Porn Valley- In a deal that’s guaranteed to give the Deep Throat franchise more faces than a politician, Arrow Productions has announced a licensing deal that will debut a line of t-shirts in September. The deal was put together by Robert Interlandi of Arrow together with a company called Bang On, www.bang-on.com.

Bang-On currently has outlets in around 150 malls in Canada and the mid west. In the deal, Bang-On will offer T-shirts for over 60 of the Arrow titles. Interlandi first got the idea when a company called Dragonfly began making similar apparel but without Arrow’s authorization.

I spoke to Interlandi about that when I interviewed him during Arrow’s fashion party last month in Studio City.Here’s what was written:

“What they [Dragonfly] did was, they scanned our box and put it on a T-shirt,” Interlandi said. “They also did Debbie Does Dallas, Tell ‘Em Johnny Wadd Was Here and a few others. And so we gave them a cease and desist order. It stopped it. Ray Pistol said I’ll give you a licensing deal, just pay me. They said no. Okay, so we’ll sue you. And they had to stop.”

Calling Arrow the Disney of the porn industry, Interlandi remembered seeing something about George Lucas on the A&E Channel.

“He said he made more money off of licensing Star Wars than the actual movie, so that got me thinking,” said Interlandi.

Because Arrow couldn’t sell any movies at the AVN show last year, for Interlandi it became a matter of searching out other ways to promote the Arrow name. And the brouhaha with Dragonfly plus the comments Lucas made about licensing indicated that T-shirts and costumes seemed to be the most logical way to go. And there’s also the fact that Halloween costumes are becoming very popular adult novelty items.

“What Star Wars has, I want,” said Robert Interlandi. “If they have costumes, I want costumes. If they’re doing playing cards, I want playing cards. My theory is we can license everything.”

Interlandi talked about a deal he did with Bang-On which has 150 stores in malls in Canada and other parts of this country where Bang-On is expanding their US franchise.

“They press the covers of our boxes on T-shirts, as well as our old movie posters,” Interlandi explains. “I liked the name of the company and thought this would be a good fit. They have 60 of our titles they’re going to put on T-shirts. The deal is signed and they’re already working on it.”

Monday morning I spoke to Interlandi’s father, Paul, who tells me the deal is complete and the T-shirts will debut next month.

“They’ve already got designs made and they’re in production right now,” says Paul Interlandi lending all the credit to his son. “Some of the T-shirts will be from boxcovers and some are photographs we have from the movies. They’re all based on our movie titles like Deep Throat, Devil and Miss Jones, Debbie Does Dallas.” According to Paul Interlandi, Arrow will be featuring the T-shirts at its booth during AEE in January.

“And we instantly go into 150 stores with this deal.”

According to Interlandi, Arrow is working on other licensing deals that will be “out of this world.”

“It’s going to blow everybody’s mind when we announce them,” he says. “We got some really cool stuff coming up and are in the process of writing contracts right now.” According to Interlandi, licensing is probably a better place to be than the video business right now, although Arrow seems to well into expanding its current library of classics. Interlandi’s been working on restoring old titles like Telefantasy which will be out probably before October. And then there’s The Budding of Bree [Henri Paris’ shot-for-shot remake of All About Eve]which will also be available soon in a revitalized edition.

“Classics have been our strong point- a lot of people are intrigued by quality filmmaking,” he says.