.” This name is still in use today, although the studio logo would continue to evolve over time.